During the more than two decades since the Oslo and Taif accords that brought an end to the first Palestinian Intifada and the Lebanese Civil War, there has been an explosion in almost all areas of Palestinian and Lebanese cultural production, this despite the rapidly narrowing of any possibility of a just political solution to the Palestinian question or a resolution to the problems of confessionalism and inequality that led to civil war in Lebanon. In both contexts state or quasi-state institutions have refused to address the urgent political questions that continue to shape the lives of Palestinians and Lebanese. In the Palestinian context, this work has shifted to the arts (broadly defined) , to new, theoretically complex and exciting texts that engages directly and indirectly with earlier Palestinian works; operates consciously within a decidedly transnational framework even as it insists on the specificities of local experiences and perspectives; and opens the possibilities of what it means to be a Palestinian by complicating the dominant Palestinian narrative(s) of loss and struggle. These works also circulate within the context of complex and rapidly changing political conversations about the politics of cultural production, including but not limited to debates surrounding cultural and academic BDS, normalization, and gender.In Lebanon independent NGOs endeavor to address that void by tackling the past through the promotion of archival projects, cultural initiatives, technical workshops and outreach programs. Specifically, these activities recall the violence and destruction of Lebanon’s civil wars despite the persistent “hostility to history” that seeks to suffocate Lebanese social and political life.
Because Palestinian and Lebanese cultural texts are increasingly finding their way into college classrooms, there is a need for a similarly sophisticated scholarship that examines how such works engage questions of individual and national agency, selfhood, and subjectivity across time and at both local and global levels. This panel is an initial attempt at such a scholarship. It begins with a paper on the changing reception of Mahmud Darwish in American and European classrooms as a result of new approaches to translations of his works. This contribution underscores the dynamic nature of cultural texts across time, and the ways in which translation and distribution practices can shape Western interpretations of Palestinian texts. A second paper borrows from thing theory and forensic architecture to uncover the culturally powerful acts of analysis and archiving inherent in the film essays and art projects of Kamal Aljafari, Mais Darwazeh, Larissa Sansour, and Elia Suleiman, thereby opening a space for discussion within the university classroom of these texts that both includes and transcends their representations of loss. The final paper focuses on “Memory at Work,” a web-based project of Umam D&R in Beirut. The paper describes the project and its theoretical basis as a site for exploring and monitoring the war, not only quantitatively, but as qualitatively through personal and collective memories and reminiscences, as well as a site for addressing the war’s presence, the myriad ways it affected—and continues to influence—the public and private lives of the Lebanese. Taken together the papers offer instructors intellectual tools and methods for enriching discussion and study of Palestinian and Lebanese texts in the classroom.
A Forensics of Home: Reading The Spaces and Objects of Contemporary Palestinian Cinema
The past decade has seen an increasingly wide range of what can broadly be categorized as Palestinian experimental films. These films eschew the familiar fictional narrative and documentary structures and instead are structured as film essays, video loops, or installations. One strand of this work has focused intensively on an intimate and rigorous representation of spaces and objects, and the relationship between characters and the spaces they occupy. Within the charged context of Israel/Palestine such texts are particularly challenging for students and activist arguments who look to creative texts to confirm a particular narrative of the Israeli Palestinian conflict or to bolster a preconceived notion of Palestinian lived experience. In this paper I propose to read a selection of these texts (films and photography by Elia Suleiman, Kamal Aljafari, and Mais Darwazeh) through the theoretical lenses of thing theory and forensic architecture as a means of rendering the non-narrative aspects of their works (and in particular what appears to be an obsessive focus on seemingly mundane objects and apolitical spaces) comprehensible to students. Thing theory provides tools for broadening a geographical approach to understanding the relationship of people to the spaces they inhabit to include their interaction with specific objects in those spaces. Individuals are shaped not only by the configurations of their homes, neighborhoods and institutions, but also by their regular interaction with the things that populate them. Conceived as a method for uncovering evidence of violence in the built environment at a macro level within the context of documenting human rights abuses, forensic architecture, forensic architecture lays bare the communicative context and rhetorical devices for interpreting objects, spaces, and images. The works of these filmmakers, I argue can be interpreted as a forensics of intimate spaces, uncovering not the traces of violence on a landscape but rather the traces of intimate human encounters within rooms.
It is clear that the destiny of Palestine has had a deep and positive impact in the development of contemporary studies about the Arab world in American and European universities. It has also created a militant attitude that has highlighted the ideological aspects and political commitment of literary works. This has probably been the most common reading of modern Arabic (and particularly Palestinian) literature, resulting in a strong and enduring bond between the surface text of literature and politics. However, recent work goes beyond the analysis of Arabic literary texts as historical, sociological or political documents that characterized Western scholarship on Arabic literature during the 20th century. This new treatment is uncovering nuances and complexities for Palestinian literature that has long been recognized for other literary traditions.
Mahmud Darwish may be the author who best exemplifies the course taken by Palestinian literature and its translation and reception in recent decades. The earliest translations into English, Spanish and French of Darwish in 1960s appeared in the markedly political atmosphere after the disaster of 1967. After that, Darwish was published for decades in fragments or anthologies in narrowly defined political contexts. The first complete translations of Darwish’s diwans did not appear until many years later.
Has Darwish ceased to be an exclusively political symbol and a cause, to become at last a writer that shares space with the great authors of the 20th century? Are Darwish’s works to be found where they belong, with publishing houses that focus on literature, rather than on the author's origin or political commitment?
UMAM Documentation and Research (UMAM D&R) believes that dealing with Lebanon’s violent past, crystallized during the 1975 – 1990 civil wars, is fundamental to eliminating the specter of renewed conflict that continues to haunt the country. As state organizations steadfastly refuse to engage in the historical analysis of Lebanon’s civil war, UMAM D&R endeavors to address that void by tackling the past through the promotion of archival projects, cultural initiatives, technical workshops and outreach programs. Specifically, these activities recall the violence and destruction of Lebanon’s civil wars despite the persistent “hostility to history” that seeks to suffocate Lebanese social and political life. The Memory at Work website initiative helps overcome governmental intransigence by enabling Lebanese of all beliefs and backgrounds to engage firsthand with the true Lebanese experience.
Memory at Work is a database centered on the history of and recollections about the Lebanese wars, particularly those dubbed as being “civil.” It is intended as a means to explore, monitor, and follow-up on these wars, not only quantitatively, but as qualitatively through personal and collective memories and reminiscences that have either emerged or been ignored assiduously because of this horrific experience. Memory at Work also addresses the war’s presence, the myriad ways it affected—and continues to influence—the public and private lives of the Lebanese and the impact it had on those who either participated actively in the conflict or suffered its wrath in silence. It does so by offering access to thousands of open source, war-related articles and other data which, combined, should be seen as a plea to revisit the war through texts, facts and terminology, and identify—two decades after it ended—those among us who witnessed its course. Memory at Work also asks the enduring question: What do we do now? In other words, what is to be done with the war’s legacy and absurd history, particularly since the Lebanese deny any kinship to either of them?
UMAM D&R recently expanded this website, launching a mirror-image English version. It is our hope that this translated version will help researchers, citizens and history buffs alike delve deeper into the facts of Lebanon’s torrid history. While certainly not a substitute for primary source research, this website aims to help guide researchers more directly and quickly to important primary source material.
