Boxed In: Re-Becoming Palestinian

When we come from marginal places, the ones that are often given names such as “third world” or “developing countries”, we are made to believe that we were born to fit into certain categories, to produce works that dazzle the public white gazes as they move swiftly from one tragedy to the other. When they see a black artist, they stare at you as if that artist’s trauma was your own, and when they see pictures of an Apartheid wall, screaming soundtracks of resistance, they look at me; because I solely have come to represent the entirety of a people’s struggle. This is what it means, what it feels like, to navigate through institutions unused to witnessing collective heartbreaks, because when they speak of communities, they often think of shared physical spaces, whereas we have surpassed the need for touch, we have become connected through our memories and hopes for a radical future. My story with Utopias began with the winter of 2019; when we were asked to think of positive futures as part of a year-long university project, not knowing that we were only months away from a pandemic that would sweep us all away from physical means of communication, let alone any positive thoughts. Yet I dared to dream of a Utopian Palestine, I dared to bring her into the academy, unpredicted tears were awaiting me as I tried to introduce her to the world. My world, at least; a bunch of boxes staring back at me from a 12-inch screen, “objectively” critiquing my work. I was troubled, reading up on science fiction while at the same time keeping up with the reality of the news; Trump declares a peace plan, it hit international outlets, Gaza’s situation is worsening with a blockade and a pandemic, an Autistic man was killed by the Israeli police, another man by a US-American one. The Utopia I was constructing continued to slip away from my grip. I was told to “stay with the trouble”, as Donna Haraway had instructed, and I couldn’t understand why a US-American woman needed to tell me what to do. Yet with the heightened protests of 2020, the fears and worries that came with it, I found myself in a state of hope as I witnessed BLM protests and calls for intersectional solidarities, I dared, once again, to dream of revolutions, and to introduce my own. In my final stages, I understood the meaning of finding joy within the trouble; I no longer wanted to create new realities, I wanted to focus on the ones that already existed.

The two movies: "Home Will Always Be Waiting" (https://vimeo.com/411984031) and "Who's Dreaming of Utopias When We're All Asleep?"  (https://vimeo.com/427054918) have acted as coping mechanisms as I tried to convey my thoughts through humor and poetry. A pleading call that says: this is who I am, and I am by no means an entire country, just someone who is trying to go back to it. By being Palestinian, I have acted as a mere reporter on the situation, a representation of war zones and conflicts, and I no longer wanted to be put into that box; so, I formed my own, and I put everything in it, and I shipped it to where it belonged.

By re-becoming Palestinian, I have made the decision to challenge the expectations of the academy; hoping to convey that even though I will continue to include Palestine in my conversations, I will do it on my own terms. 

As 2021 emerges, I am learning that I do not need to apologize for speaking, writing, or making art about Palestine, no matter how radical or uninviting she might sometimes seem. I am learning to no longer shed tears for the academy, to no longer perceive my existence as a threat; I have become a provocation, allowing the public white gazes to linger around for more than a few seconds. Our Utopias are not islands, the countries we come from are not artworks, and our identities are not trademarks; they form the basis that uplift us to serve both our individual and collective needs. We can be all queer, feminist, BIPOC etc. so long as these labels empower us to wholly become ourselves. The violence we experience comes from the limitations imposed on us by the institution. I end this with excerpts from a statement I have written on the 2nd of June, 2020, days before reading it out during my final presentation: 

If I have learned anything this year, it is that freedom, as Angela Davis puts it so well, is indeed a “constant struggle”, a struggle of actively learning and unlearning the structures of white supremacy and oppression. A struggle of challenging the Euro-centricity of the same syllabus that has taught me all about “post”-colonial theories. Reading Said and Fanon is a must, but only to a certain extent. It is then my duty to search for all the Malcom Xs and Audre Lordes of the world. I have attempted to individualize my work so that it would not seem too extreme for the institution, the institution which, although allows me to speak freely about the things I could not have otherwise addressed elsewhere, restricts my opinions and frames them into “personal reflections”. I ask you to not individualize my labour, because it is built on the backs of those who have come before me.

Read the full statement under: https://cdslab.uni-ak.ac.at/WhoseUtopia/statement.html 

Project website: https://cdslab.uni-ak.ac.at/WhoseUtopia/boxopen.html 

Special thanks to Frauen*Forscherin Magazine for including my work as part of their SS21 publication "Navigating The Toxic Maze" found here: https://www.oeh.univie.ac.at/sites/default/files/CMS/Frauen_Ref/Fr_For_SoSe_2021_web.pdf