Gaza as Metaphor

by Dina Matar (Editor), Helga Tawil-Souri (Editor)

Overview

Open-air prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma, Bare humanity: irrespective of when, where, and to whom the word is uttered, Gaza immediately evokes an abundance of metaphors. Similarly, a plethora of metaphors also invoke Gaza: Crisis, Exception, Refugees, Destitution, Tunnels, Persistence. With essays written by journalists, writers, doctors, academics and others, this volume uses metaphor to record and historicize Gaza, to contextualize its everyday realities, interrogate its representations and provide an understanding on Gaza's real and symbolic significance. The essays within, written both from within Gaza and outside, touch on life and survival, the making of the Gaza Strip and its increasing isolation, the discursive and visual tools that have often shackled Gaza behind misunderstandings, and what Gaza contributes to our understanding of exception; inequality; dispossession; bio-politics; necro-power and other terms which we rely on to make sense of our world. The volume reveals how Gaza is an outcome of specific historical and spatial practices, and not simply a metaphor of a far-away humanitarian disaster or place of incomprehensible violence. Gaza As Metaphor demonstrates that Gaza is a real place, an inseparable part of the past, present, and future condition of Palestinians, in particular, and of dispossession, more generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849046244
Publisher:	Hurst
Publication date:	04/15/2016
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	553,731
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Helga Tawil-Souri is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University. Dina Matar is the Director of the Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS, University of London and the co-editor of The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Cover art by Raed Issa

Introduction by Helga Tawil-Souri and Dina Matar

Photo by Tanya Habjouqa (from Women of Gaza series)
Section 1: Living Gaza
1. Helga Tawil-Souri, Gaza as Larger Than Life
2. Haidar Eid, Diary July 20, 2014 / Signposts on the Road to Liberation
3. Said Shehadeh, Ghazeh el Sumud: Confronting Israeli Mass Torture
4. Pierre Krähenbühl, Gaza as a Metaphor for Unsustainability
5. Mouin Rabbani, Israel Mows the Lawn
6. Naim Al Khatib, On War and Shit

Photo by Jim McFarlane (from Gaza Anti-Portraits series) [* needs to be confirmed]
Section 2: Placing Gaza
1. Khaled Hroub, Tunnels: Love, Lions and … Absurdities
2. Jehad Abusalim, From Fence to Fence: Retelling Gaza's Story
3. Ilana Feldman, Gaza: Isolation
4. Salman Abu Sitta, Gaza Strip: The Lessons of History
5. Glenn Bowman, Gaza: Encystation

Photo by Omar Al Qattaa (children in Gaza)
Section 3: Narrating Gaza
1. Selma Dabbagh, Inventing Gaza
2. Ramzy Baroud, Fighting Another Day: Gaza's Unrelenting Resistance
3. Atef Alshaer, In the company of Frantz Fanon: The Israeli Wars and the National Culture of Gaza
4. Ilan Pappe, Can the Pen be Mightier than the Sword? Permission to Narrate Gaza
5. Dina Matar, Gaza: Image Normalization

Photo by Omar Al Qattaa (Parkour photo)
Section 4: Thinking Gaza
1. Darryl Li, Gaza at the Frontiers of Zionism
2. Ariella Azoulay, Concentration-Place
3. Nimer Sultany, Repetition
4. Sara Roy, Gaza: No Se Puede Mirar - One Cannot Look, A Brief Reflection
5. Sherene Seikaly, Gaza as Archive

Biographies

Index


BIOGRAPHIES
Jehad ABUSALIM was born and grew up in Deir al-Balah city in the Gaza Strip. Jehad attended Al-Azhar University in Gaza, receiving his Bachelor's degree in Business Administration. Afterwards, he attended the Islamic University-Gaza where he received a diploma in Hebrew language. Jehad has worked in a number of civil society organizations, including PalThink for Strategic Studies, a local Palestinian think tank, the Birzeit Center for Development Studies, Save Youth Future Society, the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, and HADAF Center for Human Rights, and Swisspeace. Since the fall of 2013, Jehad has been a candidate for PhD at New York University in the joint program in Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History. His research focuses on the influence of the Nakba on the Gaza Strip and how it radically changed the political, social, demographic, and economic realities of Gaza.
Salman ABU SITTA is a Graduate of Cairo University and University College London in civil engineering. Abu-Sitta is the founder and president of Palestine Land Society and author of several books including the Atlas of Palestine 1917- 1966 (English and Arabic editions), the Return Journey, and more than 300 papers and articles on Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return. He is also a member of Palestine National Council and the General Coordinator of the Right of Return Congress.

Naim AL KHATIB was born in 1968 in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received his bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a minor in Theatre from the American University in Cairo in 1993 and his master's in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. He published his first narrative collection "Free Reign" in 2010, and his second "Stolen Alive" in 2013 (both in Arabic). He also has attempted screenwriting and playwriting in addition to his passion for acting and directing.

Atef ALSHAER is a Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Westminster. He has several publications on the Arab world in the field of literature, politics and language. He was educated at Birzeit University in Palestine and SOAS, University of London, where he obtained his PhD and taught for a number of years.
Ariella AZOULAY is in Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature, Brown University. Her recent books include From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, (Pluto Press, 2011), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012) and The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008), and, co-author with Adi Ophir of The One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (Stanford University Press, 2012). She is Curator and documentary film maker. Among her recent projects: of Potential History (2012, Stuk / Artefact, Louven), Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012).
Ramzy BAROUD is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, managing editor of Middle East Eye and the author of several books. Baroud founded the Palestine Chronicle and is currently completing his PhD studies at the University of Exeter. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
Glenn BOWMAN is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent's School of Anthropology and Conservation. His research (1983-present) has predominantly concerned Israel/Palestine (particularly Jerusalem and Bethlehem District) where he has examined topics ranging from pilgrimage and inter-communal shrine sharing to nationalist mobilisation and the historic and contemporary practices of structured separation. He has carried out cognate research in Yugoslavia (1990-present) and Divided Cyprus (2009-present). Some recent publications include: "A Place for the Palestinians in the Altneuland: Herzl, Anti-Semitism, and the Jewish State" in Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power. eds. Elia Zureik, David Lyon & Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Routledge, 2010); "Viewing the Holy City: An Anthropological Perspectivalism" in Jerusalem: Conflict and Cooperation in a Contested City. eds. Madelaine Adelman & Miriam Elman (Syracuse University Press, 2012); "Sharing and Exclusion: the Case of Rachel's Tomb," Jerusalem Quarterly 58 (2014); and "Violence before Identity: an Analysis of Identity Politics," The Sociological Review 62 (2014).
Selma DABBAGH is a British Palestinian writer of fiction who lives in London. Her first novel, Out of It (Bloomsbury 2012) set between Gaza, London and the Gulf, was critically acclaimed and listed as a Guardian Book of the Year. She has also published short stories with Granta, International PEN, the British Council, Wasafiri, Telegram and The Letters' Page. She has been nominated for several awards for her stories. Her first play, The Brick, was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in January 2014 and nominated for an Imison Award. She is currently working on her second novel. Selma also works as a lawyer in London, with a focus on international criminal law. She has previously worked for human rights non governmental organisations in East Jerusalem, Cairo, and London and has spent her life shuttling between Europe and the Arab world. www.selmadabbagh.com
Omar EL QATTAA is a photographer based in Gaza * [waiting on updated bio]

Haidar EID is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at al-Aqsa University in Gaza. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on cultural Studies and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of Comparative Literature. Eid received his Ph.D. in English Literature and Philosophy from University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Worlding Postmodernism: Interpretive Possibilities of Critical Theory (Roman Books, 2014).
Ilana FELDMAN is Associate Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at George Washington University. Her research has focused on the Palestinian experience, both inside and outside of Palestine, examining practices of government, humanitarianism, policing, displacement, and citizenship. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67 (Duke University Press, 2008); In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Duke University, 2010; co-edited with Miriam Ticktin); and Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule (Stanford University Press, 2015). She is currently working on a project, tentatively titled Life Lived in Relief: Palestinian Experiences with Humanitarianism Since 1948, which involves fieldwork and archival research in and about Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. This project explores the dynamics of long-term humanitarianism and the politics of living in the humanitarian condition.
Tanya HABJOUQA is a photographer with a master's degree in Global Media and Middle East Politics from the University of London SOAS. Habjouqa's photographs focus on gender, social, and human rights issues in the Middle East. Tanya is a founding member of Rawiya photo collective, the first all female photo collective of the Middle East. Her work has been widely exhibited, and her series ¨Women of Gaza" was acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Art in 2013 and in private collections. In 2014 she won a World Press Award for her series Occupied Pleasures in which she documents many of the ludicrous moments of everyday life that the 47-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem has created. Habjouqa was a finalist for the 2014 FotoEvidence Book Award, and recipient of the Magnum Foundation 2013 Emergency Fund. Based in East Jerusalem, she is working on personal projects that explore identity politics, occupation, and subcultures of the Levant. www.tanyahabjouqa.com Khaled HROUB is a professor in residence of Middle Eastern Studies and Arab Media Studies at Northwestern University/Qatar, and a senior research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies of the University of Cambridge where he founded and directed Cambridge Arab Media Project (CAMP). He is the author of Hamas: A Beginners Guide (2006/2010), Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (2000), and editor of Political Islam: Context versus Ideology (2011) and Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (2012). In Arabic he published Fragility of Ideology and Might of Politics (2010), In Praise of Revolution (2012). In literary and poetry, he published Tattoo of Cities (literary collection, 2008) and Enchantress of Poetry (poems, 2008) - both in Arabic.

Raed ISSA is an artist, born Al Bureij refugee camp, Gaza. After studying Computer Science in the Islamic University in Gaza, Raed turned to the fine arts, taking courses in mural painting, drawing and oil painting. He has had two solo exhibitions in Ramallah and has contributed to several group exhibitions in Palestine, Jordan, Switzerland and Australia, including the traveling exhibition in France of 10 young Palestinian artists (2003-04). In 2002 he won a Distinction Award in the A M Qattan Foundation Young Artists Award. He was invited to the 2003 Braziers International Artists Workshop in the UK. Raed lives in Al Bureij and works in Gaza City.

Pierre KRÄHENBÜHL is Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Prior to joining UNRWA, he served as Director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross, overseeing that organization's response to conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Colombia and Libya, among others. He holds a BA in Political Sciences and International Relations from the University of Geneva.
Darryl LI is an anthropologist and attorney who has worked in the Gaza Strip for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem.
Dina MATAR is senior lecturer in political communication at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She works on the relationship between culture, communication and politics, with a special focus on Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. She is author of ¨What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood¨ (Tauris, 2010); co-editor of ¨Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Palestine and Lebanon¨ (Tauris, 2013) and co-author of ¨The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication¨ (Hurst, 2014). Matar is co-founding editor of the ¨The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.¨

Ilan PAPPE is Professor of History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 to 2000 and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006.Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.He was appointed as chair in the department of History at Exeter University in 2007-2009 and became a fellow of the IAIS in 2010. His research focuses on the modern Middle East and, in particular, the history of Israel and Palestine. He is the author of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006); The Forgotten Palestinians (2011); The Idea of Israel (2014) and The Israel-Palestine Question (1999) among other books.

Mouin RABBANI is Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Co-Editor of Jadaliyya. He is Policy Advisor with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and Contributing Editor to Middle East Report. He has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Sara ROY is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. Her most recent book is Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton University Press, 2011, 2013).

Sherene SEIKALY is Assistant Professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the editor of the Arab Studies Journal, and co-founder and editor of Jadaliyya e-zine. Seikaly's Men of Capital: Economy and Scarcity in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2015) explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body.
Said SHEHADEH was born and raised in Jaffa, Palestine. He completed his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His dissertation research examined the application of psychoanalytic theory to the Arab self. Said developed a wide range of interests in various types of trauma, including sexual, political, and community violence trauma. His clinical training and work centered on the psychological assessment and treatment of emotional and physical trauma. Based in Ramallah and New York, Shehadeh's current research project focuses on Palestinian resilience under settler colonial occupation.
Nimer SULTANY is Lecturer in Public Law, School of Law, SOAS, University of London. Previously, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at SUNY Buffalo Law School. He holds an SJD from Harvard Law School; an LL.M. from University of Virginia; an LL.M. from Tel Aviv University; and an LL.B. from the College of Management. He practiced human rights law in Israel/Palestine, and was the director of the Political Monitoring Project at Mada al-Carmel - The Arab Research Center for Applied Social Research. His publications include: ¨The State of Progressive Constitutional Theory: The Paradox of Constitutional Democracy and the Project of Political Justification¨ in the Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review; Ägainst Conceptualism: Islamic Law, Democracy, and Constitutionalism in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring¨ in the Boston University International Law Journal; Äctivism and Legitimation in Israel's Jurisprudence of Occupation¨ in Social & Legal Studies; ¨Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel's New Hegemony¨ in the Journal of Palestine Studies; and Citizens without Citizenship: Israel and the Palestinian Minority (Mada, 2003). His op-eds appeared in Arabic, Hebrew, and English in numerous media outlets, including: The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Buffalo News, Ha'aretz, and Al-Quds al-Arabi.
Helga TAWIL-SOURI is a media scholar, photographer and documentary film-maker whose work focuses on issues of spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle East. The bulk of her scholarship analyzes culture and technology in everyday life in Palestine/Israel, theorizing how media technologies and infrastructures function as control and bordering mechanisms, and how territorial/physical boundaries function as cultural spaces. She writes on contemporary Palestinian cultural politics, internet, telecommunications, television, cinema, videogames, as well as physical markers such as ID cards, checkpoints and buffer/border zones. She is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication and Director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.