The politics of place and the storied edges of Palestine: an exploration of the Palestinian Museum’s Digital Archive.

Keywords: Palestine, Place, Politics, Settler Colonial Geographies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 2

Abstract

Applying Doreen Massey’s (2005) concept of place to the archive, this paper encounters the ways in which Palestinians conceptualise and usher in a politics of place that is both rooted and unbounded, and in challenge to the colonial spatialities in Palestine. Drawing on notions of ‘throwntogertherness’, porousness and the unending storying of places, I argue that Massey offers rich ways to ground analysis that opens up the impact of the archive. Archives have become integral tools and important spaces for Palestinians (Doumani, 2009) to contest and counteract the Israeli settler colonial project of erasure (Stoler, 2018 Abu-Lughod, 2020). Yet, research into these archival spaces is scarce.

The Palestinian Museum’s Digital Archive (PMDA) seeks out and shares Palestinian histories “from below”, placing value and importance on the ordinary stories of Palestinian life. This paper is drawn from my ethnographic study of the PMDA, whereby I undertook a textual analysis of places in the archive and conducted semi-structured interviews with Palestinians working in the PMDA and those in the diaspora who use the archive. I argue that the PMDA’s spatiality is stretched beyond a site of historical narration to a generative network, collectivising Palestinians and engaging in questions of place, politics and future. This approach makes possible ways of seeing Palestine not as closed, mournful past but as living, possible future. The PMDA, through its relational politics of place and the spatial and affective dimensions it initiates, facilitates grassroots, people-centred history making that contributes to the broader struggle for liberation in Palestine.