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Race, Representation and Decolonial Imaginings of Palestinian Refugee Life

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Race, Representation and Decolonial Imaginings of Palestinian Refugee Life Temporalities of ‘Return’: Race, Representation and Decolonial Imaginings of Palestinian Refugee Life Shaira Vadasaria A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Graduate Program in Sociology York University Toronto, Ontario May 2018 ã Shaira Vadasaria, 2018 Abstract This dissertation examines the representational life of return and asks: how has Israeli settler-colonialism and international rights discourse come to bear on political imaginings of return for third-generation Palestinian refugees residing in the occupied West Bank? Examining this question as a genealogical inquiry, I consider what legal and aesthetic imaginings of return tell us about the historical and on-going project of race in Palestine/Israel as it coalesces under settler- colonialism, law and protracted humanitarianism. I begin by tracing the work of race across modern political Zionist thought, appeals to Israeli nationhood and the expulsion policies used to evict Palestinians during early Israeli settlement. Next, I develop a legal history of the ‘right of return’ as a land-based reparative justice imperative and consider how it became instituted through a system of protracted humanitarian governance. In so doing, I delineate the racial grammar and juridical grounds through which Palestinian personhood came to be constituted and made legible under international governance and against settler-colonial orderings of expulsion. Against this context, chapters four and five attend to some of the ways that third-generation Palestinian refugees negotiate claims to return through decolonizing cultural production. Methodologically, I draw from six-months of research in the Southern West Bank region where I worked closely with two experimental social action projects: DAAR (Decolonizing Architectural Art Residency) and Campus in Camps. I examine their architectural and story-based imaginings of return as a history of the present but also consider what these imaginings suggest about return in its afterlife. I analyze this using a range of materials including open-ended interviews with Palestinian refugees and participants in the collectives, visual, media and narrative texts, and public speeches and published works by the collectives involved. Theoretically, I draw from theories of race, settler-colonialism, affect and psychoanalysis to analyze these texts and rely on theories of representation, genealogy and discourse analysis to interpret the material. Through this work, I treat representations of return as both a racial index of Palestinian refugee subjectivity formed across settler-colonial expulsion, legal redress and humanitarian governance and a methodological directive for thinking about ontological claims to Palestinian futurity. ii Dedication To my mother, Amina, and father, Didar. For their tender hearts and generous spirits. It is possible… It is possible at least sometimes… It is possible especially now To ride a horse Inside a prison cell And run away… It is possible for prison walls To disappear. For the cell to become a distant land Without frontiers (…) - Mahmoud Darwish, “The Prison Cell” iii Acknowledgements This work has been a labor of spirit connected to so many people, places and ideas across time. It has found resonance with the political and intellectual legacies of feminist and post- colonial theorizing – and the struggle to keep alive histories and ideas that matter. Through these legacies, I am reminded of the potency of knowledge that dares to produce otherwise. This work has found inspiration, curiosity and home in Palestine - in large part because of the profound generosity and spirit of so many people and communities I’ve had the honor to learn from and engage with. It has found support, renewal and continuity in family, friendships and mentorships in Toronto – as well as London, New York and San Francisco. This work has many people and encounters to thank. Over the course of my graduate studies, Dr. Carmela Murdocca’s rigorous scholarly training and supervisory capacities shaped me and my work in profound ways. Her mentorship throughout it all went far beyond the reach of a supervisor. Her incisive engagement with my scholarship helped me see through and clarify the ethical, political and methodological commitments of this project. At every turn, she offered critical feedback, intellectual renewal, emotional support, friendship, nourishing meals and talks, and reminders for why we commit ourselves to the work that we do. Words really can’t translate what it has meant for me to learn from a mentor so brilliant and so committed to the ethics and rigor of knowledge production. I would also like to extend deep gratitude to Dr. Alison Crosby and Dr. Lesley Wood, both of whom inspired momentum, critique and curiosity on this project at times that it needed it the most. Thank you for believing in the potentiality of me and this project, and for keeping centre the political implication of this work. I would also like to thank my external examiner, Dr. Nadera Shalhoub- Kevorkian for offering such a close reading of this work and providing insightful theoretical and iv methodological directions for where the project might advance further. It was an immensely rewarding experience to be in conversation with you after taking such inspiration and direction from your scholarship all these years. I also thank Dr. Honor Ford-Smith and Dr. Christopher Kyriakides for engaging questions during the defense. And a special thank you to Dr. Laleh Khalili, whose scholarship, teaching, and political imperatives inspired my earliest thinking on this work in salient ways. Dr. Kamala Kempadoo, Dr. Radhika Mongia and Dr. Michael Nijhawan also offered critical thought and intellectual training at different stages of my doctoral degree at York University. Audrey Tokiwa has been immensely supportive and encouraging throughout the entirety of my doctoral degree and no graduate student in York University’s Sociology program could make it through without her. I’d also like to acknowledge a special professor, Dr. Lara Karaian. Without your support, guidance and fierce training in feminist theory, I may never have pursued graduate studies. Thank you for asking me to do so. Your brilliance, curiosity and steadfast support has inspired so much for me. My family and especially parents, Amina and Didar provided an unlimited well of love, strength, support and encouragement through it all - even when they didn’t quite understand what I was up to and why this degree was taking so long to obtain. It is because of the profound ways that they care that any of this work was even imaginable. To my sisters – my mentors of family life and showing up through the tides, thank you for the ways you did and supported me through it all. A special thank you to Salima Bhimani for keeping alive the importance of this work and my commitment to it at every turn. Thank you deeply for keeping me on schedule with the writing, the intellectual labor, emotional support, check-ins, mentorship, and love through it all. Thank you for bearing witness to this work at every stage. v This work has also been made possible through the friendship and generosity of so many people in Palestine. Friends from Addameer, Badil, Beit Ashams, Campus in Camps and DAAR, in particular Ala Jaradat, Sahar Francis, Magda Mughrabi, Eilda Zaghmout, Nimala Kharoufeh, Athar Mufreh, and Dalia Lutfi provided me rich conversations, meals, homespace, office space and yoga space. Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti also provided me space to think, research and process and a generous window into their creative thinking process and experimental narrative production. A special thank you to Mustafa Alaraj, a dear friend who also helped me make sense of this work through support with translation. My colleagues and students at Al-Quds Bard College were especially supportive and helpful towards the final stage of this work. It was often in the classroom and through engagement with students at AQB that I came to read this work and its interlocutors through a fresh set of eyes. Thank you for the many ways you showed up ready to think, feel, critique and imagine otherwise. So many friendships have nourished me and this work with curiosity, care and profound support. Rita Nketiah and Fayola Jacobs, thank you both for giving me the courage to carve a path in academia. Graciela Flores Mendez, your strength, grit, and deep capacity to show up is a gift to so many of us. Thank you for the support you lent me during the most critical junctures of this work. Jen Preston, our chats, thinking and feeling together in lived space and across worlds brought home to me and this work. My earliest graduate school community lit the path of academia for me and continue to stimulate grounded thought and friendship. Julianne DiSanto, Tim Bryan, Preet Virdi, Daena Crosby, Sana Affara offered such deep curiosity throughout it all. Shaila Khan, Fenn Stewart, Anke Allspach, Zahir Kolia, Nishant Upadhyay, Shaista Patel, Beenash Jafri, Nisha Eswan, Reeju Ray, Anita Castelino, David Moffette, Akanksha Methi, Katie Natanel, also offered care, friendship and critical thought through it all. Alexa Stevens, Emily Mulder and Chloe vi Benoist’s steady friendship in and between visits to Palestine brought care and a sense of home to the winds of it all. A special thank you to Alexa and Peter, for being a steady home base to come back to all those years. Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, your friendship, brilliant scholarship, commitment to thinking and reading and steady presence at the Common made the progression of this work possible. I’d also like to thank deeply two special people that entered my life and this work at a critical time. Alejandro Urruzmendi and Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, thank you both profoundly for the ways that you tended to me in the final writing stages of this work.
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