AcKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has been researched and written for almost fifteen years, across three different continents and a multitude of settings and institutions, growing through manifold encounters and intellectual conversations. This means that I owe my gratitude to many people for helping me out in this project, and also that I have probably if unintentionally left some of them out of these acknowl- edgments. I hope that those whom I have inadvertently left out will pardon me and still read and enjoy this book, knowing they have contributed to it. My first heartfelt thanks go to several people who have played important roles in the making of this book, models of critical inquiry and cultural prac- tice who have inspired me throughout years of conversations and exchanges: Suad Amiry, Khaldun Bshara, Michael Herzfeld, Lara Khaldi, Lynn Meskell, Ann Rigney, Ann Laura Stoler, and Salim Tamari. The people working for the Palestinian organizations that are the subject of my research have also been key to the making of the book, for the ways they embraced, helped, supported, and encouraged me along this path. First, the people of Riwaq, as well as Khalil Rabah, who was long with that organization, for hosting me and offering me their friendship and full support, making me feel a part of the team. I am also very grateful to the PACE staff, who welcomed and hosted me when I arrived in Palestine and first guided me through the lacerated West Bank landscape; I am extremely grateful and remember with great affection Adel Yahya and his family. I also thank Jamil Hilal for his friendship, as well as our language ex- changes. A conversation with Khalil Nakhleh in 2004 was seminal to this book. Hebron is one of the places I feel most at home in Palestine. One person in particular deserves my deepest gratitude: thank you, Fatin, for being the most wonderful friend beyond our differences! Other people welcomed me, hosted me, and made me feel at home in Hebron. I owe deepest thanks to Khaled al- XII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Qawasme and Rula Sharawi for their extremely generous hospitality, both at home and at the HRC. The Sharif and Muhtasib families deserve a special men- tion in these acknowledgments for giving me a home in Hebron. Thank you Um Osama and Rula for taking such good care of me! Also, HRC engineers and administrators, and particularly Emad Hamdan, Hilmi Maraka, and Nuha Dandis, donated a significant amount of time to me, providing vital informa- tion. I am grateful to Hisham Sharabati for several very informative interviews I carried out with him. Many institutions supported me throughout the research and writing for this book. Over the years, I have worked for a number of universities that have all in different ways supported my research and writing: the Stanford Depart- ment of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Utrecht University’s Institute for History and Culture, the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Cambridge Uni- versity’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, and European Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam, as well as the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational, and European Studies and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory, and Material Culture. Many colleagues at these institutions have offered valuable feedback and warm friendship and advice throughout the years, and I am very grateful to them too. The research and writing for this book has been made possible also by several grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Stanford Human- ities Center, the Stanford and Cambridge Archaeology Center, and the Nether- lands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The different parts of the book—which have all gone through many incar- nations—have benefited from the amazing feedback of a number of great col- leagues. In particular, I want to thank Lori Allen, who commented on my book proposal, and Kirsten Scheid: both have provided me with precious feedback as well as plenty of insights during our conversations. For Chapter 1, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Widad Kawar, who first made me comprehend the beauty and the affective meanings of Palestinian embroidery, and Shuruq Harb, who invited me to be part of the Labor of Love project and helped me develop my ideas on agency and embroidery. The Palestinian Museum as well as Tasneem Hasan at Inash al-Usra provided key material otherwise very dif- ficult to find. Chapter 2 has grown through the input of audiences particularly at al-Quds University Center for Jerusalem Studies and the Cambridge Conflict ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii in Cities group, as well as the feedback of Wendy Pullan and Haim Yacobi. Chapters 3 and 4 have benefited tremendously from generous feedback by Da- vina Cooper, John Clarke, and Nikita Dhawan as well as from the conversations ongoing within our Reimagining the State for Progressive Politics group. Ham- dan Taha offered vital information. I could not have written Chapter 4 without the inspiration and ongoing exchange with my friends Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili; also, my conversations with Rana Anani and Eszter Szakacs greatly enriched this chapter. Jack Persekian, Beshara Doumani, and Omar al-Qattan have helped me better understand the workings of cultural institutions, in Pal- estine and elsewhere. Finally, I am beholden to Khaled Hourani for allowing me to use the Hebron drawing of his late brother Hassan Hourani, which is so dear and full of meaning to me, for the cover of this book. I thank the editorial staff of Stanford University Press and particularly Kate Wahl for being such an effortless pleasure to work with and for helping me make my writing stronger. Nawwal Khalili and Zahra Khalidi deserve my out- most gratitude for helping me with the Arabic translations and transliterations with incredible generosity, even under very tight deadlines. I am also indebted to the feedback of editors Laura Helper-Ferris and Sarah Grey at Ideas on Fire. The list of friends to thank in Palestine is very long. A large number of wonderful people contributed to this research with their time, conversations, support, and encouragement. In Ramallah, I want to thank in particular Nura and Nawwal Khalili’s family—Nawwal, Nura, Yazan, and Ghazi—for being my family away from home. Reem and Mohannad welcomed me and my cat in their lovely old Ramallah home. Giovanni Fontana deserves a special mention for both his support and friendship: he was crucial in so many ways and helped me gather fundamental material. Carmine, you deserve a special thank-you for standing by me throughout these years, even though this project has been the cause of our separation for long periods of time. My cat Jazar, born (or so I suspect) in Bethlehem, moved with me to Hebron and accompanied me throughout my fieldwork interviews there and later on, always at my side. Without Lele, this project would not have been born. Also, I thank my parents for being so supportive of a choice that took me far away from them, and who long wondered whether this book would come about. In my family, Vittorio and Luca share the passion for intellectual inquiry. I dedicate this work to my daughter, Ada, who gave up some of her XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS time to allow me to work on this other “baby” of mine, and to my grandmoth- ers, Angela and Anna, who both passed away while I was writing but who are always with me—three people to whom I owe so much of what I am and what I write. Ultimately, this book is dedicated to all Palestinians who made me un- derstand the beauty of Palestine, and the ways in which it is not only a place of violence but also one of creative experimentation, insurgent agencies, and astute, resourceful attempts at doing things otherwise, to reverse colonial vio- lence, and who helped me think of Palestine as a place to learn from, as a model for how things could be, of the risks and joys of attempting new things in im- possible circumstances, the force of this radical political imagination. HERITAGE AND THE CULTURAL STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE This page intentionally left blank .