| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, I investigate how contemporary works of Palestinian literature and film articulate claims to human rights within various UK and US shared reading spaces. My method involves a close analysis of the framing of human rights in contemporary works of Palestinian literature and film; and discussions of the shared reading spaces where the works circulated. I distinguish between three types of rights claims found in the works: the right to exist (contesting the historical erasure of Palestinian life and culture); the right to land (contesting the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land); and the right to speak (contesting the international underrepresentation of Palestinian voices). The right to speak is manifest both within the narratives, as in the very circulation of the works themselves.
Each of my chapters addresses a different series of local contexts, a different medium, and a different type of event, illustrating the variety of Palestinian arts. I investigate how the various media frame human rights and lend themselves to different types of shared reading spaces. My respective case studies concern: (1) Film screenings of the documentaries Five Broken Cameras, Roadmap to Apartheid and The Wanted 18 at UK universities; (2) A Bird is Not a Stone, a poetry anthology which was performed in Arabic, English, as well as Scottish languages in Scotland and England in 2014; (3) The 2015 instalment of ‘One Book, Many Communities’, an annual campaign where people from many countries are stimulated to organise reading groups of one specific novel selected by the organisation – in 2015, this was Mornings in Jenin. I argue that the works articulate their claims to rights by framing Palestinian lives as ‘grievable’ and by asserting the need for self-representation and self-determination by representing corporeal suffering and the subjects’ responses to this. The shared reading events construct a space where what I call Palestinian ‘invisibility’ is counter-acted, as they enable access to Palestinian voices. | |
