Zahi Zalloua provides the first
examination of Palestinian identity from the perspective of Indigeneity and
Critical Black Studies. Examining the Palestinian question through the lens
of settler colonialism and Indigeneity, this timely book warns against the
liberal approach to Palestinian Indigeneity, which reinforces cultural
domination, and urgently argues for the universal nature of the Palestinian
struggle.
Foregrounding Palestinian Indigeneity
reframes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a problem of wrongful
dispossession, a historical harm that continues to be inflicted on the
population under the brutal Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. At the same
time, in a global context marked by liberal democratic ideology, such an
approach leads either to liberal tolerance - the minority is permitted to
exist so long as their culture can be contained within the majority order -
or racial separatism, that is, appeals for national independence typically
embodied in the two-state solution.
Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause not
only insists that any analysis of Indigeneity’s purchase must keep this
problem of translation in mind, but also that we must recast the Palestinian
struggle as a universal one. As demonstrated by the Palestinian support for
such movements as Black Lives Matter, and the reciprocal
support Palestinians receive from BLM activists, the Palestinian cause
fosters a solidarity of the excluded. This solidarity underscores the
interlocking, global struggles for emancipation from racial domination and
economic exploitation.
Drawing on key Palestinian voices,
including Edward Said and Larissa Sansour, as well as a wide range of
influential philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek, Frantz Fanon and Achille
Mbembe, Zalloua brings together the Palestinian question, Indigeneity and
Critical Black Studies to develop a transformative, anti-racist vision of the
world.
