Palestinian Geographical Imaginations: cultural practices to nurture political alternatives

This Fellowship will enable me to make a novel and significant contribution to political geography by expanding academic knowledge of decolonial epistemologies and indigenous critiques to the nation- state within settler colonial regimes (building on Naylor et al., 2018; Velednitsky et al., 2020; Radcliffe & Radhuber, 2020). Drawing from a detailed empirical account of independent non-state-funded initiatives in Bethlehem and Ramallah (West Bank), my doctoral thesis illuminates artistic and cultural practices that unsettle state-centric and geopolitical discourses of nationhood. Diverging from scholarship that frames Palestinian cultural politics as part of a struggle between two competing nationalisms, my research investigated the transformative potential of Palestinian cultural initiatives in the West Bank. The thesis develops through three case studies, namely the Digital Archive of the Palestinian Museum of Birzeit, collective walks in rural areas around Ramallah, and the Palestine Museum of Natural History of Bethlehem. Each experiments with alternative paradigms of sovereignty predicated upon the rejection of controlling, abstracting and homogenising logics of settler nation states. Each articulates a diverse set of political identities, which are disillusioned with nationalist politics and determined to challenge exploitative human relations with the environment in the face of climate change.

Conceptually, this research project explored cultural practices through the lens of alternative geographical imaginations. Building on a growing body of works in postcolonial, indigenous and decolonial geographies, my conceptual use of 'imagination' sheds light on decolonial epistemologies. Specifically, the relationship between imagination and political alternatives is explored within debates in political geography. While most interventions in political geography have stressed the role of imagination in sustaining and justifying Empire, fewer studies have focused on its role in cultivating political alternatives. During the fellowship I aim to show that cultural initiatives are central cites of prefigurative politics where new possibilities and progressive futures are imagined. I explore their potential and actualisation through two specific and interconnected lenses. The first looks at the relationship between humans and the environment as an increasingly aspect to decolonial practices in Palestine and across different indigenous nations under settler colonialism. The second looks at collecting and archival practices as key resources to imagine possible futures, in in contrast with scholarly work that has focused on the archive in relation to national pasts and disembodied institutional power of state practices.

These arguments hold significant relevance in at least three directions. First, they open new conceptual avenues to transcend ethnic and territorial understandings of self-determination. Second, far from being merely speculative exercises, they flag viable changes and political possibilities. Third, I will use this fellowship to communicate the findings of my research both within academic circles and amongst non- academic audiences, paying particular attention to their consequences for academics, (including university students) and stakeholders in the cultural field.