Najat Rahman

My proposed research aims to produce an interdisciplinary analysis of the theory, aesthetics, and politics of Palestinian diasporic cultural production in the last two decades in light of its significant presence on the international scene, and following on the heels of the immense influence of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry that had dominated Palestinian culture for decades. The 1990’s have heralded a new period of creativity in the wake of the Oslo Accords, and “as a result of the decentralization of the Palestinian political scene.” (Pappé 2005) It traces the influence of Darwish’s poetry in language, lyric, performative and visual art forms.I propose an overview of Palestinian art post-Oslo; an interdisciplinary and theoretical examination of Palestinian film, visual art, and lyrical expression; a close critical examination of the works of several artists who played a central role in this new wave, such as Suhair Hammad, Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu Assad, Emily Jacir, Sharif Waked. These will provide the basis for a book and a workshop accompanied by film screenings.This project represents a significant and innovative contribution since this will be the first substantial study to account for this wave of experimentation that has emerged post- Oslo in the Palestinian context and to trace the impact of modern Arabic poetry (specifically that of Darwish) on proliferating art forms. The argument and approach are also innovative (the conceptualization of the national through the diasporic; theorizing the multilingual in relation to the intermedial that the diasporic also has spawned); examining the relationship of aesthetics and politics in light of the theoretical contribution of Jacques Rancière (2010).