What if There’s Greater Intimacy in the Collective?

Authors

  • Eleri Connick The University of Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24847/v11i12024.447

Keywords:

Materiality, Exile, Palestinian, Jordan, Playing, Participation

Abstract

In this research note, I track the reflective process of creating and facilitating a workshop series in Amman, Jordan, as a way in which to explore the (re)creation, (re)construction, and (re)negotiation of understandings of Palestinian cultural heritage and identity. The workshop centers around the idea of materiality from the Palestinian homes in Amman being framed as a “material witness” of exile. These material witnesses become an access point into the individual versus the larger transnational exilic experience. I introduce the idea of playing within a participatory heritage framework and how, by starting with the material witnesses from houses in Amman today, it enables a discussion on the modalities of exile, local identity formation, and the performativity of memory as part of an ongoing creative process of meaning-making. I also draw out discussions of playing with my own methodology practice and what it means for future research.

Author Biography

Eleri Connick, The University of Amsterdam

Eleri is a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam’s School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. She was the PhD Fellow at Darat al Funun (Amman) February–July 2023 and a ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Beyond Borders Start-up Scholar in 2022/2023. Her doctoral project,“ The Materiality of Exile in Jordan and Lebanon: The Palestinian House,” proposes a radical conceptualization of home and all that it can provoke. The project posits home as a place and employs spatial imaginary to understanding the experience of exile, an opening to the material objects of exile, and a portal to the scalar and temporal relations (and memories) that emerge. 

References

Al-Hardan, Anaheed. “Decolonizing Research on Palestinians: Towards Critical Epistemologies and Research Practices.” Qualitative Inquiry 20, no. 1 (2014): 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800413508534. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800413508534

Al-Hardan, Anaheed. Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231176361.001.0001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231176361.001.0001

Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso, 2019.

Butler, Beverley. “‘Othering’ the Archive—From Exile to Inclusion and Heritage Dignity: The Case of Palestinian Archival Memory.” Archival Science 9, no. 1–2 (2009): 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9095-0. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9095-0

Davis, Rochelle. “The Politics of Commemoration among Palestinians.” Journal of Palestine Studies 47, no. 1 (2017): 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.47.1.69. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.47.1.69

Doumani, Beshara. “Archiving Palestine and the Palestinians: The Patrimony of Ihsan Nimr.” Jerusalem Quarterly 36 (2009): 3–12.

El-Kurd, Mohammed. “What Role does Culture Play in Palestinian Liberation?” Mondoweiss, 6 September 2023. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/what-role-does-culture-play-in-palestinian-liberation/?utm_content=bufferb0c7a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer.

Roued-Cunliffe, Henriette and Andrea Copeland, eds. Participatory Heritage. London: Facet, 2017. https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783301256. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783301256

Sa’di, Ahmad H. and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Saad, Dima. “Materializing Palestinian Memory: Objects of Home and the Everyday Eternities of Exile.” Jerusalem Quarterly 80, no. 4 (2019): 57–71. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649530.

Saloul, Ihab. Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001382. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001382

Tolia-Kelly, Divya. “Locating Processes of Identification: Studying the Precipitates of Re- Memory through Artefacts in the British Asian Home.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, no. 3 (2004.): 314–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0020-2754.2004.00303.x. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0020-2754.2004.00303.x

A landscape photo taken in Lebanon. Two unidentified men stand in the foreground.

Downloads

Published

2024-02-27

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2024)

Section

Research Notes

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Eleri Connick (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Creative Commons License

The content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.