What if There’s Greater Intimacy in the Collective?

Authors

  • Eleri Connick The University of Amsterdam Author

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

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

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Published

2024-02-27

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2024)

Section

Research Notes

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Copyright (c) 2024 Eleri Connick (Author)

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