From Wall 1.0 to Wall 2.0: Graffiti, Social Media, and Ideological Acts of Resistance and Recognition Among Palestinian Refugees

Abstract

Writing as an ideological act of resistance and recognition among members of the socially disenfranchised has been engaged with in myriad contested political and cultural terrains. Historically, for Palestinian refugees living under conditions of Israeli occupation, expressions of resistance and recognition were visually and textually inscribed through provocative displays of graffiti on the very separatist wall erected by their occupiers. More recently, however, these acts have been (re)articulated through various forms of social media. We capture this phenomenon as being one dimension of transmedia storytelling, and specifically as a consolidation of, what we are calling here, Wall 1.0 and Wall 2.0. We argue that this consolidation has engendered significant implications for how ideological acts of resistance and recognition among disempowered subjects ought to be conceptualized. Indeed, this consolidation marks a necessary move in the contest over place from geographically constrained physical spaces to spreadable and editable digital spaces. In terms of theoretical contribution, it has illuminated how discursive political claims are transitioning from a state of temporality and attributed ownership to a state of permanence and coproduction.

The organization of ideological discourse in times of unexpected crisis: Explaining how COVID-19 is exploited by populist leaders

“…The achievement of surface-level validation provided the necessary grounds to make a liminal move to the second stage: the demonization of Muslims in the country through inflammatory political rhetoric (Li and Prasad, 2018) . In this case, surface-level validation from legitimate institutional actors justified the demonization of Muslims as they came to be viewed as an existential threat to both India and Hinduism.…”

(Dis)embodied encounters between art and academic writing amid a pandemic

“…We draw inspiration from Haraway’s ([1985] 1997) notion of cyborg writing and Prasad’s (2016) reading of it, which we felt provided a useful lens for making sense of the writing experience of this hybrid piece and its political potential. Doing so, we develop a form of feminist writing, as a genre‐blurring cyborg practice, which, by combining political artistic practices (Li & Prasad, 2018) expressing COVID‐19 embodied experiences of diversity, in the context of virtual connections, enabled us to meaningfully embrace, express and connect our different bodies when they were physically kept apart. By invoking hybridity that counters the masculine normality of academic writing, this text intends to produce academic knowledge that writes and speaks of actual experiences of marginalization, inter‐sectionality and vulnerability (Prasad, 2016; Pullen, Helin, & Harding, 2020), that now urgently seek expression in a neoliberal world of pandemic (Bahn, Cohen, & van der Meulen Rodgers, 2020; Butler, 2020; Wasdani & Prasad, 2020).…”

“…These were the topics that she was exploring in her research by employing feminist forms of writing to discuss social inequalities, including her own experiences of vulnerability (e.g., Mandalaki, 2019) as well as through her poetry and art‐making, which were now used to bring matter and sense in her academic work (Barad, 2007). Their seemingly different practices seemed to be guided by their common belief of how art and academic writing as forms of activism can politically speak of experiences of othering that remain under‐expressed, in the neoliberal society, to reclaim space for resistance and social transformation (Ahonen et al, 2020; Alakavuklar, 2020; Li & Prasad, 2018; Prasad, 2016). Their artistic and academic political endeavours of resistance stood body‐to‐body at the picket line of global efforts voicing the need to decommodify and dignify working conditions across sectors as well as enable access to vital resources for all to tackle the emerging inequalities, which were increasing globally amid the pandemic (e.g., Bahn et al, 2020; Ferreras et al, 2020).…”

“…It was their shared belief that even though the writing itself would only start after this month of multiple online chats and artistic exchanges, the final text should not only expose the final deductions or conclusions of this process, but also the very artistic and virtual (dis)embodied encounters through which these conclusions and this art‐based writing became possible. Capturing these elements involved engaging in a writing understood ‘not as‐production, but in production’ (Clarke et al, 2020, p. 52), which by combining provocative political art performance, poetry and creative prose, in the context of virtual connections, allowed them to develop an amalgam of experiences of vulnerability and diversity, whose voice has a social and political bearing (Li & Prasad, 2018; van Amsterdam & van Eck, 2019), which aspires to also speak of other bodies urgently seeking expression in a neoliberal world of pandemic. It also enabled them to use their personal experiences to converse with other voices, who had found their own creative (virtual) ways of connecting through writing, in an isolated world of pandemic (e.g., Boncori, 2020; Gao & Sai, 2020; Plotnikof et al, 2020).…”

“…The artistic and virtual exchanges featuring in this text are thus not used as illustrations of abstract theories and meanings but actually occupy space to politically speak of the actual experiences of the bodies that they seek to express, and explain their underlying structures (Dewey, [1934] 2005; Li & Prasad, 2018). By stressing both the process of writing ( how ) and the content of it ( what ), such a cyborg hybrid language enables tabooed, marginalized, gendered and vulnerable identities to author themselves in a free language (Rhodes, 2019) that transforms cultural thinking and taken‐for‐granted assumptions to allow them to regain agency and visibility in the society (Prasad, 2016).…”