The burden of being exemplary: national sentiments, awkward witnessing, and womanhood in occupied Palestine

Segal, Lotte Buch

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12164

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…Reminiscent of what Freud described, this mood surfaced as an elusive sentiment of having lost or fearing the loss of something without knowing precisely the object of loss. Elsewhere I have documented how the derivative affliction of the wives of political activists confines them as women too (Segal , , , 2014a). They live the absence of their husbands, fathers, and sons on an everyday basis, not knowing when their kin will be released, or in which state, and in yet other cases knowledge is certain that release will never happen.…”

Section: Endurance In Palestine – Sumud and Sadnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambivalent Attachment — Melancholia and Political Activism in Contemporary Palestine

Segal¹

2016

Ethos

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This article argues that over the course of the past three decades a mood change has occurred in terms of how Palestinians relate to the ideal of an independent Palestinian state. During the first Intifada, from 1987 to 1993, which constitutes the golden age of Palestinian resistance towards Israel's occupation, the Palestinian resistance movement was characterized by a passionate belief in the possibility of a revolutionary transformation. Due to the consistent stalemate and even worsening of the conflict that have followed in the wake of the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2003, this passionate belief in the realization of a Palestinian state has been replaced by ambivalence toward that ideal. Based on insights from my intermittent fieldwork with families of Palestinian political prisoners from 2004 to 2011, this article suggests that the contemporary ambivalence surrounding the revolutionary project can be meaningfully analyzed using Freud's notion of melancholia. In Freud, melancholia accounts for the relation between a feeling of indeterminate loss and ambivalent attachment. The notion of melancholia thereby provides anthropology with a concept that can be used to name and explore the frayed attachment to the ideal of a Palestinian state in the context of an ongoing colonial occupation. The passionate politics of the First Intifada enabled a fusing of Palestinian personhood with the overall political project into a subject characterized by active resistance. In contrast, the ambivalent attachment that marks the link between self and state project in the Palestinian territories after the Second Intifada leads to a mood of melancholia. By analyzing the attachment to the political project as an indeterminate loss in the melancholic's ego, I argue that the Palestinian political project is part of the self and keeps its adherents in a repetitive temporal fold from which they are unable to escape, because they are obliged and compelled to keep fighting for a state that does not seem to materialize. Conceptually, melancholia has the capacity to elucidate the emotional and deeply intersubjective toll it takes to live and aspire to an ideal that seems further from realization by the hour.

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Section: Endurance In Palestine – Sumud and Sadnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambivalent Attachment — Melancholia and Political Activism in Contemporary Palestine

Segal¹

2016

Ethos

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“…Other scholars looked at gendered affect. Lotte Buch Segal () focused on the suppression of emotional expression among the wives of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Women with husbands jailed in Israel were expected to be exemplars of perseverance, steadfastness, and political sacrifice.…”

Section: The Sensuous Life: Affect and Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, people must act on those other agents around them so that “matter comes to matter” (Appadurai :234). The emphasis on the need to act is reflected in the number of pieces that mentioned labor and work: physical labor, emotional and social labor (Segal ), muddy labor (Watanabe ), institutional labor (Hartigan ), political work (Mathur ), and boundary work (Stavrianakis ). In addition, many authors talked about the importance of care, for example, the idea that people created kinship through care (Govindrajan ; Yates‐Doerr ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The latter is complemented by the use of nonhierarchical analytic language (e.g., entanglements, associations) that avoids classification and the mechanisms behind it. Many authors pointed to enduring inequalities, international (Bishara ; Hinterberger and Porter ; Walford ; Watanabe ), national (Berg and Ramos‐Zayas ; Gribaldo ; Weiss ), and intimate (Friedner ; Seeman ; Segal ), linked to political and cultural stratification. Other authors emphasized the unpredictable results of interactions (Anand ; Badaró ; Hutchinson and Pendle ) and the ways in which new knowledge or sentiments emerged (Englund ; Shapiro ; Sternsdorff‐Cisterna ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Year 2015 in Sociocultural Anthropology: Material Life and Emergent Cultures

Koenig

2016

American Anthropologist

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In this review essay, I explore the implications of renewed anthropological interest in materiality and the cultures that emerge from interaction among humans, nonhuman agents, and the material environment.Drawing upon sociocultural anthropology published primarily in 2015, I focus on five themes: cultures as emergent; bureaucracies in contemporary life; science, measurement, and state policy; affect and emotion in daily life; and multispecies and interspecies studies. Overall, the works I review illustrate the strength of anthropology in rendering visible the contradictions, trade-offs, and unlikely connections of lived experience in a material world. The works also show how cultures become real through people's actions and interactions with others. Nevertheless, sociocultural anthropology continues to face two enduring contradictions: first, attention to inequalities and disadvantages caused by existing structures versus an emphasis on the emergence and consequent unpredictability of social forms, and second, a view of humans as significant causal agents who can harm the natural world versus a perspective that sees humans as influenced by complex environments that include nature, nonhuman living beings, and inanimate objects.[sociocultural anthropology, materiality, emerging cultures, bureaucracies, interspecies studies, year in review] RESUMEN En este ensayo de revisión, exploro las implicaciones de un interés antropológico renovado en la materialidad y las culturas que emergen de la interacción entre humanos, agentes no humanos, y el ambiente material.Basándome en la antropología sociocultural publicada primariamente en 2015, me enfoco en cinco temas: culturas como emergentes; burocracias en la vida contemporánea; ciencia, medidas, y política del estado; afecto y emoción en la vida diaria; y estudios de multiespecies e interespecies. En general, los trabajos que reviso ilustran la solidez de la antropología en hacer visible las contradicciones, intercambios, y conexiones improbables de experiencias vividas en un mundo material. Los trabajos también muestran cómo la culturas llegan a ser reales a través de las acciones de las personas e interacciones con otros. Sin embargo, la antropología sociocultural continúa enfrentando dos contradicciones persistentes: primero, atención a las desigualdades y desventajas causadas por estructuras existentes versus unénfasis en la emergencia e impredecibilidad consecuente de formas sociales, y segundo, una perspectiva de los humanos como agentes causales significativos quienes pueden dañar el mundo natural versus un enfoque que ve a los humanos como influenciados por ambientes complejos que incluyen la naturaleza, los seres vivos no humanos, y los objetos inanimados. [antropología sociocultural, materialidad, culturas emergentes, burocracias, estudios interespecies, año en revisión]

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“…This article follows recent anthropological attempts to probe the ethical complexities of being a witness (e.g. Mittermaier ; Segal ). For the Ahmadis, to be a witness means positioning oneself in a relationship to truth such that one can attribute something of one's own ethical formation to it.…”

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confidence: 99%

Witnessing a potent truth: rethinking responsibility in the anthropology of theisms

Evans

2016

J R Anthropol Inst

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For Ahmadi Muslims in the Indian town of Qadian, a major part of ethical behaviour is the cultivation of a relationship of subordination to potent religious truths. This involves both manifesting and witnessing the truth of their religion in the form of polemical arguments and religious travel. I argue that understanding how moral character develops out of such a relationship requires us to turn our analytical attention away from agency and towards responsibility. Such a move has important implications for the more general anthropological study of theisms.

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The burden of being exemplary: national sentiments, awkward witnessing, and womanhood in occupied Palestine

Cited by 19 publications

References 26 publications

Ambivalent Attachment — Melancholia and Political Activism in Contemporary Palestine

Ambivalent Attachment — Melancholia and Political Activism in Contemporary Palestine

The Year 2015 in Sociocultural Anthropology: Material Life and Emergent Cultures

Witnessing a potent truth: rethinking responsibility in the anthropology of theisms

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