The Reproduction of Settler Colonialism in Palestine

Abstract

Critical scholarship on Palestine/Israel tends to focus on conceptualising the settler colonial practices that characterise this conflict but have failed to account for how these practices are reproduced and sustained over time. To address this gap, rather than focusing on Israel' s quantifiable strengths such as military might, the use of law, the economy, and diplomacy, this article investigates the reciprocal relations between the formation of Israeli modes of being or subjectivities, on the one hand, and the generation and distribution of settler colonial surplus, on the other. The examination of the processes of subjectivity formation in their settler colonial register on the side of the coloniser allows understating how the circuits of settler colonial power endure.

Transgenerational trauma and collective resilience: A qualitative analysis of the experiences of settler-colonial violence among three generations of Palestinian refugees

“…The political implications of the Palestinian suffering appear from the continuous re-experiencing of taghriba (exile’s) memories, the territorial dispossession and homelessness experienced by three generations of Palestinians as a ma’sah (collective tragedy) and musiba (disaster) (Akesson, 2014). Furthermore, the cultural expropriation of historical and native places fostered by settler-colonial violence made Palestinians feel tarheel (expelled) from their ancestor’s homeland (Svirsky, 2021). Finally, the economic dimension of the Palestinian suffering is transmitted over generations through stories of famine experienced during the ’48 disaster and today’s chronic poverty affecting the refugee camps (Afifi et al, 2016; Qato, 2020).…”

The normal life of settlers

“…As I have shown elsewhere (Svirsky, 2021), the question of the historical continuity of oppressive power can be understood by turning to the Marxian concept of social reproduction, which identifies the ways in which capitalist social relations are reproduced beyond the economic sphere (Balibar 2015: 437–440; Marx, 1976: 110). Taking my cue from how Marxian feminists articulate the concept (Bhattacharya, 2017; Federici, 2012; Vogel, 1983), I focus the question of social reproduction on the relation between the formation of subjective modes of being in an oppressive society, and the endurance of abusive power exercised upon the oppressed.…”