Memory Activism in Palestinian Theatre and Oral Narratives

Following the trauma of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 and the establishment of Israel, Palestinians are facing mounting deprivation of their rights, land and culture. To fight forgetfulness and denial, various Palestinian political streams shaped the identity of resistance during the seventies and eighties, while Palestinian popular culture, manifested in the theatre, folk telling, and music, was merely framed within the parameters of artistic expressions. However, with the rise of Israeli occupation since the nineties, Palestinians lost more lands, rights and are suffering from constant violations. The overall atmosphere has created a sense of disbelief and disillusionment among the Palestinian people, who lost trust in the political discourse of its leaders. This resulted in the surge of popular culture, more specifically within performative forms of art, such as plays and oral narratives (legends and folktales). Although popular culture and its artistic forms of expression have usually been deemed as epiphenomenal in Middle Eastern Studies in general and in Palestine Studies in particular, this paper explores the idea of how Palestinian popular culture and performance are foundational means for negotiating power and resistance, social interaction, and identity. Synthesising various concepts within memory studies, the paper will discuss the aesthetics of popular culture as a form of cultural resistance and activism while unfolding the intertwined nature of post-memory (Hirsch, 2008) and identity narratives in the Palestinian case. A complex relation reflected in various artistic and literary forms, which I will scrutinise in my discussion of a couple of Palestinian oral narratives and plays