‘Is-Was’: Temporalities, Hauntings, and Al-Faragh

This text aims to contribute to the ever-shapeshifting futurity of Palestinians through the frames of temporality and spatiality, most notably through the archive and construction of language. This thesis works in the Palestinian condition, observing the use of what I call Palestinian language (defined through symbols, icons, visual and material traditions) in a attempt to witness how Palestinians rewrite themselves in dignity. What is the temporal livelihoods of symbols? How are these tools reconfigured and remade throughout time and history? Primarily focusing on the evolution of Palestinian symbols to observe the cultural historiography of Palestinian language, and in such posits the archive as the keeper and holder of these histories and emotions, it observes the redefining and reimagining in contemporary narratives. Finally, it reflects on the archive with the aid of Edward Said's ‘permission to narrate,’ Edouard Glissant’s ‘opacity’ and Reem Fadda’s ‘not-yet-ness,’ along with several other imperative frames. As Palestinians once created images and symbols, so too do they deconstruct them to make space for incoming futures and present language to give language and voice to their current events and themes engendering them.

Author

• Aboutaleb, Leena

Language

• en

Keyword

• temporal
• Palestine
• symbols
• language
• spatial
• futurity

Date created

• 2022

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Media & Strategic Communications

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Youmans, William

Committee Member(s)

• Osder, Jason
• Bahador, Babak

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/tt44pn587