Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, Lissa: A Story of Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, Lissa: A Story of Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, Lissa: A Story of Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (New Texts Out Now)

By : Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, Art by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer

Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, Lissa: A Story of Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).

Art by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Coleman Nye (CN) and Sherine Hamdy (SH): We were struck by the tensions and affinities between our anthropological projects on the ethical dimensions of medical technologies in two very different settings. Our major dilemma was: how do we make these two worlds—genetics in the United States (Nye) and transplants in Egypt (Hamdy)—converge in a compelling, realistic, and accessible way? We knew we wanted to do it in graphic form. In our teaching, we have both been struck by how the combination of text and image in graphic memoirs can powerfully convey the visceral, temporal, and social dimensions of illness. At the same time, the levity of the genre makes it easier to engage with difficult topics such as cancer (Mom’s Cancer) or political violence (Maus). We ultimately decided to create a fictional narrative in which there were two main characters, each based on our research, whose worlds were deeply intertwined through proximity and friendship, and whose life trajectories reflected the broader medical dilemmas we wanted to explore. Fiction gave us the freedom to craft an absorbing, relatable character-driven narrative, and the flexibility to adapt the narrative in ongoing conversation with the illustrators, Caroline and Sarula, as well as with our interlocutors in Egypt.

It explores a range of themes around illness and biotechnology in a global context, but also explores the political, social, and environmental dynamics of suffering and resistance through the lens of the Egyptian revolution.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

CN and SH: While the book is informed by medical anthropology, it exceeds disciplinary boundaries. It explores a range of themes around illness and biotechnology in a global context, but also explores the political, social, and environmental dynamics of suffering and resistance through the lens of the Egyptian revolution. A brief plot synopsis shows how this is all grounded in a story of friendship. Anna is an American grappling with how to manage her genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer, and Layla is her Egyptian best friend from a very different class and religious background who is dealing with her father’s kidney disease and decisions around organ transplantation. Neither character fully understands the other’s medical situation, which is a source of tension in their relationship. All of this takes place as the 2011 Egyptian Revolution erupts, and both women find themselves reckoning with the broader promises and dangers of enacting a different future through political protest.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

CN and SH: What is perhaps unusual about this book is that it is topically and thematically the same as our previous academic research, but it adapts it into graphic narrative form. In this way, it is interesting to read it alongside our other publications because it in some ways rhymes with those works and in other ways gives them greater depth and clarity. For example, in two-page spreads, we visually convey the same anthropological ideas around the social and environmental factors that shape disease that we did in thirty-page academic articles.

This project also allowed for more dynamic, collaborative forms of authorship and citation than in our more conventional work. Lissa not only required us to connect across different languages and perspectives—the academics’ and the artists’—but also allowed us to reconceptualize what counts as knowledge. For example, throughout the book, we visually cite Egypt’s graffiti artists and incorporate real revolutionary actors—including protestors, academics, and doctors—as characters in Lissa as a way to acknowledge their political actions and intellectual contributions to the revolution and to our project.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

CN and SH: Honestly, everyone! One of the strengths of the graphic novel format is that it allows for multiple layers of engagement—a middle schooler can read it as a compelling story and learn some things about the Egyptian revolution, a doctor can take away new insights about the social and ethical dimensions of health, or an anthropologist can read this as social theory in-action. Also, the same reader can read it several times and find new things each time. Maybe they start to notice the symbolism of cats or eyes in the book, or they draw unexpected connections to their own experiences.

Sarula Bao (SB) and Caroline Brewer (CB): As illustrators who are not from the same ethnic and cultural background, one of the most important things for us was honoring the Egyptian people and their stories. Ultimately, we hope that we were able to use our art to amplify their voices. The biggest impact that we hope it will have will be as a narrative where people can see themselves, and we think this is particularly important for North African, Southwest Asian, and Muslim girls who might see themselves in Layla’s narrative treated with respect and care.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

CB: Since Lissa, I have been developing my own short form comics as well as branching into the realm of interaction design, working on a small team to develop and illustrate a tabletop role-playing game (RPG). While this may feel like a departure from a scholarly graphic novel, many of the skills I developed as a part of Lissa have allowed me to explore issues of accessibility and representation within the context of gameplay. The project’s goal is to create not only extremely engaging and improvisational role playing format, but to explore accessibility from form through function, addressing legibility, language, improvisation and the formation of identity through play that is so often overlooked in more structured RPG game formats such as Dungeons and Dragons.

SB: While I absolutely loved working with Sherine and Coleman and the collaborative work environment of being in a team, I have also been interested in developing my own ideas and stories that are unique to myself. I recently finished a short comic entitled “Real Chinese Food” that I am distributing through various small publishers and businesses. It is a story that specifically deals with my Chinese-American identity and feelings of uncertainty in between two worlds. It uses Chinese food as a device to explore this, with my character loving to eat Chinese American food, but feeling ashamed when her American friends refer to it as unhealthy, trashy, and bad food. This is then contrasted with her Chinese immigrant family who also look down on Chinese American food, contributing to her feeling out of place with Chinese culture at home and not being able to connect to it. Ultimately it continues to end in uncertainty, though finding a point of happiness in specifically Chinese American cuisine. I wanted to talk about the everyday micro-aggressions that can lead to feelings of confusion and prolonged questioning (as is the process in our lives), rather than having direct answers and conclusions to internalized racial conflicts. I am also working on some light-hearted and humorous stories that are a little strange and heavy with visual symbols, but ultimately are about human relationships.

J: What visual tools are unique to Lissa’s telling and how did they help to convey Lissa’s more abstract themes?

SB and CB: One of our first conceptual starting points for the script was to split the visual arch of each character between the two of us. This duality comes into play throughout the book. It is intrinsic to many of the stylistic choices we made around how the girl’s worlds collide and diverge culturally, familially, and politically. Visual and emotional bifurcation work in concert, and the collision of styles and their subsequent withdrawal mirror the girls’ emotional and personal journeys and character arcs. The story starts with both girls co-existing in their own style together in the same pages. However, as they grow up and grow apart, the styles separate until we can only see either Anna through Layla’s eyes, or vice-versa. This was shown by the two of us drawing entire pages and sections individually where the emotional weight was on one of our respective characters, instead of the two of us working on the same page. By the end of the novel, the girls are able to understand each other and respect the other’s choices, and this final connection is illustrated by the two styles merging again, showing their shared world.

Almost every page includes specific decisions regarding objects, tone, layout, composition and lighting, using these elements to better convey the emotional aspects of the story. For example, when Anna and Layla start growing apart from each other—secrets and distrust building all-the-while—we illustrated the contrast by dressing Anna in a dark clothing in light settings and environments, and Layla in light clothes in dark settings. Anna is keeping secret, hence her dark clothing, while the light backgrounds symbolize her knowledge of her truth. Layla’s light clothing shows a relative innocence regarding their friendship and the situation, and her dark backgrounds correspond to Anna’s, as she is in a sense being "kept in the dark." We also use various symbols and motifs through the story: the cats represent their friendship, eyes represent the "truth," encompassing the knowledge of the political corruption of the Egyptian government, as well as the dreams and devastation of the revolution. The eye as "truth" is an important part of Anna’s story as well, the shots centered on her evil eye necklace serve as both a link to her home and family in Egypt, as well as a symbol of her journey to discover her genetic history and possibility of a dark future.

Excerpt from Lissa:


[Excerpted from Lissa: A Story of Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution, by Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye. Copyright (c) 2017 - University of Toronto Press. Used with permission of authors and publisher.]


New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.