Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery, eds., My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (New Texts Out Now)

Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery, eds., My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (New Texts Out Now)

Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery, eds., My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (New Texts Out Now)

By : Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery

Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery (eds.), My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2020).

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

Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery (KW & LE): The book, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, was born out of a writing workshop on Iranian identity taught by Persis Karim and Anita Amirrezvani in 2015 in Berkeley, CA. We both came to the workshop with deeply personal desires to connect more fully with Iranian culture. Katherine’s Iranian husband had not been very forthcoming about his heritage, which left her to excavate that culture, through research and writing, on behalf of her Iranian American son and daughter. Leila, a half-Iranian poet, had not had the chance to meet many Iranians outside her mother’s family and was eager to delve more deeply into her cultural identity through writing.  

In the workshop, we met other members of the diaspora—including each other!—all of whom had distinct, compelling stories to tell. Ultimately, we saw that it would be valuable to collect these diverse narratives into a single volume—stories about issues that in large part have not been shared before by Iranian American writers.  

We also wanted this book to push back against the continuous vilification of Iran and Iranians by both political forces and the media. As Persis Karim asserts in her foreword to the book, “Americans need human stories to counter the escalating rhetoric and hostility…that threaten to separate families and choke the Iranian people through such overtly hostile acts as the Muslim ban, the re-imposition of sanctions, the abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal.”

Recurring themes include longing, belonging, exile, duality, and hyphenated identity ...

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

KW & LE: This book presents the diversity and human face of the Iranian diaspora—beyond what is typically depicted in the media, and beyond the wave of immigration from Iran around the time of the 1979 revolution. The book reflects contemporary issues of sexuality, gender identity, generational differences, and recent immigration. Recurring themes include longing, belonging, exile, duality, and hyphenated identity, among others.  

My Shadow Is My Skin rests on the shoulders of several anthologies from the Iranian diaspora—collections of poetry, fiction, and women’s writing—as the first such anthology dedicated to nonfiction. Given our politically charged climate and because these personal accounts deserve to be documented and preserved, we feel that first-person narratives are especially important in this moment. 

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

KW & LE: For Katherine, this book is connected to a long practice of writing aimed at excavating her husband’s Iranian culture. Her first published piece, an essay titled “Iranian Revelation,” was published in Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves (HarperCollins 2005). 

Leila is a poet whose prior work has largely centered on Iranian identity and the concept of generational trauma. 

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

KW & LE: This book has the capacity to build community within the diverse Iranian diaspora. Already, this collection of authors, who live all over the country, have come together in the spirit of community. Established writers in this collection are becoming aware of emerging writers. Through readings and other public programming, we hope that the book brings new groups of people together who will go on to form lasting community.  

In addition to members of the Iranian diaspora, we hope that this book also finds a wider audience of readers who are unfamiliar with Iran and Iranian Americans. We would like readers to get a sense of the rich, nuanced humanity of the Iranian diaspora and an understanding of how the diaspora itself has changed over time and through generations. 

The book is also an ideal candidate for both high school and university classrooms. It would be relevant in a variety of subject areas: creative writing, Middle Eastern studies, cultural anthropology, diaspora studies, sociology, and Iranian studies, among others.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

KW & LE: Katherine is researching how the impact of immigrating under duress—leaving a country because of extenuating circumstances like revolution or war—transmits to successive generations. There is a lot being written about the effects of trauma on one’s offspring—epigenetics. Her next project explores this topic, possibly through the medium of fiction.

Leila is writing a memoir in poem form, drawing heavily upon her Iranian identity and bi-cultural upbringing in New England.

J: Tell us about the process of pulling together this anthology.

KW & LE: We started by placing a call for submissions for a new anthology of nonfiction writing from Iranian diasporic writers. We received a high volume of responses, including several from our fellow workshop participants, which thrilled us. Some of the essays had familiar themes, such as immigrating to the United States in 1979 or describing trips back to Iran after ten, twenty, thirty years of absence (lots of airport scenes, etc.). However, many of the essays told radically different and modern stories about themes like sexuality and mental illness—subjects that are not widely discussed by Iranians, and certainly not often written about or published. We decided that we wanted to have more of this kind of writing, to more broadly showcase a new generation of writers who might be divulging parts of themselves for the first time. So, we began researching intensively and exploring new (to us) Iranian authors through social media platforms like Twitter, which led to several direct requests to authors. In some cases, these authors wrote something original for the anthology, and in some cases. we chose to reprint a previously published piece that we felt conveyed a story that needed to be told. It was very exciting do a deep read of all the pieces we had amassed and to think about how to organize them meaningfully. 

 

Excerpt from the book 

We need these writers to represent themselves and their own stories and the stories of their families, whose lives have been marked by forty years of turbulent history. We need so much more than the drumbeat of war, we need more than the rhetoric of powerful men bent on drowning out stories of real people’s beauty, conviction, suffering, and loss, and we need to tell so much more than a national or nationalistic narrative. We need these stories and these authors more than ever. We need them like we need oxygen. 

-       Persis Karim in the Foreword  

Introduction

In the four decades since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iranian-Americans have made sense of their lives and reconciled their sense of belonging and not belonging through writing, first though poetry and memoir in the immediacy of migration and exile, and later in a developing and rich explosion of fiction. In the past decade, we have seen a blossoming of nonfiction writing that reflects complex voices and modern sensibilities and that reveals a broader range of stories and remembrances than ever before.

Literature traveled with those who left Iran after the revolution, in their suitcases, in their memories, and in the lifeblood that they passed on to their American-born children. So it is no surprise that Iranians in the diaspora have consistently gravitated toward the arts—and toward writing in particular—as a way to grapple with their experiences of immigration and alienation. Those who left—and in some cases fled—Iran have existed in the shadow of political and historical events that have loomed large over the past forty years. They hold inside them memories of growing up and living in Iran, traumatic recollections of war and political upheaval, and experiences of confronting discrimination and alienation in a new land. Those born in the United States also carry some of those traumas and memories as they carve out their own distinctive Iranian identities. But alongside these challenges, Iranian-Americans also carry stories of starting successful lives in a new country, learning different ways to express their Iranianness, and developing meaningful new connections to their heritage. The literary expressions that have emerged from these experiences are both unexpected and nuanced.

This collection before you, My Shadow Is My Skin, was prompted by our meeting in the spring of 2015 at a writing workshop titled “Exploring Iranian Identity” in Berkeley, California. The workshop, directed by the novelist Anita Amirrezvani and the poet Persis Karim, offered participants—all of whom had some connection to Iran—an opportunity to work on intimate, identity-focused material. The participants wrote powerful narratives that they had not shared or even explored previously: stories about religion, sexuality, family secrets, war, racism, and episodes of deep pain and oppression by society and even by their own families. As participants ourselves, we were struck by the poignancy and immediacy of the narratives shared by our fellow writers. Our own workshop experiences compelled us to believe that even more personal and familial stories lay hidden, unexplored and in need of excavation. In that spirit, we embarked on a journey to bring together these types of nonfiction narratives.

Although the two of us—Leila, the daughter of an Iranian mother and an American father, and Katherine, the wife of an Iranian immigrant and mother of two half-Iranian children—might not seem like obvious candidates to edit a collection of writing from the Iranian diaspora, we came to realize that we were in fact ideal representatives of the diaspora’s most recent iterations and thus well equipped for this endeavor. We represent facets of the larger, modern Iranian diaspora, beyond the first wave of immigration to the United States. We are both part of the diaspora and outsiders within it. Each of us experiences the Iranian diaspora and its accompanying “practices” in different ways and in ways that are distinct from those of our parents, our significant others, and our extended families.

Over the last four decades, assimilation, intermarriage, and new waves of migration have diversified the Iranian diaspora in the United States. Diaspora communities now include not just adults who immigrated from Iran after the 1979 revolution but also Iranians who immigrated as children and grew up in the United States, as well as younger generations born here. These diverse experiences have prompted more heterogeneous perspectives on what it means to be Iranian or Iranian-American—and even what constitutes an “Iranian diaspora”—in the twenty-first century. The narratives in this collection, and indeed many of the authors themselves, feel both Iranian and American. Others feel not quite either. As contributor Roger Sedarat describes it, “The hyphen between East and West has led me toward some illusive unity, even while keeping me separated, as a kind of minus sign.”

This collection takes its name from a phrase in contributor Cyrus Copeland’s essay “Shadow Nation.” My Shadow Is My Skin reflects the notion that many of the authors in this anthology find themselves living in the shadow of their past histories or under the shadow of their families’ expectations. Some of the authors describe living in the shadows, not wanting to reveal their Iranian heritage, or coming out of the shadows to live a more authentic life. For others, this shadow is fully integrated into who they are—it is part of their physical body. They wear the shadow of Iranianness like a skin. Many of these authors also write about the color of their skin being what keeps them in the shadows, their otherness excluding them from being fully accepted by other Americans and sometimes even by fellow Iranians. As Neda Maghbouleh writes in her essential work The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, “Iranians have been pitched across a white/non-white American color line for over a century.” Indeed, particularly for the younger, American-born writers in this collection, their identities have been shaped—and continue to be shaped—by the complex social entanglements of racialization in the United States. 

These nuanced personal stories are acts of witnessing, typically overlooked or obscured by the steady stream of negative headlines about Iranians and Iran. Particularly at this time in history, we need people to emerge from the shadows and reveal their truth. Thus, in curating this literary collection, we aim to move the canon of Iranian-diaspora writing to another level, beyond the kinds of antagonistic, superficial portrayals perpetuated by the news media, to feature real people, real stories, and real experiences of Iranians and the greater Iranian diaspora in the twenty-first century.

In My Shadow Is My Skin, we turn to the tradition of nonfiction to claim and craft personal narratives that haven’t yet been shared. This collection also embraces contemporary voices that are bravely expressing themselves in new ways. To that end, we have sought to elevate feminist and queer voices and to include writers whose experiences reflect intersectional perspectives.

As we assembled and edited My Shadow Is My Skin, we were aware of the looming fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the significance it holds for so many in the Iranian diaspora. However, we wanted the writing in this collection to move beyond that singular historical event and its immediate fallout to show how the diaspora has evolved, modernized, and operated in a variety of contexts and moments. Today, Iranians in the diaspora are living under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, heightened bellicosity toward Iran, increased sanctions, and the looming prospect of military conflict between Iran and the United States. This atmosphere amplifies the need for Iranian-Americans to share more nuanced, three-dimensional perspectives on their heritage. My Shadow Is My Skin is emerging at an essential moment for Iranian Americans, giving them agency in representing themselves in all their complexity.

This collection brings together thirty-two authors, both established and emerging, whose writing captures diverse perspectives and complex attitudes toward Iran and America. The authors include recent immigrants alongside those who came to the United States immediately after 1979. Their narratives span the period from the 1979 revolution to the current era of Trump. Roughly half of the authors were born in Iran and emigrated to the United States. The other half were born here to Iranian or Iranian and American parents, or married into Iranian families. A third of the contributors are bicultural, having one Iranian parent and one parent from another culture.

In bringing these diverse stories together, we ask where have we of the Iranian diaspora been, where are we now, and where are we headed? We hope to broaden the discussion around these questions at a time when such conversations are critically needed. We hope that the readers of My Shadow Is My Skin discover, in this tapestry of stories, the intricate ways in which the Iranian diaspora has evolved over time and, indeed, continues to evolve. And we hope that through these deeply personal narratives, readers of all backgrounds may see pieces of themselves reflected back at them.

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.