Aslı Vatansever, At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

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Mar 1, 2021 Region
Aslı Vatansever, At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

Aslı Vatansever, At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (New Texts Out Now)

By : Aslı Vatansever

Aslı Vatansever, At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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

Aslı Vatansever (AV): I started to develop the idea for the book in 2017, during my first year in exile. I remember feeling a mixture of duty and urgent emotional need. On the one hand, I strongly felt that it was my (or our) responsibility to tell our own story—the story of the exiled Peace Academics—and to do so in a way that would shake off the romanticized aura of exile. After having observed what kind of an “exotic” niche the media and the academic establishment had pushed us into, through the discursive construct of exile and the risk-oriented temporary funding schemes, I was convinced that it was essential to reveal the unromantic truth about our situation. We are neither quixotic freedom fighters, forever at political risk, as the discourse on academic freedoms portrays us; nor have we all suddenly become poets, as the common conception of exile suggests. In our host countries, we are basically yet another, albeit more precarious and less integrated, segment of the disposable mass of surplus academic labor force. 

On the other hand, there was the surmounting need to deal with the emotional burden of what had happened. We could not exactly make sense of or even name it while it was still going on—especially in the first months, where we each had to rebuild our entire lives from scratch. Life in exile is anything but poetic; it is a never-ending, soul-crushingly dull series of errands and trivialities. Readers may understand what I mean by that, when they read the narratives of my fellow signatories who kindly confided in me their side of our collective experience. They almost unanimously described life in exile as “living in a purgatory.” We all use(d) different methods to deal with this limboesque feeling, but writing, talking, producing, and participating in whatever forms of resistance that are available in a certain context have certainly proven effective. As for me, I resorted to the two main “weapons” at my disposal: sociological analysis and collective solidarity. This is how and why this book came to be.
My point was to first overcome the analytical emptiness of the concept of “exile as identity.”

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

AV: I touched upon a variety of topics, from precarity and subjectivity, to mourning and resistance—all against the backdrop of exile as a particularly precarious setting. And, consequently, this put me in dialog with a number of scholars, from Marx and Polanyi to Freud, and from Edward Said and Judith Butler to Isabell Lorey and Rosi Braidotti. 

I started with the structural background of academic labor precarity, using Marx’s categories of commodification and reserve army of labor, as well as his distinctions between “productive versus non-productive labor” and “potential versus actual labor force.” My point was to first overcome the analytical emptiness of the concept of “exile as identity.” I described the displaced scholars as a segment of the precarious and disposable academic labor force. From there, I moved on to the socio-emotional corollaries of precarization as a process of downward mobility. This prompted new questions such as the role of mourning in dealing with loss, because precarization always involves loss—be it the loss of a job, or the loss of social status, or, in the case of the exiled academics, the loss of all hitherto established parameters of life, including our home country. 

This may sound like an ambitiously wide range of themes. But in the last instance, it all boils down to the interaction of structure and subject, which is also pretty much the essence of sociology itself in my opinion. A final, concluding idea that I referred to in this respect was the “nomadic subjectivity,” which I discussed in the book with reference to Rosi Braidotti’s “affirmative ethics,” Emmanuel Levinas’ “Otherness,” and Isabell Lorey’s idea of turning precarity into a new mode of collective existence. My insistence on drawing parallels between exiled academics and the domestic academic precariat in the host country was mostly inspired by Lorey. Following from there, nomadic subjectivity then involved an attempt to unthink the conventional binary oppositions like “refugees versus residents” or “host versus scholar at risk” and to understand what binds us amidst the multiplicity of the human condition.

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

AV: As a sociologist of work, I had been working on the transformation of academic labor relations and, more specifically, on precarious academic work long before I emigrated. As a result of my Marxian political-economic orientation, I habitually tend to reflect on the attack on scientific freedoms and forced migration from the perspective of the neoliberal restructuration of the academic sector. Thus, in this work, I took a step further and tried to illuminate the conjunction of political insecurity and economic precarization.

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

AV: I do not have any preferences regarding the audience. I only know that I do not wish this book to be seen as “exile literature”—or at least primarily as such. Exile certainly is an important theme here, but it only serves as an example of the many possible settings against which more fundamental questions, such as the interaction between precariousness and subjectivity, can be reposed in a new light.

In a more practical sense, I hope that the book contributes to a more holistic understanding of academic freedom and academic work in the twenty-first century—one that is capable of recognizing that there can be no academic freedom without job security, and that the attack on the latter ultimately means an attack on the former as well. The relation between the political threats against academics and the neoliberal market interventions to precarize academic labor is remarkably missing in the entire discourse on academic freedom. So much so, that one cannot help but wonder whether the academic community has become so aligned with the fragmented neoliberal logic that it is now unable to connect the dots and recognize the structural connections between different social phenomena. 

The entire risk narrative is based on the assumption that the political oppression in the periphery and the economic precarity in the core countries are two completely separate phenomena. But in reality, they are the two sides of the same coin. Displaced academics go through the double pressure of political oppression and economic precarization simultaneously. Their case shows that the academic labor force is faced with insecurity everywhere—be it the political threats in the periphery or economic precarity in the core. To recognize the concurrence of political risk and economic precarity is not only crucial for understanding the real scope of the threat that we are facing globally, but it is also probably the most promising one in terms of establishing a real connection between the displaced scholars and the massive domestic academic precariat in the host countries. I would like to think of my work as a contribution in this regard. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AV: Currently, I am working on various manuscripts that take up on academic precarity from different angles and with slightly differing foci, including a book chapter on the labor market situation of exiled academics and an article on the precarious researchers’ initiatives in Germany. But my main project, on which I will be working on for the next two years at the Bard College Berlin and which really gives me thrills, is a comparative typology of the existing instances of academic labor activism in Europe. 

J: You emphasized the parallels between the exiled scholars and the academic precariat in Germany several times. You also made the case for viewing political oppression and job insecurity as equally dangerous for academic production. Would that mean that you describe the state of academic freedom in your host country as equally alarming as in Turkey?

AV: The overt political oppression of scholars which we now witness in an increasing number of countries worldwide is certainly frightening. I definitely have no intention of downplaying it. But I refuse to put job security and academic freedom on a scale and make a choice between them. The absence of violent forms of political oppression automatically does not imply limitless academic freedom. We must ask to what extent freedom of research can exist where researchers have no job security, or where market incentives dictate the research agendas. 

As a Scholar at Risk, I emigrated from a country that is in the bottom bracket of the Academic Freedom Index, to another that is in the top bracket. Germany is one of the favorite destinations for displaced scholars due to the plethora of third-party funding opportunities. But what looks like an advantage is actually a sign of the lack of public funding. In the German academic system, the only form of job security is the full professorship, and everything below is fixed term. Currently, the full professors make up only 7% of the entire academic workforce in the country, which means that 93% consists of precarious researchers working on fixed-term contracts and third-party funded projects. According to the 2017 report of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research on early career researchers, the percentage of the early career academics dependent on external funding has increased by 76% since 2000. During the same time period, the number of tenured professors has only grown by 21%. Meanwhile, only about 25% of the full professor positions are occupied by women (BUWiN, 2017). This should give us an idea of how precarity is gendered and how political freedoms do not necessarily imply gender equality (or equality of any sort, for that matter). Under these circumstances, I think it is legitimate to ask to what degree academic freedom can be maintained in a system where researchers have to live in constant fear of dropping out. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 1, Section 1.2., “The Exiled Academics for Peace as a Segment of Academic Surplus Labor Force,” pp. 48-51)

Despite the general (false) conviction about an alleged exceptionality of academic labor, there is no reason for assuming that the general law of capital accumulation would not apply to the sector of knowledge production and higher education, in which the academic/intellectual labor force operates. In fact, as discussed in the previous sections of this chapter, one of the most tangible manifestations of this law in the sphere of academic production can be observed by the casualization and underemployment trend in academia: The overwork of the employed portion of academic laborers through forced flexibilization and ultimately, the precarization of academic work, are conditioned by the ever-expanding ranks of the academic reserve army, and vice versa.

In the peripheral parts of the capitalist world-economy, such as Turkey, the global systemic drive to produce and re-produce an ever-growing reserve army of labor is backed and reinforced by autocratic governmental measures, as can be observed – among others – in the massive re-structuration of the public sector via authoritarian interventions such as statutory decrees. Currently, an increasing portion of the existing academic labor force in Turkey is being completely excluded from formal employment in the domestic labor market. In the meantime, it is being set “free as a bird” in the Marxian sense onto the global labor markets. Following Marx’s distinction between different forms of relative surplus population as “floating” ( flüssig), “latent”, “stagnant” (stockend), and “pauperized” (Lumpenproletariat) reserve, it can be argued that this academic surplus labor force, now expanded through forced geographic displacement, falls into the category of “floating reserve”, which comprises of the occupationally downgraded faction of workers (Marx [1890]2007: 670–673). As opposed to the latent reserve, that includes people oscillating between paid and unpaid employment, and the stagnant pool, that refers to the marginalized segment with a continuously unstable work situation, the floating reserve refers to the people experiencing downward mobility. The floating reserve pool also includes those members of the skilled labor force that recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. In view of their educational background and occupational skills, and still holding on to the basic meritocratic premises of liberalism, this segment usually believes that their situation is “conjunctural”, i.e. that they would return to formal, high profile employment. However, considering the abovementioned inherent features of capitalism, it seems more likely that the majority will soon be joining the ranks of the pauperdom, i.e. the homeless, the deprived, the “unemployable”.

The current position of the forcibly displaced Peace Academics can be summarized as a floating segment of the huge reserve army of surplus labor. This definition is painfully accurate in their situation, as they do not only represent an institutionally detached workforce, moving adrift on the labor market, but they are literally “floating” in the geographic sense as well. As “refugee”/ “exiled”/ “at-risk” scholars, they wander from city to city, country to country, in search of an opportunity to re-enter the academic market, while in the meantime struggling to survive on emergency solutions like short-term scholarships.

Most of the time, their socio-economic coordinates within the academic production relations are obfuscated by the political background of their expulsion and occupational dismantling. In the last instance, the emphasis on their role as dissident intellectuals, and not as a part of the working population, is also related to a general confusion regarding “academic labor” as a distinct category to which the typical capital-labor-relations supposedly do not apply. Yet, the nature of the work they provide notwithstanding, they are (or used to be) wage-laborers, subject to the administrative as well as economic rules and laws of work, as much as any other segment of the labor force. Their dismissal (either by regular contract cancellation or per statutory decree), regardless of its political meaning for Turkey’s human rights record, meant their exclusion from the sphere of formal employment. Their current profile as persecuted dissident intellectuals from Turkey may lend them a romanticized aura, but it does not change their position as “academic surplus labor force”, kept in reserve and outside of regular employment through short-term and politically conditioned scholarships, on which also their residence statuses in the receiving countries depend.

The common prevalent labels like “endangered” or “at-risk” scholar tend to primarily refer to the political threats facing the displaced academics as dissident scholars. As such, they provide merely conjunctural explanations to a wide-ranging structural issue broadly outlined in the previous section. The general approach to the situation of the Peace Academics is paradigmatic in this regard: The current happenings in Turkey, including the issue of Peace Academics, are mostly being discussed with regard to the rise of authoritarianism and the undermining of civil and human rights. Similarly, the situation of the emigrated Academics for Peace is being dealt with mainly as a political problem within the sphere of human rights and academic freedoms. However, focusing solely on the political aspect of the situation does not only omit the economic aspect of the AKP government’s anti-intellectualist populist policies, but also prevents us from grasping the possible structural impact of the sudden influx of surplus labor that might volatilize further the already congested European academic labor markets.

The AKP’s current anti-intellectualist offensive is not an isolated phenomenon. It is in fact a part of the worldwide neoliberal strategy to spread precariousness and eradicate rational agency, various examples of which can be observed in a growing number of countries from Brazil to China at the moment – albeit with different intensity and relying on different methods. This is in no way to downplay the severity of the current happenings in Turkey, nor does it mean to repudiate the peculiarities of the Turkish case. To be sure, the violent methods with which this neoliberal policy is being implemented in the Turkish context is related to Turkey’s peripheral position within the capitalist world-economy.

It is a known fact that neoliberalism has always tended to pursue its agenda via undemocratic means in the peripheral regions. And, certainly, we shall not oversee the historical peculiarities of the Turkish society that serve to reinforce this harsh course. The deeply rooted, class-based feud between the laymen and the intellectual strata and the organic ties of the universities to the state since their foundation count among these said peculiarities.

The idiosyncrasies of the Turkish society notwithstanding, the AKP government’s brutal intervention into the sphere of knowledge production and higher education can be seen as a neoliberal tactic to kill two birds with one stone: On the one hand, the government is pursuing a policy of systematic de-institutionalization in the sphere of intellectual production. On the other hand, it intensifies the structural anxiety over exclusion from formal employment by gradually undermining all normative standards in the public service sector. On that score, economic precarization and political oppression constitute the two sides of the same neoliberal coin.
Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

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.