Problematising Memorialisation in Amman: “a Memorial for Gaza in Amman, What a Disrespectful Liberal White Stance”
On the one-year anniversary of October 7, Palestinian Ambassador to the United Kingdom shared a two-minute video on X [formerly Twitter] which broached the question of how will the genocidal onslaught on Gaza be remembered? The video shows several scenes in an imagined 2040, where children are walking through various museums and memorials that were erected across Asia, America and Europe. The video features no museum or memorial in the Levant or Maghreb. This paper will explore what happened after Palestinians watched and responded to the video in a workshop in Amman [Jordan] in October 2024. The paper provides an opportunity to think about how memory [and memorialisation] functions in the Jordanian capital Amman, a state whose "stability" has been grounded upon depoliticisation and normalisation, and the repression of memories which could rupture the stability. The paper will discuss not only the “disgust” at positing the idea of a memorial in Amman, but the wider question of any memorial or museum related to the Gaza genocide.
Imagining and world-building in Jordan - a state land-locked between the current onslaught of violence against Palestine, Lebanon and Syria – was deemed impossible so the paper will conclude by briefly exploring what happened when the group instead write postcards from an imagined liberated Gaza in 2070 back to Amman and from there, think about how this period of violence will be remembered.