Representations of Colonial Violence in Palestinian Society

Representations of colonial violence in Palestinian Society

In this article I am interested specifically in colonial violence, not in other fabrics of violence in society as other scholars have explored the notion that colonial violence breeds social violence in different forms that are reproduced by Palestinians themselves in their daily life. This focus, however, does not mean that all other modes of violence are attributed to colonial violence, as there are clearly other instigators of violence, be it gender-based, socio-economic, or the violence generated by traditional structures. What I mean by colonial violence, in the present context, is the “original violence” that is structurally connected to colonial power present on the ground. Such violence is meant to impose dominance and maintaining hegemony to suppress the colonized and imprison them within a persistent state of conformity to the colonizers and their ethnic hierarchies. Besides keeping the colonized people as subjects, this violence secures control over their actual resources (i.e. land, water, energy, etc.). I am rather interested in the colonized than in the colonizer as I employ the Subaltern Study Group’s conceptions that prioritize the narrative(s) of the indigenous people themselves to give voice to them as a scholarly means to exit the dominant colonial framework.