un/learning Palestine
an embodied collective un/learning space
an embodied collective un/learning space
“The people in Gaza are teaching us so much about the focus of bringing the collective body back together… looking for signs of life under the rubble, underwear, bracelets… investigating searching for life and relation… we already know who the murderer is… we’re not investigating a crime scene or who the criminal is… we’re searching not for a victim… we’re searching for the context that is deeper than all of us… this is why our hearts are so critical… when we grieve we can be in touch with the justice we have… to be ready to purify every single moment…”
- Devin George Atallah in conversation with adrienne maree brown on ‘Palestinian grief and undying liberation’
“Fuelled by our collective rage and grief, we unite and empower us. Still amidst these difficult times, we channel our hope as a collective force of resistance to the very foundation of these unjust systems, in Palestine and everywhere. We will not only survive this genocide, we will thrive––reclaiming our stolen land and building a future free from the chains of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and zionism.”
– Queers in Palestine, From Palestine to the World: October 2024
the colonial violence in Palestine is not new—neither for Palestine nor other indigenous lineages of resistance to land grab and social erasure. the genocide in Palestine is part of the violence of colonialism, coloniality and white supremacy, which include Europe’s border regime and the settler colonial violences and genocides unfolding also in Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Tigray, West Papua, Kurdistan and Kashmir, as well as on turtle island, amongst other places.
Palestinian liberation is part of collective liberation: “what Palestine needs, we all need. Palestine is a key for liberation and how we orient towards this moment in relation towards our land and each other” (adrienne maree brown).
decolonial solidarity asks us to notice and acknowledge how Palestine’s un/freedom is deeply interwoven with our collective and personal liberation from coloniality and whiteness. how so many of Gaza's wounds have been left open because of us (‘because of us’ by em berry). how, as Combahee River Collective has stated, for black women to be free we would all need to be free, because our struggles and freedoms are interconnected, intersectional and non-separable.
the commitment to Palestinian liberation calls us in to bear witness and engage in self-reflection and self-accountability around our entanglements and implications in oppressive systems, collective traumas and systemic griefs and to un/learn the beliefs and behaviours of coloniality and whiteness that seek certainty, coherence and solutions to unspeakable violence. it calls us in to reorient towards healing and transformation of colonial violences through a commitment to justice that is embodied in us—and to undoing carceral, colonial ideas and systems of injustice that are neither transformative nor life-affirming.
un/learning space, workshops & public discussions
we have held and explored some of these questions in community in the embodied colearning space ‘un/learning Palestine’—coinitiated and cofacilitated by valentina azarova and feminist activist and codirector of Al-Shabaka, Yara Hawari (see call for participation — reproduced below). the group, including some 15 participants, met at the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research in Athens, Greece throughout October and November 2024. during our time together, we cocreated these prompts and resource bundles, as well as this longer resource list.
the biweekly meetings culminated in a two-day workshop on ‘anticolonial and queer feminisms and Palestinian liberation’ with a delegation of Palestinian and Lebanese feminist activists, including Queers in Palestine on 25 and 26 November 2024 @EIGHT/Το ΟΧΤΩ in Athens, Greece (see programme). the same week, we also organised two public discussions on ‘queer/ing Palestinian liberation’ and on the ‘the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the struggle for liberation’, with somoud - the Palestinian community centre in Athens.
on this communal journey of un/learning how Palestinian liberation, part of collective liberation, is at the heart of anticolonial and queer feminisms, we held and ideated around the following questions:
🌀what anticolonial and queer feminisms and feminist praxes are revived and perhaps also reframed through and by Palestinian liberation? how are Palestinian feminists drawing on the insight of indigenous feminisms to understand the violence inflicted on Palestinian bodies across time and fragmentation, as bodies that carry indigenous futurities, and to resist the gendered and sexualised violences at the core of Israel's colonial project? what queer/ing Palestinian liberation means?
🌀centring Palestinian anticolonial and queer feminisms, what does decolonial solidarity demand of us? how do we work towards justice at a time of immense grief and loss? how do we fundamentally reimagine what justice means, what it entails and how it feels like in our bodies? how are radical imagination and decolonial love forces for transformation and liberation for Palestine and beyond?
***
we are resourcing around issuing a call for participation in an online un/learning Palestine space in 2025, which we will post on our IG and X accounts.
- Devin George Atallah in conversation with adrienne maree brown on ‘Palestinian grief and undying liberation’
“Fuelled by our collective rage and grief, we unite and empower us. Still amidst these difficult times, we channel our hope as a collective force of resistance to the very foundation of these unjust systems, in Palestine and everywhere. We will not only survive this genocide, we will thrive––reclaiming our stolen land and building a future free from the chains of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and zionism.”
– Queers in Palestine, From Palestine to the World: October 2024
the colonial violence in Palestine is not new—neither for Palestine nor other indigenous lineages of resistance to land grab and social erasure. the genocide in Palestine is part of the violence of colonialism, coloniality and white supremacy, which include Europe’s border regime and the settler colonial violences and genocides unfolding also in Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Tigray, West Papua, Kurdistan and Kashmir, as well as on turtle island, amongst other places.
Palestinian liberation is part of collective liberation: “what Palestine needs, we all need. Palestine is a key for liberation and how we orient towards this moment in relation towards our land and each other” (adrienne maree brown).
decolonial solidarity asks us to notice and acknowledge how Palestine’s un/freedom is deeply interwoven with our collective and personal liberation from coloniality and whiteness. how so many of Gaza's wounds have been left open because of us (‘because of us’ by em berry). how, as Combahee River Collective has stated, for black women to be free we would all need to be free, because our struggles and freedoms are interconnected, intersectional and non-separable.
the commitment to Palestinian liberation calls us in to bear witness and engage in self-reflection and self-accountability around our entanglements and implications in oppressive systems, collective traumas and systemic griefs and to un/learn the beliefs and behaviours of coloniality and whiteness that seek certainty, coherence and solutions to unspeakable violence. it calls us in to reorient towards healing and transformation of colonial violences through a commitment to justice that is embodied in us—and to undoing carceral, colonial ideas and systems of injustice that are neither transformative nor life-affirming.
un/learning space, workshops & public discussions
we have held and explored some of these questions in community in the embodied colearning space ‘un/learning Palestine’—coinitiated and cofacilitated by valentina azarova and feminist activist and codirector of Al-Shabaka, Yara Hawari (see call for participation — reproduced below). the group, including some 15 participants, met at the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research in Athens, Greece throughout October and November 2024. during our time together, we cocreated these prompts and resource bundles, as well as this longer resource list.
the biweekly meetings culminated in a two-day workshop on ‘anticolonial and queer feminisms and Palestinian liberation’ with a delegation of Palestinian and Lebanese feminist activists, including Queers in Palestine on 25 and 26 November 2024 @EIGHT/Το ΟΧΤΩ in Athens, Greece (see programme). the same week, we also organised two public discussions on ‘queer/ing Palestinian liberation’ and on the ‘the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the struggle for liberation’, with somoud - the Palestinian community centre in Athens.
on this communal journey of un/learning how Palestinian liberation, part of collective liberation, is at the heart of anticolonial and queer feminisms, we held and ideated around the following questions:
🌀what anticolonial and queer feminisms and feminist praxes are revived and perhaps also reframed through and by Palestinian liberation? how are Palestinian feminists drawing on the insight of indigenous feminisms to understand the violence inflicted on Palestinian bodies across time and fragmentation, as bodies that carry indigenous futurities, and to resist the gendered and sexualised violences at the core of Israel's colonial project? what queer/ing Palestinian liberation means?
🌀centring Palestinian anticolonial and queer feminisms, what does decolonial solidarity demand of us? how do we work towards justice at a time of immense grief and loss? how do we fundamentally reimagine what justice means, what it entails and how it feels like in our bodies? how are radical imagination and decolonial love forces for transformation and liberation for Palestine and beyond?
***
we are resourcing around issuing a call for participation in an online un/learning Palestine space in 2025, which we will post on our IG and X accounts.