Not even a word: Politics of speech and silence in Palestinian memories
Abstract
This article explores the memories of female Palestinian former political prisoners, via a rethinking of the interrogation moment as liminal space. This arena reveals and triggers productive processes of recognition of self and other, construction of meaning, and resistance strategies by reproducing a mode of remembering that can transcend the yoke of “victimisation” and defeat. I aim to acknowledge the terminology that prisoners use – or refuse – to describe themselves and their “being-in-the-world” and to explore the wide range of meanings involved. In this context silence, the act of not confessing during the interrogation, can be read as a microcosm of values that is not reducible to traumatic discourses, a categorisation that risks obscuring the social, cultural and political frame in which it is shaped.
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