The Psychic Life of Liberation: From the Shatat

Abstract

In the face of Israel’s ongoing genocidal atrocities in Palestine, Arab activists in the shatat articulate rage, grief, and resistance within the confines of a colonial tongue. They do so in continuity with multiple histories of Arab resistance against European and US imperial and colonial violence. In this context, the author contends that they embody a communal source of strength she calls the psychic life of liberation, a force that sustains a collective struggle for liberation. This essay shows how the psychic life of liberation is constituted by intergenerational grief, collective love and care, and a profound sense of sumud that transcends time and space.

Keywords:

• diaspora
• liberation
• colonialism
• resistance
• collective care
• psychic life
• Palestine
• activism
• intergenerational trauma
• Zionism

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Kim Greenwell and the editorial team at JPS for their incredible feedback and suggestions.

Notes

1 “Israel/OPT: New Evidence of Unlawful Israeli Attacks in Gaza Causing Mass Civilian Casualties Amid Real Risk of Genocide,” Amnesty International, February 12, 2024, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-new-evidence-of-unlawful-israeli-attacks-in-gaza-causing-mass-civilian-casualties-amid-real-risk-of-genocide/.

2 Nadine S. Naber, “Imperial Whiteness and the Diasporas of Empire,” American Quarterly 66, no. 4 (December 2014): 1107–115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43823189.

3 Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (Washington, DC: Middle East Research and Information Project, 2014), https://merip.org/palestine-israel-primer/.

4 “Sabra and Shatila Massacre: What Happened in Lebanon in 1982?,” Al Jazeera, September 16, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/16/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-40-years-on-explainer.

5 Edward Said, “Permission to Narrate,” JPS 13, no. 3 (1984): 27–48, https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/Permission%20to%20Narrate.pdf.

6 “Video Shows UIC Police Arresting Palestinian Student for Marking Campus Property with Messages,” CBS Chicago, January 19, 2024, YouTube video, 7:14, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfP1HNKk27M&ab_channel=CBSChicago.

7 Andrew Lapin, “Chicago School District Faces Title VI Investigation after Pro-Palestinian Walkout,” Jerusalem Post, February 22, 2024, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-788204.

8 Mary Norkol, Nader Issa, and Emmanuel Camarillo, “Thousands Attend Funeral for Palestinian American Boy Killed in Plainfield Township,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 16, 2023, https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2023/10/16/23919368/palestinian-boy-wadea-al-fayoume-fatally-stabbed-funeral-plainfield.

9 SJP at UIC (@sjpuic), Instagram main page, last accessed April 19, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/sjpuic/?hl=en.

10 https://palestinianfeministcollective.org/.

11 Nadine S. Naber, “The Radical Potential of Mothering during the Egyptian Revolution,” Feminist Studies 47, no. 1 (2021): 62–93, https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2021.0010.

12 Dean Spade, Mariame Kaba, and Ejeris Dixon, “We Keep Each Other Safe: Mutual Aid for Survival and Solidarity,” November 12, 2020, Barnard Center for Research on Women, https://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/we-keep-each-other-safe/.

13 Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2023).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadine Naber

Nadine Naber is a professor of gender and women’s studies and global Asian studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, an editorial board member of JPS, and founder of Liberate Your Research. A scholar activist, she is the author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2012), coeditor of four books, including Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), and an organizer with INCITE! Palestine Force, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity.