Tahrir Hamdi, "Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
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My name is Brian Ska, a host for the channel, and today we'll be speaking with Dr. Tahir Hamdi. Dr. Hamdi is a professor of postcolonial literature and decolonial studies at Arab Open University in Jordan.

In addition to many important articles on postcolonial studies and decolonial thought, she is author of the book Imagining Palestine, Cultures of Exile, and National Identity, published by Bloomsbury in 2022. Welcome, Tahir. It's great speaking with you today. Hi, Brian. So nice to be with you today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and the history of the book and why you decided to write it? Yes, sure.

Well, as I was telling you earlier, most of my work, anyway, all my articles, published articles, were about Palestine, anti-colonial struggle, anti-colonial theory. So it just felt right. I mean, this is, and my background also, you know, if we're talking about my family background, I mean,

Yeah, so my parents really, even though I grew up in Chicago, I was born in Amman, Jordan, but I grew up basically in Chicago. But my father, Khalil Hamdi, who passed away in 2021, I write about this in my book in the introduction. He was one of the founders of the Arab nationalist movement, A&M.

basically in the 1950s and 60s. And their goal, their aim, the A&M, was to liberate Palestine. But before you could do that, my dad always told me was you needed Arab unity. So that's why the idea of the Arab nationalist movement didn't happen, of course. But I grew up with Palestine. I grew up with Palestine at the dinner table.

I was, and I say it in my book, I was named Tahrir. Of course, Tahrir in Arabic means liberation. And I always, because I grew up in Chicago and people had a really difficult time saying my name there, I always asked why was I named Tahrir, liberation? And of course, the stories were always there. Palestine was always narrated, my father's experience. He

He was not only a political activist, but he was one of the people who helped found, let me say, the idea, the concept, and actually the action of armed resistance. We can say that now. This was in the 1950s and 60s.

This is, of course, after the Zionist state entity was established in 1948. And my dad was very much the fida'i, which means like fighter and willing to sacrifice. So Palestine was part of my upbringing and my very being. It was there in my name.

I grew up, as I say in the book, I carried Palestine with me, and I didn't even understand why other people were not always talking about Palestine in the way that my family was talking.

So when I started writing, although English literature was my specialization, I couldn't ignore, for me, what was the most important thing in my life and in the history, the continuing history of the Nakbe, the ongoing Nakbe. Nakbe, of course, means catastrophe.

So, of course, the first book that I would write would be about Palestine. People always knew. I mean, every time I presented at conferences, it was like, you're going to put that in a book, right? You're going to put that. And the book just came to be. It was always there. But when I was contacted by I.B. Torres, they contacted me based on my research work. And they said, the publisher at the time said, we want you to write a book.

And I said, yeah, sure. You have a title. Of course I do. And the title was just always there. What's the title? Imagining Palestine. I didn't even have the subtitle ready. It wasn't Cultures of Exile National Identity. Actually, the subtitle was suggested by the publisher. But Imagining Palestine. They liked the idea. I started writing and this is what came out. And

at the same time, I wanted to contribute a book on Palestine that was multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. I didn't want to just do, for example, pure literature. No, I wanted history, politics, theory, literature, song, dance,

I wanted to interview people, and I did in the last chapter of my book. I wanted to imagine Palestine and help some of these thinkers help me imagine Palestine as well. I talked to people like Leila Khaled, if you've ever heard of Leila Khaled. I talked to Ilan Pepe. I talked to Stephen Salaita. I talked to Ibrahim Odeh. I talked to many thinkers, intellectuals.

And I asked them to imagine Palestine, how they would imagine a future Palestine and the strategies of resistance, etc. So for me, this was always important. And I think I was able to do that in this book. I was able to bring together, I would say, many disciplines, history and politics and anti-colonial theory and song and dance and literature and novels and poetry and memoirs, etc.

And so pretty much, I mean, yes, this is how it came about. It's something I always had to do. I did, and I'm glad I did. And of course, there are other, I have another book out that I co-edited with Louis Braheny.

on Hassan Kanafani. I can mention that a little bit later. And I'm thinking maybe of a third book now on, well, two books at the same time, one on decolonizing education and the other about the songs and the poetry that came out after or post, let me say, October 2023.

Yeah, so the, you know, ideas keep coming up and we have to document them we have to put them down in writing. Yeah, great. So, can you provide an overview of the book and I mean also kind of the central kind of idea.

What does it mean to imagine Palestine? What does it mean to imagine Palestine? And how does this relate to maybe some of the resistance literature and some of the writers you discuss? What does it mean to imagine? And what is the importance? Yeah, what does it mean to imagine? Let me start off by saying that

I hate, I despise defeatist thinking and defeatism, okay? Or simply to accept the status quo and start from there, okay? So you have to be practical, people would say. There's Israel, and the best we can get is a two-state solution. I never believed in that, and I thought it was very defeatist, okay?

For me, imagining is about action. It's about planning. It's about agency. It's about resistance in all its forms. The very act of

of imagining itself is an act of resistance. And I really do like that essay by Patrick Williams where he writes about the outlines of a better world. Let's say post-colonialism or decolonial studies as an anticipatory discourse.

It is something in the making. Now, I do totally and honestly believe that Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea, as a popular slogan goes. Now, when that will be, I don't know. Um,

Ilan Pepe has ideas. Other thinkers have ideas. But before the liberation of Palestine, of course, there's going to be a lot of, um, you know, what we see in Gaza today, a lot of catastrophic happenings, the genocide. And, you know, a lot of people will say, um,

you know, but is it a genocide? I think what's happening is a genocide and possibly more than a genocide. That's why works like imagining Palestine and to resist that kind of normalization of things you would

never imagine, you know, could be normalized. Things like genocide, things like the intentional starvation of a people. You know, before the Gaza genocide began,

Ya'av Galan, I think the defense minister of Israel said, of course, they have a total like blockade siege on Gaza. No food, no water, no electricity. No, no, no, no, no. We'll get into Gaza. No medicine, nothing. We are dealing with human animals, he said, and we're going to act accordingly. I mean, what kind of minister, a

person in government of a so-called democratic state would be able to say that with complete impunity. Only Israel. So I think that the idea of resistance is very important. Resistance leads to liberation. This is what my book is about. And I look at different thinkers who

Ghassan Kanafani's resistance literature and ideas on resistance, Frantz Fanon, Emile Carr Cabral, many other thinkers, the idea of hope, the idea of nurturing hope, the idea that real, genuine change can be effected.

I look at the literatures of, let's say, or the literature of, you know, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish.

the political thoughts of Ghassan Kanafani, his, you know, his novellas, his novels. I look at other people's literature as well, not only Palestinians. I look at what native Indians in the United States and Canada, for example, have to say about Palestine. I look at Black writers and

and see like June Jordan, for example, what they have to say about Palestine, what they witnessed.

So I feel that anti-colonial struggle, wherever it is in the world, must be studied together. And solidarity for me means action. It is not only talking about Palestine, but it is also acting. So I wanted to offer up this book to contribute something where people can think expansively. Palestine.

Palestine is history, but we have memory, we have post-memory, but it's also living. I mean, Marianne Hearst, for example, has the idea of post-memory. However,

What's happening in Gaza, what's happening in the so-called West Bank, but I like Mureed Barghouti's ideas of West of what, Bank of what. There's no, I mean, country or area called the West Bank. It's Palestine. It's occupied Palestine. So I wanted to contribute something to make people think deeply about the idea that

of what it means to imagine. For me, imagining is the planning stage. But this planning stage will inevitably lead to liberation. But we can't have liberation without solidarity. So I wanted to put something out in English for the whole world to read. Because English, of course, is the lingua franca. Everybody seems to be able to speak and read in English. So

We need to know what Palestine is. We need to know what Israel is. Israel is not a democratic state. Israel is a settler colony.

And Israel is a brutal settler colony. And what we're seeing today, what is playing out in front of us today, live streamed for everybody to see, is what Israel was, is, and will continue to be, if it continues to be, inshallah, it will not. Zionist structures, which are very racist, very brutal, and should not exist anymore.

in a humane world. So this is what my book is about. I look at different writers, thinkers, theorists. Ilan Pape, when he reviewed my book, he said, this book makes Palestine theory, okay? It theorizes Palestine. And basically, yes, this is what I was doing. I was starting with Palestine.

Palestine, and then moving out to theorize resistance, agency, action, change. This book is about change, and it's about that change can happen, will happen one day.

As I, you know, and even all the intellectuals in the last chapter that I talked to, I interviewed, one of them, by the way, was the martyr, Rifat Al-Arair. I somehow saw something very genuine in this young professor from Gaza. Yeah.

And I liked his ideas. This is even before his poem, If I Must Die, was ever really known or popular. And his ideas and what he was doing in Gaza, I just felt was very important. That's why I included him in the last chapter of my book. And I wanted people to see these ideas, these thinkers' ideas also on Palestine.

So, yeah, pretty much that's about it without getting into the details of the different works and writers that I considered.

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So you mentioned, I mean, you talk a lot about naming. And I'm wondering, you know, and that has to do with imagining, but, you know, I would imagine also recovery, building, restoring. And in the book, you have a term that you use, verbicide.

And I was wondering if you could just say a little bit more about that and the importance of that. Exactly. Now, verb aside, I read this article by Mureed Barghouti.

He's the Palestinian poet. He passed away, but his son, Tamim Barghouti, is now a very popular poet. Tamim's mom, Radwa Ashour, also wrote a very important novel on Palestine called The Woman from Tantura. Tantura was one of the villages where a lot of people were massacred in 1948. But going back to the idea of verbicide,

We create terms sometimes, or let's say hegemonic centers, okay, media, they create terms sometimes intentionally in order to rewrite or let's say erase a certain history, a people, a culture. Like Murid Berguti says, even the word West Bank,

Why? Why are we even calling it the West Bank or the occupied territories? Are the territories a nation? Are they a people?

Even the word conflict. OK, when people say, oh, the Arab-Israeli or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. OK, is it a conflict? I mean, let's think about it. When we say conflict, don't we sort of

Aren't we sort of erasing or intentionally diverting attention from what actually happened? It is not a conflict. Was slavery a conflict? Settler colonialism, although, you know, in different places of the world, were they conflicts? Why was it called conflict?

settler colonialism there and a conflict here. How did Israel come into being? How was it established? Well, you had a Zionist movement, and those who established the Zionist movement were basically people from Europe, okay, regardless of what their religion was.

And a lot of them came from different places in Europe. Many of them came from different places in the Arab world. And these people came in as colonizers to displace another people, okay, who were there. It was not a land without a people for a people without a land.

My people were there. My ancestors were there. My grandparents and my great-grandparents and my great-great-great-grandparents were there. They lived there. They died there. So when a different people and basically Europeans are coming in to displace the indigenous people of the land, this is not a conflict.

This is a very brutal form of settler colonialism that continues to this day. So verbicide basically is the intentional use of words

to erase the reality of the situation. So we need to understand, and this is what my book is about, we need to understand history. You mentioned recovery, of course. Memory is important. There's this book as well, this huge book, All That Remains, okay? Um,

by Walid al-Khali. And he said, these are the Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel, 1948. So yes, we need to know this history. We need to recover it.

And at the same time, we need to be able to imagine, not to accept the wrong and to say, okay, move on. How can we know? We need to understand what happened and we need to right that wrong. We cannot have that wrong continue. Zionism is a very Eurocentric. It's very racist. It's very brutal.

Israel was born or came into existence based on two main tactics. The first one was genocide or ethnic cleansing, and the second one is expulsion, expulsion of the indigenous population of the land. So yes,

Verbicide is an intentional use of terms to erase history, culture, reality. And we need to be really wise to this thing, to what's happening, because language education is very important. You know, even the thing is when people say, oh, history did not begin on October 7th. That sort of angers me a bit, you know.

Really? Really? I mean, history did not begin. Of course, it didn't begin on October 7. But I'll tell you what began on October 7. Agency. Resistance. Violent. Read Franz Franzen.

Okay, because when you put a people under siege and you put them on a diet, as they say, you can so much calories can go into. Okay, and they can't breathe. They can't use their land, their water, their sky. What do you expect exactly? What do you expect? Negotiations? No. Resistance, armed resistance is one form of resistance. Okay.

So what was the question on Verba's side? But you get what I'm saying. Yes, I mean, framing and language and the sort of...

the way that this so-called conflict is framed and the control over what Said called the permission to narrate is so dominant and so prevalent in this case. And there's so much disparity in

in the power that's wielded in terms of language and in terms of narration and censorship in ways that are constantly surprising and shocking. I'm wondering, in the book you address

in the introduction, you addressed post-colonial theories, reluctance, often reluctance to address the issues of Palestine. And this is true even today. I mean, even, you know, looking through conferences in post-colonial studies, in journals, in associations, in statements, there has been a,

deafening silence on the issue. Some associations, some major associations have yet to even address the conflict as far as I've seen. In the book, you

provide a few suggestions about why this, this might be the case. And I'm wondering, so this is kind of a double question and it ties to, to my, my question about if you faced any sort of resistance or censorship, or if, if you've, if you've had that or face that,

in the publication of the book specifically or even generally in conferences or publications. And what seems to be most true, because you...

you say, you know, in the book, you lay out a couple suggestions of why this might be the case, but what seems to be most true around about the silences, about the silence around Palestine and the kind of reasons for it. Yeah. Yeah. The silence around Palestine, I think it really has a lot to do with,

And I'm going to answer this question. And if somebody were listening to me, let's say from the center of power in the West or anywhere in the West, they would call me anti-Semitic, which is weird because I'm a Semite. Right.

Zionist control, I think, around the world, all over the world, is so strong. The Zionist propaganda machine, the control of governments, the control of any power structures, any centers of power, you will always find power.

this massive Zionist propaganda machine. Now, people in Congress know that, and they talk about that. I mean, I heard, you know, I read about many of them saying, oh, everybody has their like Zionist, I forget what they call them, tutor or guide or Israel guide. So this idea of

not breaking the rules, not wanting to sound anti-Semitic, not wanting to be labeled anti-Semitic, got to the point of, you know what's really weird? Even in imagining Palestine, this is before the beginning of the Gaza genocide, even to say that Palestinians exist or there were a people living there before

the Zionist settler colony was established is even termed as, you know, anti-Semitic. To not agree with a Jewish-only state on the land of historic Palestine is anti-Semitic. The propaganda is so strong that people either fear it

Some may even believe it. It becomes part of their awareness, their consciousness. You know, even in the Arab world, it's not really as free as you would tend to think at, you know, Arab universities, for example. Because here at Arab universities also, we're always self-censoring.

And don't forget that our governments basically are controlled by U.S. government, which is very Zionist in its orientation. So the silence on Palestine is, I think, based on

pretty much the hegemonic control of Zionist propaganda on the centers of power all over the world, including the Arab world. And I don't think anywhere in the Arab world are we totally free even of this kind of control of Zionism. And if there is a government that has some sort of freedom, it would be crushed.

by the West and by Arab regimes as well. So the silence on Palestine is due to a very strong propaganda machine, fear of breaking the rules, fear of being labeled, fear of losing your job, fear of not getting the funding that you want.

In academia, you would be isolated. I mean, like Rabab Abdelhadi at San Francisco State University. Even her teaching Palestine course has been sanctioned, shut down so many times. She tried to interview several people. Zoom would shut her down. So there is a very specific machinery of

silencing of erasure. We simply don't have the permission to narrate Palestine. Now it's becoming a little bit better. I'm not saying that there's an absolute silence because you have people like Anna Ball and Patrick Williams and Anna Bernard and different thinkers and writers in the UK, I think more than in the US, who

There is some change, but the change is very slow and it really needs to grow. And, you know, my concern also is in the Arab world. You would think that they would be more interested in decolonizing education, but they're not.

Self-censorship is so strong. They don't, you know, to me, they don't even realize that we need to decolonize in terms of education and academia. We'll get to that maybe later on. But I mean, it really is a sorry state. You mentioned, for example, that I have an article on Gaza and you started reading it. Well, at my university, I sent that article out

To my colleagues in the English department, I'm the president of Arab Open in Jordan now, Arab Open University in Jordan. So I'm like, here, look, this is my latest article. I'm pretty sure that nobody read it. I'm pretty sure that nobody read my book. I'm pretty sure that I'm not blaming. It's just a mindset. What is it? Is it fear? Is it Allah? Is it hopelessness?

that the situation simply cannot change, won't change. I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe I said some things I shouldn't have. But I mean, I really I would like to see more defiance in academia, more disobedience in academia, academia, more epistemic to use the term by Walter Magnolo, more epistemic disobedience.

were always, when I was like...

at university and I was still a student. I was like, oh, can I write about this person? Can I do my thesis on? No, no, no. You have to stick to the canon. What canon? Whose canon? Why is there a canon that I need to stick to? I mean, this idea of being obedient and following the rules is just so crippling, so oppressive. And I think it's

A tool that is used for silencing, for shutting up, for erasing, for not even creating this mentality of resistance where you're supposed to accept passively. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah, so I actually do want to turn to decolonization and to ask you about that and to maybe even differentiate that if it's possible from post-colonialism or post-colonial studies or

or even resistance. I'm wondering if those terms intersect and as I also, I think I mentioned that I read your article, your 2022 article, Decolonizing Literature Departments at Arab Universities, which I think is a really great article.

And I'm wondering what decolonizing means for Palestine and also for universities in the region and also for literature and for literature departments. What does that mean? What does that look like? How is that term kind of to be employed? Yeah.

See, I think it's not exactly what post-colonialism is, what decolonial studies are, what resistance is or resistance literature. It's what people made of them. It's how people understood them. Okay.

For Patrick Williams, for example, post-colonialism should be rooted in resistance and liberation. But so many people, and of course, we know that like Edward Said's book, Orientalism, which was published in 1978, sort of ignited or began this sort of idea on the so-called post-colonial. But what later became of it

is post the colonial, okay? As if, and that people started using the term post-colonial as if it was, as if we are living in a post-colonial era, but we're not.

colonial institutions remain. I mean, maybe physical colonization left, okay? But what colonization left behind is very colonial in its structure, in its discourse, in its mindset. For example, I'm sure you're aware of Gowrie Viswanathan's book,

Masks of Conquest, she says, English departments in the global south are really remnants of colonialism. And English literature was used as a kind of making the population consent to being colonized in India. She was talking about India and the British colonization of India.

So English literature, therefore, is a remnant of colonialism.

We are not now in the Arab world. We are not in a post-colonial era because colonial structures remain at the highest level in academia, universities, governments, everywhere. For me, decolonization is a process of getting rid of those structures that

OK, that remain here, that remain ingrained in the system, that remain in our academia and universities, that remain in the mind. That's why Ngugi Wa-Fiango has decolonizing the mind. OK, so decolonization is a resistance system.

strategy, if you will. It is a very important part of resistance. If we say anti-colonial struggle maybe is like a physical kind of resistance or armed resistance, well,

Decolonization needs to accompany anti-colonial struggle. Decolonization means decolonizing our academia, decolonizing universities, decolonizing education, decolonizing governments, decolonizing, for example, in Jordan, in

and different parts of the world. It's so difficult to decolonize our English departments because we have something, for example, a control system called local accreditation.

Okay, so you get local accreditation officers in academia coming to university. Okay, university saying, you have this course, that course, that course, that course. And if you don't have all the courses that you're supposed to have, you're not accredited. Okay, so you have a lot, you have this cage, right?

that you really can't break out from unless you're doing it individually, which is what I did in my courses. I introduced anti-colonial thought and theory and books and et cetera. But I mean, decolonization then, to go back to the difference, is a very important part of the struggle

to decolonize colonial structures and centers of colonial power that remain in supposedly free and independent nations, which really don't exist because there is no independence in

in political decisions or different kinds of decisions that concern the colonial master. So basically, I would say that's the difference. We should all concentrate on this idea of decolonization, which is a process. It's continuing. It also involves decolonizing what's up here, the mind, as Ngugi Wa Thiong'o would say.

So I think that's just about all my questions on the book and on your work. But before we wrap up, I did want to ask you if you could just recommend, you know, a couple of books on the issue or, or even new sources or, or, or contemporary writers, you know, places and people and sources that, that people can kind of go to and,

for information and to learn more. Okay, Brian, I will do that in a couple of minutes, okay? But I just wanted to read this part of my article that you mentioned at the beginning. It's in the latest issue of the journal From the European South. And here I say, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote in a piece he called A War for War's Sake.

from this day on he who does not become palestinian in his heart will never understand his true moral identity despite the siege and murderously mad bombing campaign by the zionist entity gaza lives in

and it will rise again. And as Darwish writes in a poem called Silence for Gaza, it will continue to explode. And the idea of explode, and I'm going to read just the words that Darwish here wrote about Gaza exploding. I want to connect them to Langston Hughes' Dream Deferred, what happens to a dream deferred. And then he asks Darwish,

questions, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, etc. And the last line, or does it just sag like a heavy load? And then the last question, he italicizes it, or does it explode? So I just, you know, connected between the two. This is what Darwish says.

Enemies might triumph over Gaza. The storming sea might triumph over an island. They might chop down all its trees. They might break its bones. They might implant tanks on the insides of its children and women. They might throw it into the sea, sand or blood. But it will not repeat lies and say yes to invaders. It will continue to explode.

It is neither death nor suicide. It is Gaza's way of declaring that it deserves to live. It will continue to explode.

So it is a dream that will be realized. And I want you to think of Gaza now in its greater Palestine will continue to explode because resistance will never end, can never be, you know, killed. You cannot kill the resistance of a people. So in terms of what books...

I would recommend, and I'll try to even mention some news sites, websites, etc. You have Nur Masalha, the expulsion of the Palestinians, and of course, his more recent Palestine, a 4,000-year history. You have Ilan Pepe's The Ethnic Cleansing of

of Palestine. Everything by Ghassan Kanafani. I adore Ghassan, all of his novels and his theoretical work as well. Our latest book on Ghassan Kanafani, Selected Political Writings. Of course, my book, Imagining Palestine.

I have a colleague, her name is Afafid Jabri, who has a new book called Palestinian Refugee Women from Syria to Jordan. And in terms of news sources, I do like the Palestine Chronicle, Ramzi Baroud's Palestine Chronicle, Ali Abu Namri's The Electronic Intifada. And if we're thinking of Western journalists, I love Chris Hedges. He's great.

Now, just before I end, education and decolonizing education is so very important, not only in the Arab world, but also in the Western world and other parts of the world, especially because of, you know, the Zionist entities' tactics of scholasticide, educide, pedophilia.

Pistemicide, the killing, the silencing, the annihilation of education, of Palestinian education, culture, history, libraries.

So we need to counter this genocidal erasure of humanity, of education and knowledge. It must be countered. And the answer, I say, for the rest of the world is what? OK, people might say, well, what can I do? The answer is in decolonizing education.

But also, I think that if you're all interested in helping in academia, teach Palestine. Join BDS, boycott, divest, sanctions. Don't normalize genocide. Don't normalize brutality, refugee camps, dehumanization. Join action groups. I'm currently part of an action group called, it's an academic action network called Act for PAL.

See what you can do, how you can help educate yourself, educate your students. I think that's about what I want to say. Thanks so much. I actually wanted to add one that I'm really excited about. It's by Omar El-Akkad. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he has a book coming out in February called One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

And it comes from one of his quotes. Yeah. You know, kind of thinking about, you know, the old idea that, you know, in South Africa, for example, after apartheid ended, it's impossible to find anyone who supported apartheid. It's kind of like old, just old.

But he has a quote, you know, the title of the book comes from a quote, and he says, one day when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.

And I really like that. And he has one more where he writes, this is genocide. This is what genocide looks like. Whatever you thought you'd do or say in a moment of historical atrocity, however brave you imagined you'd be, you have your answer.

That's just beautiful. That's brilliant. Thank you for his name is Omar. Yeah, he wrote a book. He has a couple of books. One is called American War. And he has a few more. It's just really, really beautiful writer. But he has this new book, this new book coming out on Palestine. So one day everyone will have always been against this. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to hear about your book and to hear you talk about your work. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Brian. It was a pleasure.