COPYRIGHT. Timothy Seidel ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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2 COPYRIGHT by Timothy Seidel 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

3 To my family.

4 WHERE IS THE PALESTINIAN GANDHI? : POWER AND RESISTANCE IN LATE MODERNITY BY Timothy Seidel ABSTRACT Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? This question has been posed as outside observers survey both what appears to be an intractable conflict in Palestine-Israel as well as what they see as the predominance of Palestinian violence as either cause of and/or response to Israeli military domination of Palestinian territory. The implication is that if there was a Palestinian leader who could lead a mass program of nonviolent direct action like Gandhi performed in British colonial controlled India Palestinians could finally be successful in ending Israeli military occupation and realizing their national dreams of political self-determination in the establishment of a state. This dissertation examines and problematizes the Palestinian Gandhi question and the discourse that produces it by identifying and exploring the contours of alternative Palestinian discourses of resistance what I refer to as discourses of political economies of resistance and transnational solidarities and resistance. By exploring these discourses, this dissertation addresses the problematic of representing political agency or subjectivity in areas of conflict and violence, in this case Palestine in the post-oslo era (2000-present). Drawing particularly from discourse and postcolonial theory, this dissertation is an inquiry into the discursive construction and obfuscation of Palestinian political subjectivity by examining narratives and practices of nonviolence and resistance in and about Palestine how certain forms of resistance are identified while other forms are obscured. Framed in the context of International Relations and Peacebuilding theory and practice, this dissertation gives greater attention to the constitutive role ii

5 of marginalized people in the production of concepts and practices of resistance arguing that this could help us identify overlooked and seemingly everyday practices that have implications for peacebuilding policy and practice. iii

6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are so many to thank for making this dissertation possible. I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Carole Gallaher, and Peter Dula. My committee chair Mohammed Abu-Nimer has been a source of encouragement and support for many years. I am grateful to the faculty and students in the PhD program at the School of International Service for creating the scholarly space that made this dissertation possible. The research for this dissertation was made possible by the financial support of Nonviolence International s Randall Research Scholarship, the American University Provost s Office Doctoral Student Research Award, and other financial support from the School of International Service at American University. Chapter six is derived in part from an article published in Third World Quarterly (volume 37, issue 9). I am grateful to the Edward Said Award Committee and the Global Development Studies Section of the International Studies Association for their support and encouragement. I am forever grateful to the many Palestinian and Israeli friends, neighbors, and colleagues who welcomed me and opened up their homes and lives to us. You never fail to challenge and inspire me. I am grateful to the many friends and colleagues at Mennonite Central Committee, who first invited me on this journey. Most importantly I am grateful to my family, my son Kai and my daughter Phoenix, who are my greatest teachers. Finally, I am grateful to my wife Chris, who made all of this possible. iv

7 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS... iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS... viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW... 1 What Is This Dissertation Doing and Not Doing?... 2 What Is the Story (Representation) of Nonviolence and Resistance in Palestine? And What Is Not Being Said?... 5 Dissertation Overview... 9 CHAPTER 2 THEORY(-BUILDING) Discourse, Discourse Theory, and Discursive Practice (and Its Historical- Material Aspects) Postcolonial Critiques Postcolonial Interrogations and Implications for How We Talk about Palestine, Peacebuilding, and International Relations CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN Methodology Method, Analysis, and Forms of Evidence Genealogical phase: What are the dominant concepts and categories for nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians are represented as lacking in practice (leading some to ask where is the Palestinian Gandhi ), a subject positioning or representation that emerges out of what I am calling a Palestinian Gandhi discourse? Ethnographic phase: What are the local concepts and categories for nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians themselves narrate and practice, and how are they articulated in discourses on resistance that problematize and counter the hegemony of the Palestinian Gandhi discourse? Access and Case Selection Discourse Analysis, Genealogy and Ethnography CHAPTER 4 GENEALOGY: WHERE IS THE PALESTINIAN GANDHI? Introduction Waiting for Gandhi v

8 Representing the Colonized: Discourse, Antagonism, and Ontological Instabilities Where Is the Palestinian Gandhi? : A Response Nonviolence and Nonviolent Resistance in Palestine Where Is the Palestinian Gandhi? : Interrogating Nonviolent Resistance in Palestine CHAPTER 5 DEVELOPMENT, PEACEBUILDING, AND POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF RESISTANCE IN PALESTINE Introduction: The View from Nahhalin Interrogating Development: Alternative Narratives of Resistance Food, Water, and Resistance De-development and the political economy of occupation Food security, food sovereignty When they destroy the trees, you plant double Political Economies of Resistance Sustainability: Land, farming, agriculture Against occupation, neoliberalism, and Fayyadism Palestinian political subjectivity and discursive resistance against the obfuscation of settler colonial occupation Transnational solidarities in global society Palestinian farmers: A last stronghold of resistance Improving People s Lives Is Resistance Palestinian Land Defense Coalition Mindset intifada Palestinian Farmers Union Resistance is invisible Conclusion: The Violence and Visibility of Palestinian Resistance CHAPTER 6 OCCUPIED TERRITORY IS OCCUPIED TERRITORY : TRANSNATIONAL SOLIDARITIES AND RESISTANCE IN PALESTINE Introduction: Occupied Territory Is Occupied Territory Contentious Politics, Transnational Solidarity, and Resistance Transnational Solidarity and Resistance as Contentious Politics Mbembe (and Fanon) on Late-Modern Colonial Occupation and Necropolitics The Palestine-Mexico Border Along the Palestine-Mexico border Emigrantes, Palestinos, estamos unidos vi

9 #BlackPalestinianSolidarity From Palestine to Ferguson Transnational solidarity and resistance: When I see them, I see us Conclusion: Discursive Linkages and the Articulation of Transnational Solidarity CHAPTER 7 POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY AND THE CLAIMS OF MODERNITY: LIBERAL PEACE, SACRED VIOLENCE, AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY Introduction: The Aftermaths of Sovereignty Dismantling the Myth of Religious Violence Muslims as a Religious Minority in Europe : Asad on Complex Time and Space Exploring Religion and the Post-Secular in Peacebuilding The critical turn in peacebuilding theory: A post-liberal peacebuilding Religion in peacebuilding Conclusion Violence, religion, and the state Principled vs. strategic or religious vs. secular? Bodies, embodied subjectivity, and resistance Religion, race, and the persistence of Orientalism De-centering the state and politicizing International Relations Post-secular reflections and the locations of peacebuilding and development CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION: POWER AND RESISTANCE Producing Palestine: The Necessities of Violence Imagination and Resistance On Discipline and Science Conclusion REFERENCES vii

10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration Figure 1. Campbell s (1992) identity-policy constellations viii

11 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW In this introductory chapter I will provide a general overview of the dissertation. It will introduce my central research question and describe what my dissertation is doing and what it is not doing: that instead of answering the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? this dissertation works to problematize the question by exploring the discourse that makes the question possible of thinkable to begin with. In particular, that it addresses the problematic of representing political agency or subjectivity in areas of conflict and violence, in this case Palestine in the post-oslo era (2000-present). By addressing this problem, this dissertation aims to discover concepts and categories that Palestinians use for describing nonviolence and civil resistance by examining narratives and practices of nonviolence in and about Palestine. More importantly, this dissertation aims to identify the discourses on resistance that Palestinians articulate through these narratives and practices that counter the hegemony of the Palestinians Gandhi discourse. Finally this first chapter will include a brief review of the literature and overview of the dissertation: What is the story (representation) of nonviolence and resistance in Palestine? And what is not being said? I will argue that this dissertation is unique in its theory-building approach to understanding nonviolence and civil resistance. Drawing particularly from discourse and postcolonial theory, my dissertation then is an inquiry into the discursive construction and obfuscation of Palestinian political subjectivity by examining narratives and practices of nonviolence in and about Palestine how certain forms of resistance are identified while other forms are obscured. 1

12 What Is This Dissertation Doing and Not Doing? Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? This question has been posed by many observers as they survey what appears to be an intractable conflict in Palestine-Israel, 1 as well as the representation of Palestinian violence as either cause of and/or response to Israeli military domination of Palestinian territory. The implication is that if there was a Palestinian leader who could lead a mass program of nonviolent direct action like Gandhi performed in British colonial controlled India Palestinians could finally be successful in ending Israeli military occupation and realizing their national dreams of political self-determination in the establishment of a state. The possibility or thinkability of this question leads me into an inquiry on political subjectivity examining both the positioning of subjects within a discursive structure as well as the way those social and political subjects act. 2 Where does the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? come from? What work is it doing? Put differently, this dissertation is interested in the questions: How is the narrative on Palestinian nonviolent resistance that makes possible the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? discursively fixed? And how do Palestinians narrate nonviolent resistance in ways that articulate competing or counter discourses 1 There are many terms used to describe the territory of historic or Mandate Palestine : Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel and Palestine, Israel-Palestine, etc. In this chapter, the term Palestine-Israel is used and refers to all of Mandate Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper. This term acknowledges that both Palestinians and Israelis claim the land and should be able to live there peacefully and securely. 2 For a discussion more generally on political subjectivity, political analysis, and discourse theory, see Howarth et al. (2000). For a focus on political subjectivity and resistance in the postcolonial context, a significant focus of this dissertation, see Jabri (2012). While a distinction can be made between subject positions and political subjectivity, I will use the term political subjectivity more generally to encompass both the discursive positioning of Palestinians and Palestinian agency as well as the agency of Palestinians as political subjects that act and make claims to politics that present resistance to those hegemonic discourses that reflect colonial rationalities that polices access to the political. As Jabri describes it, it is to rethink resistance in terms of the subject s claim to politics, locating this claim in a constitutive relationship with political community, the international, and the cosmopolitan (2012, 7). 2

13 that not only challenge the Palestinian Gandhi discourse but present alternative worlding practices altogether? On one level, this research is an inquiry into the discursive construction and obfuscation of Palestinian subjectivity by examining narrations of nonviolent resistance in Palestine how certain forms of resistance are identified while other forms are obscured, or obfuscated to deflect from the brutalities of military occupation, with particular attention to embodied resistance and subjectivity. On another level, this work seeks to understand how and why any narration of Palestine and resistance in Palestine is constrained by the legacy of colonialist modernity in general and its ongoing production of Palestine and the political subjectivity of Palestinians in particular. With this in mind, this dissertation examines the approaches, practices, and articulations of nonviolent resistance in Palestine to identify its conceptual range as well as discursive constructions. 3 By addressing this problem, this dissertation aims to discover concepts and categories that Palestinians use for describing nonviolence and civil resistance by examining narratives and practices of nonviolence in and about Palestine. More importantly, this dissertation aims to identify the discourses on resistance that Palestinians articulate through these narratives and practices that counter the hegemony of the Palestinians Gandhi discourse. I want to argue that giving greater attention to the constitutive role of marginalized people in the production of concepts and practices of resistance could help us identify the overlooked and seemingly everyday practices of colonized groups. Put another way, the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? identifies a lacking, an absence, and begs the prior question framing this research regarding the discursive replication of binary relationships of the 3 Inclusion of the theological may seem peculiar for such a project, but this approach attempts to intervene in recent discussions on the postliberal and postsecular as well as the postcolonial in International Relations and peacebuilding. For example, see the discussion below on Jabri (2010a, 2010b, 2012), Richmond (2011), and Shinko (2008, 2010), as well as Asad (2003), Muppidi (2012), Mavelli and Petito (2012), and Mavelli (2012). 3

14 underdeveloped (or pre-political, etc.) to the developed, political agents of history. The Palestinian Gandhi question itself is illustrative. This research will not look to answer the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? per se, but rather focus on identifying the discourse that makes that question thinkable to begin with. In this way the Palestinian Gandhi question serves as an indicator that something is there, that something is going on discursively. This dissertation s two particular research questions are: 1. What are the dominant concepts and categories for nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians are represented as lacking in practice (leading some to ask where is the Palestinian Gandhi ), a subject positioning or representation that emerges out of what I am calling a Palestinian Gandhi discourse? 2. What are the local concepts and categories for nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians themselves narrate and practice, and how are they articulated in discourses on resistance that problematize and counter the hegemony of the Palestinian Gandhi discourse? Using discourse analysis, this research will proceed in phases the first genealogical, the second ethnographic. First it will identify the discourse on Palestinian nonviolent resistance that makes the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? possible and investigate the work that this discourse is doing, for example in how it obscures Palestinian resistance and political subjectivity. This research will then investigate using qualitative methods such as interviews and participant-observation to identify the overlooked and learn what the obscured looks like in Palestine. Finally, using discourse analysis this research will look into how the obscured is represented discursively and interrogate why it is not seen as resistance and investigate its implications for political subjectivity. 4

15 In the context of International Relations (IR) and peacebuilding theory and practice, this research aims to give greater attention to the constitutive role of marginalized people in the production of concepts and practices of resistance arguing that this could help us identify the overlooked and seemingly everyday practices of colonized groups destabilizing binary divisions such as those between resistance and nonresistance or the political and apolitical. It also aims to offer aid in our recognition of the colonialist legacy latent in contemporary International Relations and peacebuilding theory and practice, reminding us to constantly revisit and rethink the ways we inhabit a world shaped by colonial history a point with both methodological as well as substantive implications to how we read and write worlds. 4 These research questions belie a particular methodological location or wager (Jackson 2011) as well as a particular theoretical thrust or orientation in discourse and postcolonial theory. In the following chapter I will provide the theoretical and methodological framing of this research. What Is the Story (Representation) of Nonviolence and Resistance in Palestine? And What Is Not Being Said? There has been a movement in the scholarly literature to respond to the Palestinian Gandhi question. In particular, scholars have examined the shape of nonviolent resistance 5, what it has looked like, with attention, for example, to conversations over the recognizable and 4 See the discussion in my concluding chapter s section on Discipline and Science with Wainwright (2005), Inayatullah and Blaney (2004), Chowdhry (2007) and Jackson (2011) on how our knowledge production is a worlding practice. 5 For more on nonviolence and nonviolent resistance, in particular the sort of nonviolent direct action exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, see theoretical and analytical reflections by scholars such as Gene Sharp (1973, 2005) and more recently by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (2011). 5

16 acceptable forms of nonviolent resistance and its impact. 6 In Arabic, nonviolence is often translated as la onf. However, many Palestinians instead opt for terms such as popular struggle or popular resistance (muqawama sha biye), an indicator of the suspicions many Palestinians hold regarding the language and concepts of nonviolence imported from the West, recognizing the inconsistencies over many in the West calling for and expecting nonviolence from Palestinians while subscribing to and benefiting from approaches and systems that are lessthan-nonviolent. In this manner, Western advocates of nonviolence are seen to be using this as a tool of social control, an especially poignant question to be posed to advocates of nonviolence who speak from a privileged or elite location. One reading of this literature is that it offers a response to the Palestinian Gandhi question by demonstrating that Palestinian nonviolent resistance is not only not lacking but, in some cases, robust. This has included research looking at both the first intifada (King 2007, Dajani 1994, Rigby 1991) and the second intifada (Abu-Nimer 2006, Norman 2009, Kaufman- Lacusta 2010, Hallward 2011, Hallward & Norman 2011) as well as research more widely surveying the modern Palestinian national movement (Pearlman 2011, Qumsiyeh 2011). 7 And while some of these authors may even identify the Palestinian Gandhi question as a problem and indicative of a discourse at work, I argue that they are still operating within the discourse that continues to make the Palestinian Gandhi question possible. Of course Edward Said takes 6 In particular, Arens and Kaufman (2012) provide insight into Israeli perceptions of Palestinian nonviolent resistance, with attention to Jewish collective memories of victimhood, noting for example that even if nonviolent resistance occurs, Israelis do not believe that Palestinians actually oppose violence and are skeptical of the Palestinians long-term goals (241). They also discovered a lack of optimism over the possibility of creating a movement due to a perceived lack of strong leadership: Unfortunately, the Palestinians do not have a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, or somebody who will lead If no icon leads the movement, the non-violence effort will not last long (245). 7 The theoretical background of this literature has primarily been peacebuilding and nonviolent action theory as well as contentious politics and social movement theory. Methodological approaches have primarily included using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to tell descriptive stories and chronicle events, to offer historical explanations and analyses, or to perform process-tracing using structured case comparisons. 6

17 this methodological (philosophical-ontological) approach, for example in his work on Orientalism (1978), which has implications for the conversation on political subjectivity. But neither he nor Joseph Massad (2006) gives particular attention to nonviolent resistance as an element of these discourses. Therefore while the conversation on nonviolent resistance in Palestine-Israel is not new, I argue that it has not attended to prior questions raised by a discourse and postcolonial theory approach. In methodological terms, the literature on nonviolence and nonviolent resistance in Palestine operates out of a positivist methodology. For example, the methodological approach of the authors mentioned above takes as a given this thing called nonviolent resistance. Instead of beginning with the assumption that there is a thing in the world called nonviolent resistance, this research will interrogate that assumption by examining the production of the thing (category) called nonviolent resistance by using discourse analysis. Similarly in terms of theory, the discourse and postcolonial theoretical approach this project takes is not found in the prevailing literature on peacebuilding and nonviolent resistance in Palestine. And while there are interventions of postcolonial theory in IR (Chowdhry & Nair 2004, Inayatullah & Blaney 2004, Muppidi 2012), in peacebuilding (Jabri 2012, Richmond 2011), and in Palestine studies (Said 1978, Massad 2006), none of these have examined specifically the discourses on or discursive construction of nonviolent resistance in Palestine, indicating a gap at the intersection of these pieces. It is the gap at the intersection of International Relations, peacebuilding and nonviolent resistance, and Palestine studies the gap left by an unproblematic observation of nonviolent resistance that does not consider how it always articulated within a discourse that at the same time acknowledges and obscures, authorizes and de-authorizes, acts of power and resistance 7

18 that this discourse and postcolonial theoretical approach will seek to address. Research on nonviolence in Palestine often imposes a priori ideas and categories onto the Palestinian political landscape in ways that constrain the researcher s ability to recognize forms of nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians are engaging. I claim that these constraints can be traced to perceptions and representations of Palestinian political agency and subjectivity. Drawing particularly from discourse and postcolonial theory, my dissertation then is an inquiry into the discursive construction and obfuscation of Palestinian political subjectivity by examining narratives and practices of nonviolence in and about Palestine how certain forms of resistance are identified while other forms are obscured. And in this dissertation the two examples of obscured Palestinian resistance identified include what I refer to as the discourses on political economies of resistance and transnational solidarities and resistance. This gap begs the prior questions framing this research. In particular, where does the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? come from? Why is it that this question can be asked to begin with? What work is this question performing? Who is speaking? 8 And who is listening? 9 Put another way, the question Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? identifies a lacking, an absence, and begs the prior question framing this research regarding the discursive replication of binary relationships of the underdeveloped (or pre-political, etc.) to the developed, political agents of history. 8 See Spivak (1988). 9 See Butler (2001). 8

19 Dissertation Overview The next two chapters will explore the theoretical and methodological thrust of this dissertation. Chapter 2 will discuss and explain my approach to discourse theory, exploring the concept of discourse, discursive practice, and its historical-material aspects. Next it will discuss the various theoretical post -ings I am exploring: post-structural/ secular/ liberal/ colonial. In particular it will flesh out the key concepts that fieldwork data will be organized around, i.e. the narrative or story that the fieldwork tells. Those key concepts include: political subjectivity, power, and resistance. And while this will be discussed further in chapter 4, initial attention will be given to the concepts of violence and nonviolence. In chapter 3 I will provide an overview of the key concepts and approaches to discovering, producing and analyzing data using discourse analysis. In particular it will outline the methods of genealogy (as problematization) and ethnography ( subjugated knowledge and discursive practices). This research approach is designed to map across textual and non-textual sources for both exposure and intertextuality, including a range of political and civil society locations. Chapter 4 will offer a genealogical inquiry into the narratives of nonviolence in Palestine with attention to the research question: What are the dominant concepts and categories for nonviolence and civil resistance that Palestinians are represented as lacking in practice as a result of a subject positioning or representation that emerges out of what I am calling a Palestinian Gandhi discourse? It will not attempt to offer a history of nonviolence in Palestine but rather take a Gramscian inventory of the present by tracing the genealogy of the narration/ representation of violence, nonviolence, and resistance in Palestine, how this resistance has been discursively fixed or destabilized. It gives particular attention to the persistence of certain understandings and articulations of nonviolent resistance that are expressed in questions such as Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? and offers a critique drawing from discourse and 9

20 postcolonial theory. In terms of discourse theory, it will draw from Campbell s identity/ difference discussion and the three discourses/ identity-policy constellations he identifies. In terms of postcolonial theory, it will draw from Edward Said s and Franz Fanon s discussions on representations of (post)colonial violence and resistance. Finally it will discuss the implications for narrating Palestinian nonviolence and political subjectivity, interrogating the metanarrative of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance and the way that it sets a normative trajectory/ teleology towards Europe. Multiple discourses will be examined that compete in their attempts to articulate [write] absences and presences as it relates to Palestinian political subjectivity, nonviolence, and resistance: asking the question (claiming the absence), responding to the question (claiming the presence), and interrogating the question. Chapters 5 and 6 will further problematize the Palestinian Gandhi question, and the discourse that produces it, by examining the discursive layers and articulations of Palestinian resistance encountered in my ethnographic fieldwork and research in terms of two alternative discourses of resistance what I refer to as discourses of political economy of resistance and transnational solidarities and resistance. The research question How do Palestinians narrate or represent nonviolent resistance in discourses on resistance that problematize and counter the hegemony of the Palestinian Gandhi discourse? reflects an attempt to get at the issue of political subjectivity through examining narrations of nonviolent resistance as an example of what Foucault called subjugated knowledges. These chapters will also address most directly the Palestinian context(s) of resistance, examining the expressions of power as well as resistance as expressions of political subjectivity in the late-modern context of settler colonialism, military occupation, and international/ cosmopolitan interventionism. These chapters will examine narrations of nonviolent resistance, or the discursive articulation of 10

21 nonviolent resistance, to get at the issue of Palestinian political subjectivity, which problematizes the Palestinian Gandhi discourse, and signals alternative worlding practices that themselves resist and destabilize (ontologically) the discursive fixity of hegemonic representations of Palestinians. In both of these chapters I draw from a mix of textual as well as fieldwork research to identify the contours of these counter-discourses of resistance. Chapter 5 will work to uncover subjugated knowledge as a counter to the discursive hegemony of colonial representations of Palestinian political subjectivity by providing an interrogation of the means and ends of development (and peacebuilding) as constituted by (neo)liberalism, and argue for an alternative understanding of development as resistance (or alternative narrative of resistance), especially in the context of settler-colonialism. I refer to this as a discourse on political economies of resistance. Having critically examined the dominant categories of resistance (particularly nonviolence) in chapter 4, this chapter provides an alternative re-narration of the possibilities of development as a set of practices that open up spaces of resistance to neoliberal political, economic, and ecological orderings of life in late colonial modernity (i.e. the state and global business), exploring the audibility/articulation and visibility/performance of political economies of resistance in Palestine. This can be heard in the narration of small-scale farmers as a critical front in Palestinians struggle for freedom, presenting alternative development models based on economies of resistance and steadfastness. It can be seen in the efforts of Palestinian social solidarities that work to link popular, grassroots work and the struggle to defend land underscoring the central role that land plays in settlercolonial struggles efforts that attempt to defend political, social and economic rights and reinforce international solidarity with their struggles. Here I will also introduce a reframing or renarrating of the context of Palestinian resistance in global terms, with its accompanying 11

22 discussion of global neoliberal trends and transnational networks, relocating Palestinian resistance away from a rigid focus on Israel s military occupation and toward a wider struggle against those neoliberal trends that accompany state-building. Chapter 6 continues the conversation on transnational solidarities, and its role in articulating another discourse on resistance that challenges that Palestinian Gandhi discourse, beginning with a reflection on James Baldwin s 1966 essay A Report from Occupied Territory. Though written fifty years ago, Baldwin s observations continue to resonate with the experiences of marginalized and dispossessed communities today, indicating historical trends across geographical experiences impacted by the legacy of colonialism. A growing theme in development, peacebuilding, and global politics relates to a kind of boundary crossing that sees academics and activists drawing linkages across spatial and temporal divides. Whether it is the construction of walls, militarization of borders, the confiscation of land, or the brutalization and incarceration of bodies, activists and academics are identifying commonalities among the experiences of marginalized and dispossessed communities today, indicating historical trends across geographical experiences. The situation in Palestine-Israel has taken an increasingly central role in mobilizing transnational solidarities that cross such boundaries. I refer to this as a discourse on transnational solidarities and resistance. By examining James Baldwin s analysis of Harlem s occupation and its contemporary relevance not only for the political subjectivity of African Americans but for Palestinians living under military occupation as well as drawing from a range of voices such as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Achille Mbembe, Toni Morrison, and Laleh Khalili this chapter will explore the shared experiences of racism, settler colonialism, military occupation and dispossession that separate and divide and the possibilities for transnational solidarities that cross boundaries (boundaries found both within and between states) 12

23 and defy those separations seen for example with protesters in Los Angeles demanding human rights for Latin American migrants and Palestinians, and in the #BlackPalestinianSolidarity movement reminding us to constantly revisit, reshape and rethink the ways we inhabit a world shaped by colonial history. Having discussed alternative discourses of resistance that challenge the hegemony of the Palestinian Gandhi discourse, chapter 7 will continue the conversation by offering a reflection on the implications of my research for political and peacebuilding theory implications for narrating political subjectivity and resistance in the context of late modernity, and in particular the settler-colonial context within which Palestinian resistance is narrated. This theory-building chapter will do this by further interrogating how violence and nonviolence are (co-)constituted in the liberal peace tradition, and its implication for how resistance shows up in political and peacebuilding discourses. It explores the impact of the liberal peace tradition by examining a growing conversation that interrogates the elements and categories of liberal modernist discourse in International Relations, including binary distinctions such as religious/ secular as well as violence/ nonviolence. Of particular concern in that conversation are issues of peace, violence, and the state. Political violence persists despite the claims of secular modernity. Against this are claims that political violence is only exacerbated by the persistence of the claims of secular modernity to be able to eliminate violence. This chapter will examine these claims through an exploration of the themes of violence, religion, and the state, advancing a critique of liberalism s tendency to discriminate against certain forms of political violence only to authorize others. Here there appears to be similarities in terms of how the religious/ secular are co-constituted and how violence/ non-violence are co-constituted. The implications of this for my research relate to its exploration of the discursive construction and obfuscation of Palestinian political subjectivity at 13

24 work in representations of violence and nonviolence in Palestine not only in terms of how certain forms of resistance are identified while other forms are obscured, but also that the category of violence itself displays instabilities that allow it to be discursively fixed to the colonial or pre-political subject. It signals an attempt to provincialize IR and peacebuilding, a growing theme found in conversations exploring the possibilities of the postliberal and postsecular. This chapter will engage this conversation and offer further interrogations of the religious/ secular distinction, for example in the categorizations of violence and nonviolence as well as the role of the mind/ body distinction and its impact on the categories of critique and resistance that obscure forms of embodied political agency. Finally, chapter 8 will conclude my discussion on the implications of my dissertation for theory (-building) in IR and peacebuilding as well as methodological implications for social science research agendas. The unique approach of this research frames the study of resistance with a focus on the impacts of identities, culture, and individual and collective behavior on understandings (and categories) of nonviolence and civil resistance. Problematizing the Palestinian Gandhi question, and the discourse that produces it, by hearing from Palestinians, opens up space for interrogating and tracing the colonial legacies of binaries such as violence/ nonviolence in talking about resistance. In other words, framed in the context of International Relations and Peacebuilding theory and practice, this dissertation gives greater attention to the constitutive role of marginalized people in the production of concepts and practices of resistance arguing that this could help us identify overlooked and seemingly everyday practices that have implications for peacebuilding policy and practice. In particular, this dissertation provides new knowledge on the state of, and discourse articulating, nonviolent resistance in Palestine, identifying it as an area still in need of further exploration. It contributes to the field by 14

25 uncovering local categories of civil resistance and broadening the understanding of nonviolence in regions of conflict. It provides a critical reflection on the limits and constraints as well as possibilities presented by the assumptions embedded in the notions of the peace we seek to build. It is a project that has worked to recognize how those (unreflective) assumptions present constraints or even work against the resolution of violent conflict. This emphasis on reflective practice is a recognition that our classifications of violence and nonviolence are not made outside of a discourse that at the same time authorizes certain kinds of violence while also de-authorizing certain kinds of nonviolence. This research also contributes to the critical turn in peacebuilding that gives attention to history, politics, and power in reflective peacebuilding practice. The instabilities explored in this research open productive lines of inquiry into possible forms of engagement in conflict situations that embrace the inherently contingent and fluid identities of the social fabric. In my conclusion I will return to what is essentially a methodological point concluding that unsettling rigid distinctions not only opens productive lines of inquiry into possible discursive fields that embrace the inherently contingent and fluid identities of the social fabric, but it also begins to recognize the locations from which these discourses are produced speaking again to the articulation of discourse, the production of knowledge and the relationship both have with power. In other words, I am identifying a methodological distinction between 1) going to Palestine looking to find social and political expressions of nonviolence to determine if Palestinians fit the category and 2) seeing and hearing what Palestinians are already doing, with a view toward problematization and subjugated knowledges that already assumes their constitutive role in constructing and articulating nonviolence. And I am making a methodological claim that if you hold to the former you will be constrained in your ability to see 15

26 the latter. I argue that this holds interesting possibilities in terms of discovering new ways to talk about history, change, and resistance, and imagining alternative worlding practices. 16

27 CHAPTER 2 THEORY(-BUILDING) This chapter will explore the theoretical thrust of this dissertation. First it will discuss and explain my approach to discourse theory, exploring the concept of discourse, discursive practice, and its historical-material aspects. Next it will discuss the various theoretical post -ings I am exploring: post-structural/ secular/ liberal/ colonial. In particular it will flesh out the key concepts that fieldwork data will be organized around, i.e. the narrative or story that the fieldwork and research tells. Those key concepts include: political subjectivity, power, and resistance. And while this will be discussed further in chapter 4, initial attention will be given to the concepts of violence and nonviolence. Discourse, Discourse Theory, and Discursive Practice (and Its Historical-Material Aspects) This research is guided by an understanding of discourse theory that sees every object constituted as an object of discourse, all identities as relational, and any order as an expression of a certain configuration of power relations (Laclau & Mouffe 2001, 106-7). It looks to investigate the way in which social practices articulate and contest the discourses that constitute social reality, practices possible because systems of meaning are contingent and can never completely exhaust a field of meaning (Howarth et al 2000, 3). Faced with post-structuralism s production of the notion of undecidability, Laclau and Mouffe argue that hegemony becomes a theory of the decision taken in undecidable terrain (2001, xi), a logic of articulation and contingency that understands any order as an expression of a certain configuration of power relations political identities not pre-given but constituted and reconstituted in the public sphere that can be challenged if one accepts the ineradicability 17

28 of antagonism (xvii). In this manner, they claim the openness and indeterminacy of the social, which gives a primary founding character to negativity and antagonism, and assures the existence of articulatory and hegemonic practices (145) practices that will provide us with an anchorage from which contemporary social struggles are thinkable in their specificity (3). In an articulated discursive totality, where every element occupies a differential position in our terminology, where every element has been reduced to a moment of that totality all identity is relational and all relations have a necessary character (106). Discourse theory puts forward a conceptual framework built around the primacy of political concepts and logics such as hegemony, antagonism, and dislocation (Howarth et al 2000, 6). And discourse analysis involves practices analyzing empirical raw materials and information as discursive forms, treating a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic data speeches, reports, manifestos, historical events, interviews, policies, ideas, even organizations and institutions as texts or writing. In other words empirical data are viewed as sets of signifying practices that constitute a discourse and its reality, thus providing the conditions which enable subjects to experience the world of objects, words and practices (4). According to Howarth et al (2000), the discursive is defined as a theoretical horizon within which the being of an object is constituted indicating that all objects are objects of discourse and arguing that we are always internal to a world of signifying practices and objects (3). Discourse or discourses refer to systems of meaningful practices that form the identities of subjects and objects, and as concrete systems of social relations and practices that are intrinsically political, as their formation is an act of radical institution, which involves the construction of antagonisms and the drawing of political frontiers between insiders and outsiders (4) Importantly, this always involves the exercise of power, as their constitution 18

29 involves the exclusion of certain possibilities and a consequent structuring of the relations between different social agents, and they are always contingent and historical constructions, which are always vulnerable to those political forces excluded in their production, as well as the dislocatory effects of events beyond their control (4). This research also draws from an understanding of discursive practices as socially meaningful speech acts, in which, according to Adler and Pouliot, saying is doing (2011, 14). They explain, Although practices still rely on knowledge and embody material objects, in a discursive strong sense, the competence of routinely doing something socially meaningful often relies on discourse. It is thus relevant to conceive of discourse as practice and to understand practice as discourse (14). This attention to practice is significant for this research. As Adler and Pouliot point out, a focus on practices are important because of the way they draw our attention to the things we might otherwise overlook, gloss over, ignore, forget, or dismiss because they are take as given, normal, natural, ordinary, unimportant, uninteresting, stupid. This is not unrelated to a theory of history that says this stupid stuff actually does matter. Michel Foucault, among others revisited world politics as a set of textual practices. One of the key insights brought to IR by poststructuralism is precisely that the complex pictures of world politics is made up of a myriad of everyday practices that too often go overlooked in scholarly research (Adler and Pouliot 2011, 3). The concept of discourse is central to this sort of poststructuralist-practice approach because, as Hansen (2011) describes, practice cannot be thought outside of discourse (292). Hansen explains: Foucault held that one should see discourse itself as a practice that produces a set of linguistic structures (AofK 1972, 46). Such discursive structures are necessary for our 19

30 ability to speak of this or that object, to name, analyze, classify, and explain what happens in the social and material world (ibid). Because practices systematically form the objects of which they speak, they are not solely linguistic, but constitute materiality as well (ibid, 49). (292) Hansen goes on to underscore Laclau and Mouffe s point about the materiality of discourse and discursive practices and structures as well as Foucault s point about the instability of those structures: Structures need to be (re)produced through discursive and non-discursive practice and there is always a singular, unique quality that sets a given practice performance aside (AofK 1972, 28). Hansen identifies one instability in the relationship between general and specific practices, that specific practices are always performed in relation to a general practice that is, they appeal to, or draw upon, given structures of meaning. Specific practices are performed as exemplars of a general practice, which means that they are measured against the socially constituted understanding of what a general practice implies. We might say that the general practice has an epistemic superiority as it is that which the specific practice is performed in reference to. General practices epistemic superiority also imply that they are larger than any specific practice or, put differently: a specific practice can never exhaust a general one. (293) This claim becomes particularly relevant as we begin to interrogate, or problematize, the epistemic superiority of apparently general practices. In other words, while this research relies heavily on these post-structural articulations, it goes beyond them to claim that the general always comes from some time and some place, i.e. it has its own particularity and its own genealogy that relativizes its epistemic superiority an epistemic privileging I call into question by interrogating the totalization of a general category of nonviolent resistance. 10 This sort of epistemic privileging, I argue, impacts what we see and do not see in Palestine in terms of nonviolence and resistance. The theoretical and methodological purchase of a discourse analysis approach is in the relativizing and destabilizing of general, hegemonic orders. For this 10 For more on discourse theory and analysis, see Campbell (1992, 1998), Hansen (2006), Howarth (2000), Howarth, Norval, and Stavrakakis (2000), Milliken (1999), Laclau and Mouffe (2001), Foucault (1985), Derrida (1981). 20

31 dissertation in particular, it aids in the recognition that there is a dominant discourse this Palestinian Gandhi discourse that plays a particular social and political function, which then opens up the possibility of seeing and hearing alternative discourses of resistance, not least from Palestinians themselves. The claim in this research that there is always some sort of epistemic superiority at play relates critically to the accompanying claim that this then results in, what Gayatri Spivak refers to as, a sort of epistemic violence that not only renders invisible or inaudible but creates an erasure and an antagonistic othering, which leads to the postcolonial critique that guides this research. Postcolonial Critiques This research is also guided by postcolonial theory, not least in how postcolonialism acknowledges the persistence of colonial forms of power in world politics, expressed in hierarchical binaries. 11 For example, Chowdhry and Nair (2004) argue that mainstream IR privileges hierarchy, rationality, and a Eurocentric worldview in its understanding of power, failing to systematically address the intersectionality of race, class, and gender (and I would add religion to this alterity trinity). Here the term postcolonial does not indicate a historical stage (at the end of, or after colonialism), but rather reflects the continuity and persistence of colonizing practices that present limits and possibilities in the present historical moment. This is also how Seth (2011) talks about the post in postcolonialism. It is not a periodization that neatly brackets the era of colonialism as part of the past, but rather signifies the claim that 11 This sort of interrogation is not an uncommon line of inquiry in postcolonial studies, for example see Asad (2003), Bhabha (2004), Chatterjee (2010), Fanon (1963), Hall (2007), Mitchell (1991), Morrison (1992), Said (1978, 1981, 1993), Spivak (1988). For explorations of postcolonial theory in the IR literature, see Chowdhry and Nair (2004), Darby (2004), Inayatullah and Blaney (2004), Chowdhry (2007), Agathangelou and Ling (2009), Jabri (2012), Muppidi (2012), Shilliam (2011), Seth (2011, 2012), and Vasilaki (2012). 21