Humorous Art and Reconfiguring Palestinian Discourse

The present study focuses on the role of humor in art within the discourse of resistance that has proliferated in Palestine since the turn of this century. This project explores through an anthropological lens, the social-political and cultural dynamics behind these forms of resistance in Palestine, and their underlying motives, by analyzing selected key examples of humorous art. To serve this orientation, this project will examine the following key research questions: How is humorous popular art used as a method of resistance in everyday life to shape Palestinian discourses by creating and facilitating individuals agency to move from the private to the public sphere? How do these methods shape the different meanings of power relations within national and transnational discourses? This project proposes that humor in Palestine is more prominent than political manifestos with regard to individual s agency. In addition, humor has the ability to achieve important political aims such as creating social solidarity and it is uniquely effective in bringing relief to an oppressed population. One reason behind that is its political accessibility to all individuals regardless of their gender, age, political and religious affiliation, and their economic and social background. Different types of popular art are manifested through graffiti art, songs, films, and other visual and literary forms. They have not been studied yet from the perspective of their combination with humour within the Palestinian context and are still missing from most social science perspectives on Palestine. This project will fill that gap. It aims to explore the social, political and economic dynamics behind these resistance techniques in Palestine. This project is based and builds on the hypothesis that humor and jokes play a vital role that are embedded in different dimensions in the Palestinian context as several scholars confirm. Focusing on selected spheres of popular art, mainly those connected to "humour in Palestine", can reveal and explain how individuals have created a link from personal grievances to the communal interactive domain by associating their private circle with wider social networks (national and international). The significance of this study lies in the fact that humor in Palestinian art so far had been largely ignored by research. Although there is a rich field of inquiry regarding art and humor, not much has been written about it in the Palestinian context. This research will enrich the academic knowledge regarding the notions of humor and art from an anthropological perspective in Palestine, and how it can be understood through a conceptual frame of social suffering. The fieldwork will focus on two cities, i.e. Nablus and Ramallah. Pioneer institutions that offer a space where art is produced will be focused on. These institutions will be the gateway to the field, the artists and their wider social networks. Through this avenue the project will gather data through narrative interviews on current and historical experiences and participant observation, supplemented by web- based inquiry.

For decades Palestinians have been living under Israeli settler colonialism that deprived them of their basic humanitarian rights. In spite of the stagnation in most areas to change these political and military conditions, Palestinian society has begun to develop alternative means of counter-culture.This project focused on the role of humor in art within the discourse of resistance. It explored through an anthropological lens, the social-political and cultural dynamics behind these forms of resistance in Palestine, and their underlying motives, by analyzing selected key examples of humorous art. Various publications as well workshops, conferences and lectures were organized and participated in based on the knowledge which was gathered during my fieldwork in Palestine in addition of the use of virtual fieldwork especially at the start of the project due to the Corona Pandemic. The most important impact of this project, its ability to bridge between scholars and artists from different parts of the globe by organizing various events mainly the international conference in 3-4 July 2023 "Humorous Art and the Articulation of Everyday Practices: Narratives from Palestine and Beyond", organized by Noura Kamal (Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences) & Barbara Götsch (Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna) July 2023 - Vienna https://www.oeaw.ac.at/isa/detail/event/template-event-isa-international-guest-lecture-first-name-last-name-or-type/title-of-event-3-1-3-1-1-1-1 This international conference opened up a space for dialogue between scholars and artists from Palestine and different parts of the world to share their perspectives on artwork, research, and experiences, and discuss the meaning and the role of humour and its ramifications under conditions of injustice, oppression, and resistance. In addition to that, the conference focused on humorous art as a way of resistance under conditions of political adversity, with special attention to Palestinian everydayness under Israeli settler colonialism which is seen as a lens and a tool to draw further resemblance across geographies. Those who participated or attended are academics, artists, and postgraduate students from different countries. The conference was a great success, and the discussion was very profound especially the theme brought different experiences from the world all together. In addition to that, artists shared their creativity which gave the chance for academics to engage with them in new level. The debate and dialog between scholar and academics in such interactive space reflected profoundly on how to explore the connection between various concepts in relation to humour (such as agency, coping, resistance, resilience, or narrative), and provided different themes surrounding the role of humour in people's lives, i.e., as a form of narrative expression of sense making and coming to terms with political, social and economic upheavals.