‘From Standing Rock to Palestine We are United’: diaspora politics, decolonization and the intersectionality of struggles

Ruba Salih*, Elena Zambelli, Lynn Welchman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article analyses a form of diasporic activism that breaks the seeming duality between diasporic imaginaries and colonial realities, diasporas and refugees. By focusing on the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) it analyses a diasporic standpoint which is not confined to identity politics, nor to the Palestinian nationalist struggle of territorial liberation, but conceives of Palestine as one of the most visible, present-day materializations of Western colonial modernity. The condition of this diasporic political subjectivity lies in what we call here an “intersectional ‘space of appearance’”: an affective multi-sited political space that exposes and makes visible the continuum of systems of subjugation and expropriation across liberal democracies and settler-colonial regimes, and the whiteness of mainstream activist spaces. This space encompasses key sites of Black, Indigenous, Arab and Muslim mobilization: from Ferguson to Standing Rock, from the Mexico-US border to Palestine and Palestinian camps, from Tunis to Paris.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1135-1153
Number of pages19
JournalEthnic and Racial Studies
Volume44
Issue number7
Early online date7 Jul 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • race
  • Anti-Colonialism
  • intersectionality
  • diaspora
  • Palestinian youth
  • decolonization

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