Critical geopolitics of Palestinian diasporas' autobiographical practice

Abstract

This study examines the interplay between diasporic subjectivities and imaginative geographies through diasporic autobiographical practices. It is based on the work of Mourid Barghouti, chronicling his two homecoming experiences. The argument is advanced that the imaginative geographies that diasporas construct, and in which they live, are multi‐layered and embodied. Drawing on the discursive tradition of critical geopolitics, the study shows that imaginative geographies can be reconstructed through vignettes from diasporic autobiographies. In this study, the focus is on Barghouti's different encounters during his homecoming experiences and how they gave rise to different imaginative geographies. The study contributes to existing political geography literature by highlighting the value of autobiography as a geopolitical genre.

Qualitative research methods I: Emotionally engaged approaches to working with vulnerable participants

“…These methods tend to take an holistic approach, often incorporating a degree of participation, decentring the researcher, taking into account the emotional, psychological, and physical experience represented ‘in the survivor’s whole sense of being’ (Collings et al, 2021: 25; see also Federman et al, 2016). There is a focus on listening, metaphors and dreams, utilising imagination in creative processes, allowing for painful experience to be represented and expressed through alternative vocabularies and material outputs that expand debates of what is ‘valid’ knowledge (Awan and Musmar, 2021; Baker et al, 2020; Hui 2020; McKittrick, 2021; Motsa and Morojele, 2017; Watson, 2021).…”

“…To embed reflexivity within emotionally engaged research still requires recognition of the ‘social and cultural scaffolding’ within which subjectivities are embedded (Akehurst and Scott, 2021: 12). As Hui (2020: 760) contends, geographers need to ensure critical reflexivity is placed within the context of ‘the suffering, contradictions and ironies of human lives’.…”

The absent presence of Paul Robeson in Wales: Appropriation and philosophical disconnects in the memorial landscape

“…Biography intersects with geography in the landscape through various hauntings by engaging with those ghosts either in their own memory work (i.e., the autobiographical, Ferretti, 2020; Gibson‐Graham, 2020; Hui, 2020) or in their biographically based, yet nevertheless haunted memorial landscapes. In Wylie’s work on the absent presence of memorial benches, he states that “it is the very materiality of memory – its presence, tangibility and there‐ness – that remains a touchstone, even if the matter in question is tarnished, disordered, forgotten, hidden or irreversibly decaying” (2009, p. 279).…”