Abstract
Taking Al-Harah Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Sisters as its point of departure, this chapter broadens the analytical framework by reflecting on feminist contributions to counterpublic formation in Palestine. Challenging the patriarchal roles that Palestinian society assigns to women, feminist theatre in Palestine allows us to see abject counterpublics as polyvalent social formations. Moreover, this chapter employs a ‘border thinking’ approach to engage with three different discursive and representational elements featured in Shakespeare’s Sisters: the representations of women in the Palestinian nationalist discourse; the homeplace as a counter-space where Israeli control and Palestinian patriarchal norms are challenged and disordered; and the play’s invocation of women’s liberation through discourses that lie outside the mainstream agenda of international development and human rights.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is derived in part from an article published in Studies in Theatre and Performance. See: Gabriel Varghese, ‘A Stage of One’s Own: Gendered Spaces in Palestinian Performance,’ Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 37, no. 3, 2017, pp. 301–15.
- 2.
Raeda Ghazaleh, interview with the author, May 19, 2014.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Hanin Tarabay, interview with the author, October 26, 2014.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Raeda Ghazaleh, interview with the author, June 12, 2014.
- 10.
In Amman, the company performed at the National Centre for Culture and Arts. The West Bank tour covered Ramallah , Hebron, Jenin, Bethlehem, Jericho, Nablus, the Dheisheh refugee camp, Birzeit University, and the village of Bani Nu’im. Majdal Shams is a town in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed from Syria during the War of 1967. The Edinburgh Fringe performance took place at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall. I attended the performance at Dar al-Nadwa in Bethlehem on 6 May 2014.
- 11.
Raeda Ghazaleh, interview with the author, May 19, 2014.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Raeda Ghazaleh, interview with the author, June 12, 2014.
- 16.
All quotes are from the performance.
- 17.
Raeda Ghazaleh, interview with the author, June 12, 2014.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
See, for example: Nahla Abdo, Family, Women and Social Change in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1987; Nahla Abdo, ‘Women and the Intifada: Gender, Class and National Liberation,’ Race & Class, vol. 32, no. 4, 1991, pp. 19–34; Rita Giacaman and Penny Johnson, ‘Palestinian Women: Building Barricades and Breaking Barriers,’ in Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, eds. Zachary Lochman and Joel Beinin, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989, pp. 155–69; Islah Jad, ‘From Salons to Popular Committees: Palestinian Women, 1919–1980,’ in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, eds. Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990, pp. 125–43; Philippa Strum, The Women Are Marching: The Second Sex and the Palestinian Revolution. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992; and Lisa Taraki, ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Palestinian Uprising,’ in Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, eds. Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989, pp. 171–82.
- 20.
See, for example: Sari Hanafi and Linda Tabar, ‘The Intifada and the Aid Industry: The Impact of the New Liberal Agenda on the Palestinian NGOs,’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 23, nos. 1 and 2, 2003, pp. 205–14; Sari Hanafi and Linda Tabar, ‘The New Palestinian Globalized Elite,’ Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 24, 2005, pp. 13–32; Islah Jad, ‘The NGO-isation of Arab Women’s Movements,’ IDS Bulletin, vol. 35, no. 4, 2004, pp. 34–42; Islah Jad, ‘NGOs: Between Buzzwords and Social Movements,’ Development in Practice, vol. 17, no. 4, 2007, pp. 622–29; and Islah Jad, ‘The Demobilization of the Palestinian Women’s Movement in Palestine: From Empowered Active Militants to Powerless and Stateless “Citizens”,’ The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 8, 2008, pp. 94–111.
- 21.
Kandiyoti defines ‘classic patriarchy’ as a system in which women are directly subordinated by men through the operations of the patrilocally extended family. In such families, women bargain and receive power as mothers of their sons, as mothers-in-law (over their daughters-in-law), and through power within kinship structures. She argues that the ‘clearest instance of classic patriarchy may be found in a geographical area that includes North Africa, the Muslim Middle East (including Turkey, Pakistan and Iran), and South and East Asia (specifically, India and China)’ (Kandiyoti 1988, 278).
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Varghese, G. (2020). A Stage of One’s Own. In: Palestinian Theatre in the West Bank. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30247-4_4
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