Paper short abstract:

This proposal examines the question of feminism in the context of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the digital era. I argue that to understand Palestinian feminism, the history of (settler-)colonialism and neoliberalism needs to be thoroughly considered.

Paper long abstract:

In this research, I will explore the question of the mediated visuality of Palestine under the Israeli settler-colonial occupation through theories of feminism and nationalism. I will first trace the history of Palestinian women’s activism and their participation in the resistance nationalist movement. Then, I will examine visual digital media content created by Palestinian women, such as Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri’s fictional film 3000 Nights (2015). I argue that many visual digital media content, such as the film 3000 Nights, challenges the stereotypes and the binary assumption that Palestinian women being “mother of the nation” during national movements is the result of patriarchal violence; instead, it has to be understood through the history of (settler-)colonialism and posited within specific contexts. Palestinian women strive to refuse the dichotomy division that forces them to choose between being a mother/wife or a nationalist, nor do they want to fall into the binary trap of assigning them to be either the victim of patriarchal dominance or colonial violence. The goal of this research is to first investigate the debate over the potential or limitations of digital media in fostering and disseminating hegemonic ideologies, consequently reinforcing systemic power imbalance. Subsequently, this research explores how Palestinian women's content creators posit questions of sociality and collectivity in constrained contexts of dispersion, and siege, to shed light on how the logic of gendered nationalist discourses shapes Palestinian women’s sense of feminist and nationalist consciousness.