The researchers, editor and journalist whose texts are explored below shared narratives without analysis and refrained from drawing conclusions about the stories their participants told. This part argues that, as in some of the literature explored in part one, this approach was taken in order to privilege the agency of Palestinians who shared their stories, rather than potentially objectifying them by acting as the arbiters on the value of what has been shared (see Malek and Hoke, 2014; Matar, 2011; Ghandour, 2010).
The works explored in this section contextualise the narratives with introductions that highlight the hardships and obstacles presented by the occupation and then let the narratives ‘speak for themselves’. In taking
this approach the authors of these texts avoid some of the critiques of the ways in which activists use testimony that can result in local people losing control over their stories in international campaigns (Keck and Sikkink, 1998, cited in Gready, 2008). However, in letting the narratives speak for themselves they do not offer their readers insights that would help them to appreciate the complexity and significance of the specific narratives. This part begins by exploring the work of the academic Dina Matar (2011) who critically engages with the complexity of narratives in the prologue of her text and then presents her participants’ narratives without analysis or conclusion in order to avoid imposing her interpretations on her readers. It then explores the work of the academic Zeina Ghandour (2010) who also lets Palestinian narratives speak for themselves, before examining a text by the editor Cate Malek and human rights journalist Mateo Hoke (2014) who also present Palestinian narratives without analysis or conclusions.
In her work Matar (2011, xi) seeks ‘to tell a personal history of the Palestinians, in their own words’ in order to recognise their agency as ‘actors’ instead of presenting them as victims. While Matar presents narratives to the reader without analyses or conclusions, she critically engages with the nature of narratives in the prologue to her text, helpfully recognising that they are situated and partial and that the narratives she shares need to be read with awareness of the context of the telling and narrating. Like the texts in the final part of this chapter, Matar’s text is reflexive, recognising that ‘telling and remembering are continuous processes of provisional and partial reconstruction of personal and
collective history that struggle with and against a still-contested present,’ (p.2).
Matar treats her narratives as ‘remembered personal narratives that … provide a dense and intimate ethnographic story of what it means to be Palestinian in the twenty-first century,’ (p.5). While she
acknowledges that ‘remembered experiences and truth do not necessarily overlap,’ (p.6) she tries to establish validity by attempting to corroborate the statements and details, such as dates and place names, in her
participants’ narratives with other documents and recorded histories. The richness of Matar’s contextualising of the narratives in her text is valuable and I draw on her work as I seek to contextualise the narratives I include in this thesis. She argues that her narratives are ‘fragmented
compositions of experience and existence, self-consciously staged testimonials that occasionally contain, along with the individual’s
experience, the assertiveness and stridency of the collective Palestinian nationalist stance and rhetoric,’ (p.7). She is aware that in some of the stories shared by her participants there is also silencing about events or Palestinian inaction, failures or violence that the participants felt ashamed of or guilty about. These are important points that are pertinent for my research as the participants revealed that there were things they felt unable to say in a recorded interview and sometimes also silenced each other. I explore this further both in part three and in chapter two, Listening to Palestinian Lives: Methodological and Political Issues.
Matar raises some of the themes in her narratives before she presents them, but it is not clear what each of the narratives was in
response to, which means the reader cannot see how Matar’s interests and questions have helped to shape the particular narratives she elicited. Matar decided not to discuss the narratives after she shared them and she chose to conclude the book with an epilogue that brought the history up to date, rather than to present a ‘discursive conclusion,’ so as not to achieve closure or impose her interpretation of the narratives on her readers (p.17). However, in taking this approach she denies her readers the advantage of her knowledge of both her participants and the material they shared. Furthermore, she leaves it to her readers to interrogate the narratives and draw their own conclusions about their significance, when she may be better placed to do this or to at least raise questions for her readers to think about. Given how critically-engaged and insightful Matar’s introduction is, her analysis of the narratives she shares would have been invaluable. While, therefore, Matar is clearly insightful about epistemology, the absence of those insights in the analytic sections arguably limits the utility of the accounts she shares. There has been much debate in feminist circles about the notion of ‘giving voice’ and ‘speaking from experience’. Much of this debate makes clear that neither is possible in pure, unmediated ways. The absence of an analytic voice thus leaves it unclear how Matar’s participants’ accounts are to be understood.
In her text on domination in Mandate Palestine, Zeina Ghandour (2010) includes oral testimonies ‘without interpretive exegesis or analytic interpellation – from colonized peoples, thereby allowing previously
silenced human subjects to speak for and of themselves’ (Comaroff, 2010, ix-x). Ghandour (2010, p.5) argues that she made the decision to avoid interpreting, explaining or presenting analytic commentary on the ‘deeply
moving material from native sources’ that she came across in an effort to avoid detracting from the narratives and to prevent them from losing their subtlety.
Similarly, Malek and Hoke (2014) present narratives from a wide variety of Palestinians with no analysis or conclusions in keeping with their genre of human rights journalism. They argued that they hoped the
narratives ‘provide readers with a more nuanced and humanized
understanding of life on the ground in Palestine, as well as inspiration to take a more active interest in peace – and the role of foreign influence – in the region.’ They said they searched for stories that might surprise them in order to surprise their readers, irrespective of how limited or extensive the reader’s knowledge of the situation in Palestine is. They asserted that their text offers insights into ‘the experience of growing up and making a life under military occupation’ (p.17). Like Matar and Ghandour (2010), they do not seek to influence the ways in which the narratives they present are read.
The discussion above has shown that some scholars and human rights journalists contextualise and then share Palestinian narratives, but refrain from analysing them and drawing conclusions in order to highlight the agency of their participants. In taking this approach they avoid the charge of manipulating the data to further their political agendas or of presenting their work in ways that mean participants feel they have lost control over their narratives (see Keck and Sikkink, 1998, cited in Gready, 2008). However, ‘narratives don’t speak for themselves, offering a window into an “essential self.”’ (Riessman, 2008, p.3). Rather, as Catherine
Kohler Riessman (2008) argues, the careful interpretation that narrative analysis provides is required for an appreciation of their complexity. In presenting narratives as evidence without analysis, Matar (2011), Ghandour (2010) and Malek and Hoke (2014), like many of the
researchers and activists in part one, do not guide the reader through the narratives or offer insights and analyses to help them make sense of the accounts and their significance. Consequently, their readers do not get a full appreciation of the richness and complexity of the narratives shared. The next section examines an approach to Palestinian narratives that avoids the pitfalls highlighted in parts one and two by exploring the complexity of narratives and the numerous factors that affect how they should be read.