In the series organized by Michel DeGraff entitled Language & Linguistics in Decolonization and Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, and Israel, earlier announced here:
Speaker: Leila Farsakh (UMass Boston)
Title: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Power and Limits of Language
Time: September 25, noon-2pm
Location: Room E51-095
This lecture will explore the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and unpack how Zionism was a European project of Jewish national self-determination that could not escape colonial mechanisms of self-actualization in Palestine and what became Israel. I will explore how power, imperial dynamics and forces of resistance shaped the way language has been used to understand Jewish and Palestinian nationalism in Israel/Palestine as well as to extol, sanitize, and/or reject the colonial foundation of Zionism.