‘From Standing Rock to Palestine We are United’: diaspora politics, decolonisation and the intersectionality of struggles

Salih, Ruba; Zambelli, Elena; Welchman, Lynn

Abstract

This article analyses a form of diasporic activism that breaks the seeming duality between diasporic imaginaries and colonial realities, diasporas and refugees. By focusing on the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) it analyses a diasporic standpoint which is not confined to identity politics, nor to the Palestinian nationalist struggle of territorial liberation, but conceives of Palestine as one of the most visible, present-day materialisations of Western colonial modernity. The condition of this diasporic political subjectivity lies in what we call here an “intersectional ‘space of appearance’”: an affective multi-sited political space that exposes and makes visible the continuum of systems of subjugation and expropriation across liberal democracies and settler-colonial regimes, and the whiteness of mainstream activist spaces. This space encompasses key sites of Black, Indigenous, Arab and Muslim mobilization: from Ferguson to Standing Rock, from the Mexico-US border to Palestine and Palestinian camps, from Tunis to Paris.

Citation

Salih, R., Zambelli, E., & Welchman, L. (2021). ‘From Standing Rock to Palestine We are United’: diaspora politics, decolonisation and the intersectionality of struggles. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(7), 1135-1153. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1779948

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 22, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 7, 2020
• Publication Date: May 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: May 26, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: May 26, 2020
• Journal: Ethnic and Racial Studies
• Print ISSN: 0141-9870
• Electronic ISSN: 1466-4356
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 44
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 1135-1153
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1779948
• Keywords: Diaspora, Palestinian youth, decolonization, space of appearance, anti-colonialism, intersectionality