Palestinian Magical Realism

Palestinian magical realism holds entire worlds in which imagining other futures trespasses the stiff parameters of the ‘real’, which grows more brutal every day. This session will explore the agential powers of Palestinian ‘objects’ and their capacity for magical and affective acts via sentience and animism. ‘Living’ objects that respond to Palestinian will and critical times recur in Palestinian folktales. They also appear in everyday Palestinian life, such as the ‘key of return’, which holds revolutionary and magical powers.

Sanabel Abdel Rahman will delve into how looking at forms of agency outside ‘living’ spheres creates alternative realities/materialities/futures, especially as Palestinian life continues to be relegated to death spaces or is rendered non-human. How do ‘living’ objects and more-than-human creatures in Palestinian landscapes provide a non-positivist approach to recounting and archiving Palestinian histories? How does this approach offer a refreshing and dynamical engagement with Palestinian history and its unfolding realities? How do these instances communicate a refusal to engage with colonial tools of ‘informing’ history while partaking in critical and innovative practices of worldbuilding?

No registration is necessary.

About the lecturer

Sanabel Abdel Rahman is a researcher and a literary critic. She holds a Ph.D. in Arabic literature with a focus on Palestinian magical realism. She is interested in folktales, magical-realist modes, indigenous spaciotemporalities, and speculative approaches. Making literary tools accessible within academic and public spaces is a driving force in her work. In addition to her academic work, she designs and leads workshops around Arabic magical realism in film and literature, folktales, and speculative writing. Sanabel is interested in practices of liberatory and collective imagination(s), (re)connecting to the land, decolonial writing, and activating alternative realities. Her texts have appeared in e-magazines, zines, and art exhibitions.

About New Histories of Ideas

A series of lectures by Univeristy of Copenhagen, all under the theme ‘New Histories of Ideas’. The lectures will be open to the public and aim to reach an interdisciplinary audience. The lecture series is supported by HUM: Global.