By Dr Samar Maqusi
Palestine refugee camps and exceptionality have been cojoined in theoretical and scholarly analysis ad nauseam. This is in many ways due to their resilience and resistance against spatial integration over 77 years of forced protracted displacement across the Near East, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza. Many scholars have been rushing to explain the refugee camp in Agambian terms of a ‘state of exception’ housing a biopolitical condition of bare life controlled by a sovereign power—homo sacers (Hanafi & Long, 2010; Diken, 2004;Owens, 2009; Abushama, 2021; Lechte & Newman, 2013). Whether confirming or rebutting Agamben’s philosophical claims, they remain fixed theoretical interpretations devoid of the actual lived experience of those inhabiting refugee camps. What is it that makes camps exceptional? Where is the biopolitics of the camp life? And, what is fundamentally antithetical about a camp life? These questions have been occupying my research inquiries inside the Palestine camp for the past decade, and more recently, as part of my work with IGP-RELIEF inside Lebanon’s Burj el Barajneh camp.
In this animated film ‘Camp-space: The exceptional duality of the Palestine refugee camp’, the exceptional nature of the Palestine refugee camp is revealed through the foundational state of dualism the camp spaces arose from and continue to grow in relation to. It’s a violently enduring state whereby the Palestine refugee is equally committed to the camp life alongside his/her liberation from it. Indeed, a camp life of both inhabitation and return. One which is formed through a generational passing down of a Palestinian subjectivity rooted in the lived and lingering experience of violent uprooting and displacement; attachment to a landscape and way of life once deemed truly Palestinian; a past livelihood of cultivation dependent on and interconnected with the land—the actual soil they inhabited; a socialized culture of collective survival, and a psychology of an attainable right to return. The impact of this passed down subjectivity on the lived out state of dualism inside the camp is undeniable. We can say that the camp life is both in opposition and in harmony, constantly oscillating between a state of absolute agency and sudden death.
The animated film employs the Sandouk El Ajayeb (box of wonders) aesthetic mode to express the notion of duality. Sandouk El Ajayeb is an old form of storytelling in the Arab world that was popular in the early days of the Palestine refugee camps. It would tell old popular tales of heroism and might; stories of morality and with a moral. The sandouk (box) which is featured at the start of the film is a movable wooden box with three or four circular holes that look inside the box, at an image roll wrapped around a spool. As a theatrical storyteller narrates the tale, they slowly move the image roll displaying images that match the moments narrated. Kids and adults take a seat and slip their heads into the circular holes, three or four sitting next to each other. The experience of Sandouk El Ajayeb plays on two modes of dualism; First, the simultaneous experience of oral narration and imaginary tale. Second, the experience of asynchronous time, as there exists a delay between image and voiced description by the time each frame reaches the third or fourth viewer.
This film was funded by UCL RELIEF Centre. It was featured in Failed Architecture as part of a special series on Gaza, and screened in the Atlas Cinema and the Desobedoc 2024.
Dr Samar Maqusi is a Research Associate at UCL PEARL (People-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory), working in tandem with UCL’s RELIEF centre. Her work investigates modes of sociality and vitality in the camps inside a burdened Lebanon, while building localized solutions with the community to enable socialized forms of livelihood. Previously, Samar worked with UNRWA as an Architect/Physical Planner, focusing on programmes of shelter rehabilitation and camp improvement. Samar completed her PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture where she investigated the politics of space-making inside the Palestine camps.
REFERENCES
Abushama, H. (2021). On Refugee Agency, Bio-Politics, and a New World. Refuge, 37(2), 30–37. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40794
Diken, B. (2004). From refugee camps to gated communities: Biopolitics and the end of the city. Citizenship Studies, 8(1), 83–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362102042000178373
Hanafi, S., & Long, T. (2010). Governance, Governmentalities, and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Lebanon. Journal of Refugee Studies, 23(2), 134–159. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feq014
Lechte, J., & Newman, S. (2013). Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence (1st ed.). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748677726
Owens, P. (2009). Reclaiming ‘Bare Life’?: Against Agamben on Refugees. International Relations (London), 23(4), 567–582. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809350545
Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash
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