Subject, Subjugation, and Subjectivity

This paper analyzes the ways in which complicity and dissent feed and subvert one another, or the ways in which the subjugated self becomes a political subject. The formative event of Palestinian collective identity is the loss of home and homeland in the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948. “The Catastrophe” divided the Palestinian community to two: Those who remained within the borders of the Israeli state and became Israeli citizens, and the Palestinian refugees, who came to establish the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and led an armed struggle. While examining the two narratives, I also explore two communal modes of resistance: Palestinians who struggled with a psychology of defeat, and came to challenge the authority of the state; and PLO supporters who began as members of a militant liberation movement, and ended up signing the Oslo Accords and contributing to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In short, complicity brought with it resistance, and resistance ended in complicity. If resistance ends in complicity, and complicity could turn into resistance, then the Palestinian is the example for where this interplay—between subjectivity and subjugation—takes place