Writing/righting Palestine studies: settler colonialism, indigenous sovereignty and resisting the ghost(s) of history

Abstract

This essay explores the limitations of a settler colonial analysis in writing Palestinian history. While the past decade has witnessed a plethora of interventions exploring this very concept, this essay attempts to layout the evolution of the concept within the literature on Palestine. In doing so, the utility of a settler-colonial analysis will become clearer and more substantially grounded in the discursive differences between literatures on Palestine and literatures on Zionism. This distinction between literature on Palestine and literature on Zionism is an important line to draw in the midst of a violent matrix that includes the on-going Zionist settler colonial occupation of Palestine. The essay suggests that Palestine studies should refer to Indigenous studies. It argues that while the settler-colonial analysis is fitting for the study of Zionism as an ideology and its history, frameworks that grew out of Indigenous studies are a more fitting political and academic home for the study of Palestinian history