Papers by Madalena Santos
This article focuses on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine, to consider the Theatre’s projec... more This article focuses on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine, to consider the Theatre’s project and performances as practices of creative resistance. It theorizes creative resistance to examine the Theatre as a mode of narrative performance against the logics and materiality of settler colonialism. In exploring this reative
project, this study conceives of narratives as sites of struggle that are significant in the contestation and transformation of dominant settler colonial myths.
Canadian Journal of Sociology, Dec 2013
This article presents a categorical framework for the interrogation of power relations in the stu... more This article presents a categorical framework for the interrogation of power relations in the study and analysis of Israeli colonialism in Palestine. Following critical anti-racist feminist approaches, I highlight the relationality between race, class, and gender constructions that are crucial to colonial rule. Extending Chandra Mohanty’s (1991) reading of Dorothy Smith’s “relations of ruling”, I outline six intersecting categories of colonial practices to examine Israel’s particular colonization forms and processes. These categories include: racial separation; citizenship and naturalization forms and processes; construction and consolidation of existing social inequalities; gender, sexuality, and sexual violence, racialized and gendered prisoners; and “unmarked” versus “marked” discourses. Understanding colonial experiences as heterogeneous and plural, I conclude by arguing for the furthering of decolonial and anti-racist feminist analyses from within specific sites of resistance.
In this essay I explore the idea of art as creative resistance against the modern-day colonizatio... more In this essay I explore the idea of art as creative resistance against the modern-day colonization and occupation of Palestine. I reflect on Achille Mbembe’s post-colonial subjectivities in “crisis”, modes of self-writing, and necropolitical models of occupation and sovereignty to suggest ways beyond negotiating impossibilities in the colonial context. I consider Mbembe’s theoretical contributions to put forward an alternative perspective that recognizes the importance of art in creating living memory, preserving historical narrative, and transforming the dominant ethno-national narrative which has purposely excluded a people from its story.
Conference Presentations by Madalena Santos
This talk presents some of the main themes from my dissertation which explores narratives of crea... more This talk presents some of the main themes from my dissertation which explores narratives of creative Palestinian resistance and solidarity in the work of Students Against Israeli Apartheid-Carleton, Rafeef Ziadah's spoken word, and the productions of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine. I focus on these creative projects as sites of struggle against Zionist myth making which offer alternative Palestinian perspectives on the settler colonial state of Israel. I begin by discussing Jon Collin's logics of settler colonialism and move on to demonstrate the ways in which the creative works I consider attempt to transform current understanding of Israel's violent discourses and practices.
Co-presented with Jeffrey Monaghan (Queen's University). Since the advent of the Global War on Te... more Co-presented with Jeffrey Monaghan (Queen's University). Since the advent of the Global War on Terror, Muslims in Canada are increasingly viewed by security agencies within a rubric of categorical suspicion. Marked by traces of risk that are central to contemporary counter-terrorism practices, Muslims are profiled and categorized as potentially dangerous populations and subjected to systems of pre-emptive security. Yet, categories tend to produce as much as locate the supposed objects of analysis. Discussing anti-terrorism efforts by Canadian authorities, we identify how processes of racialized othering result in the production of 'terror identities.' Contributing to the field of critical sociology, critical race and feminist studies, this paper discusses the case of Nawal Haj Khalil to demonstrate the production and operationalization of terror identities which mark individuals and function as mutable but powerful tools of social sorting through the creation of a racialized threat.
This paper utilizes the notion of the “colonial present” to examine Israel/Palestine through a cr... more This paper utilizes the notion of the “colonial present” to examine Israel/Palestine through a critical anti-racist feminist perspective which understands gender and race as crucial to the study of on-going colonization. It argues that while racism manifests itself differently in particular contexts the separation of each manifestation as old and new fails to recognize the simultaneity of the processes and practices of different racist formulations across multiple temporalities and spatialities.
This paper explores the use of art as a political practice that enables the formation of new ideo... more This paper explores the use of art as a political practice that enables the formation of new ideological and material spaces that challenge and resist the status quo. It further advances a much needed analysis of Israeli state measures to question the possibility of uncritical silence toward Israel.
In this paper, I reflect upon the theoretical issue of race-thinking as a political ideology as w... more In this paper, I reflect upon the theoretical issue of race-thinking as a political ideology as well as the practice and process of creating a racialized ‘other’. As part of a pre-organized panel I discussed the importance of Arendt’s claim of the right to have rights in relation to Audrey Macklin’s (2007) notions of ‘the citizen’s other’ and ‘the heft of citizenship’. Through an examination of rights discourse and practice in Occupied Palestine I argue for a greater critical examination of rights for those who are not recognized under any state and the racialized basis for their exclusion.
Guest Lectures by Madalena Santos
Book Reviews by Madalena Santos
alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 2014
This interdisciplinary study brings together approaches from political economy and social anthrop... more This interdisciplinary study brings together approaches from political economy and social anthropology to show how working class solidarity is intrinsically linked to but extends beyond the workplace. Gibbs, Leach and Yates argue that in examining solidarity more attention must be paid to the interplay between class, gender and race in relation to workers' broader community experiences and sense of security and risk as a result of labour force changes. The authors set out to demonstrate how globalization and neoliberal policies and practices have lead to structural limitations which have impeded possibilities for sustained solidarity. Through interviews with Mexican and Canadian automotive workers in the cities of Ciudad Juárez, Guelph, Stratford, Windsor and Brantford, they center their research primarily on working class women's experiences of solidarity to examine the impact of structural inequities resulting from class, gender and race divides. Their decision to focus on automotive workers in Canada and Mexico is based on what they see as the industry's continued importance as both "a symbol of the good life in North America" and "an exemplar of globalization."
Uploads
Papers by Madalena Santos
project, this study conceives of narratives as sites of struggle that are significant in the contestation and transformation of dominant settler colonial myths.
Conference Presentations by Madalena Santos
Guest Lectures by Madalena Santos
Book Reviews by Madalena Santos
project, this study conceives of narratives as sites of struggle that are significant in the contestation and transformation of dominant settler colonial myths.