After the signing of the Oslo Accords, the 1990s saw a steady erosion of a Palestinian political project of territorial liberation and political emancipation. Radical politics and social imaginaries were replaced with a relentless integration into global neoliberalism. Simultaneously, the two-state solution was declared dead multiple times, and Palestinian calls for a one-state solution were revived. But as the region contends with a polycrisis of Israeli genocide and apartheid, capitalist erosion of the conditions of flourishing life, and an accelerating climate catastrophe, the future looks more precarious than ever, prompting a search for futures that assert the position of Palestine in relation to its regional context.Meanwhile, a rich preoccupation with alternative futurities abound: from speculative fiction and artwork, to endeavors of archiving and imagining a decolonial future beyond the violence of settler colonialism, to questions of social reproduction and embodied futurities.

Key Questions

  • How are Palestinians imagining and planning for alternative futures for Palestine? 
  • How desirable are such futures, given the fragmentation of the Palestinian people? 
  • What are the social, political, and economic formations that those futures (re)produce? 
  • How do we forge pathways for reaching the desired futures of Palestine?

Key Cases

  • Larissa Sansour’s Sci-Fi Trilogy: A Space Exodus (2008), Nation Estate (2012), and In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2015) ( via Kanopy )
  • Palestine Land Society: Reconstruction of Destroyed Villages Architectural Competition ( website )
  • One Democratic State in historic Palestine ( website ) 
  • Palestine + 100 ( book )
  • The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL) ( website )

Key Resources

  1. Farsakh, Leila. 2021. “Introduction: The Struggle for Self-Determination and the Palestinian Quest for Statehood.” In Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition, edited by Leila Farsakh, 1-25. Oakland: University of California Press. ( open-access link )
  2. Hassouna, Silvia. 2023. “Cultivating Biodiverse Futures at the (postcolonial) Botanical Garden.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. ( open-access link ) 
  3. Hawari, Yara. 2020. “Radical Futures: When Palestinians Imagine.” Al-Shabaka, March 20, 2020. ( open-access link )

بالعربية: هواري، يارا. 2020. ”مستقبل مختلف: حين يتخيل الفلسطينيون.“  الشبكة، مارس 24، 2020. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ).

  1. مرعي، فائق. 2020. ”معمار زاده الخيال: تجارب في التحرر المعماري.“ باب الواد، يونيو 07، 2020. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ). 

Further Resources

Please contact us if you would like access to any resources.

  1. Abu El-Haj, Nadia. 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ( WorldCat link )
  2. أبو ستة، سلمان. 2007. طريق العودة : دليل المدن والقرى المهجرة والحالية والأماكن المقدسة في فلسطين. لندن: هيئة أرض فلسطين. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول )

English version: Abu Sitta, Salman.2007. The Return Journey:A Guide to the Depopulated And Present Palestine Towns And Villages and Holy Sites. London: Palestine Land society.( WorldCat link )

  1. Azeb, Sophia. 2019. “Who Will We Be When We Are Free? On Palestine and Futurity.” The Funambulist Magazine 24, June 28, 2019. ( open-access link )
  2. عازم، ابتسام. 2014. سفر الاختفاء.  بيروت: منشورات الجمل. ( رابط ورلدكات )

English version: Azem, Ibtisam. 2019. The Book of Disappearance: A Novel. Translated by Sinan Antoon. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. ( WorldCat link )

  1. El-Shakry, Hoda.  (2021) “Palestine and the Aesthetics of the Future Impossible.” Interventions 23 (5): 669–90. ( link )
  2. Farsakh, Leila, ed. 2021. Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition. Oakland: University of California Press. ( open-access link )
  3. Hochberg, Gil Z. 2021. “Introduction: Archival Imagination of/for the Future.” In Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future. Durham: Duke University Press. ( open-access link )
  4. Joronen, Mikko et al. 2021. “Palestinian Futures: Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments.” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 103 (4): 277-82. ( open-access link )
  5. Krug, Aubrey S. and Omar I. Tesdell. 2020. “A Social Perennial Vision: Transdisciplinary Inquiry for the Future of Diverse, Perennial Grain Agriculture.” Plants, People, Planet 3 (4): 355–62. ( open-access link )
  6. Muller, Nat. 2021. “Lunar Dreams: Space Travel, Nostalgia, and Retrofuturism in A Space Exodus and The Lebanese Rocket Society.” Science Fiction Studies 48 (1): 124-38. ( link )
  7. Rexer, Gala. 2023. “The Materiality of Power and Bodily Matter(ing): Embodied Resistance in Palestine.” Body & Society 29 (4): 3-28. ( open-access link )
  8. Sabaiti, Nadya. 2020. “Teaching Science Fiction While Living It in Lebanon.” Society and Space, November 20, 2020. ( open-access link )
  9. Sharif, Yara. 2017. Architecture of Resistance: Cultivating Moments of Possibility within the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, London: Routledge. ( WorldCat link )
  10. Stoler, Ann L. 2022. Archiving Praxis: For Palestine and Beyond. Critical Inquiry 48 (3), 570-93. ( link ) 
  11. Tawil-Souri, Helga. 2022. “Speculation on Infrastructural Ecology: Pigeons, Gaza, and Internet Access.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 40 (6): 1064-81. ( link )

Audiovisual Material

  1. Manna, Jumana, director. Wild Relatives. Jumana Manna, 2018. 64 min. ( link )
  2. Larissa Sansour’s artwork ( website )
  3. Nasser, Arab and Tarzan Nasser, directors. 2013. Condom Lead. Made in Palestine Project, 15 mins. ( open-access film )
  4. Singapore Art Museum. “Teaching and Living Science Fiction: Lessons from the Middle East – Nadya Sbaiti.” YouTube video. July 10, 2023. ( lecture ) 
  5.  afikra. “Exploring New Horizons: A Conversation on Arabic Science Fiction | Ashraf Fagih.” YouTube video, January 25, 2023. ( video ) 
  6. The Fire These Times. “Space Travel, Nostalgia, and Retrofuturism (With Nat Muller).”February 4, 2022. ( audio recording )
  7. Countless Palestinian Futures, a project by Danah Abdulla and Sarona Abuaker. ( web )

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Image: Palestinian man with horse on the beach in Jaffa, 2023. Photograph by Majd Al-Shihabi.

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