Unchilding by Domicidal Assault: Narrating Experiences of Home during the Second Intifada
Keyword:
Unchilding
children
oral history
home
Second Intifada
narration
memory
trauma
Abstract:
Trauma resulting from Israeli violence is embedded in the life stories narrated by Palestinians. Oral histories recorded with Palestinians who grew up during the Second Intifada reveal that the home is a central and critical location for Palestinians to trace their memories of war. It is in the intimate spaces of the home that such trauma is exposed. Though rarely addressed in mainstream news and academic publications, the Palestinian home is never immune from violence related to the larger armed conflict, and this has a particularly harmful impact on home’s youngest inhabitants. Israeli attacks on the home are part of a larger process of unchilding, that is, Israel’s use of Palestinian children as political capital.
Author biography:
Heidi Morrison is associate professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse and senior visiting research fellow at Tampere University’s Center for Excellence in the History of Experience. This article is the result of support from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), the Fulbright Scholar Program, the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies, and Tampere University’s Center of Excellence in the History of Experiences. The article received critical feedback from Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies (NDPS) 2019 workshop, Penny Mitchell, Gerry Iguchi, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Alex Winder, and anonymous outside reviewers.
