Mapping Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora: Affective Attachments and Political Spaces

This article focuses on a set of physical maps drawn by Palestinians who were living in France in summer 2012 as well as the oral interviews that accompanied the mapping exercise. Drawing on the fields of critical cartography and affect theory, it examines the different meanings of Palestine and Palestinian identity that emerge from these maps. In so doing, it highlights forms of identification that transcend the mainstream nationalist Palestinian narrative and brings to the surface forms of agency, claim making, and solidarity that elude the formal political realm. The overall goal of this article is to contribute to expanding the political vocabulary through which the Palestinian question is apprehended. The ability to think about Palestinian identity and Palestinian political claims through an expanded vocabulary that takes into account the affective realm and the realm of the ordinary is especially relevant given the current impasse of the Palestinian statehood project.