Decolonizing Truth:
Lessons from Palestine
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v38i1.159565Abstract
This essay reflects on the notions of objectivity and truth. Taking Palestine as an urgent political call and a precondition for a decolonial future, it argues that in the context of genocidal violence and the systematic distortion of reality, objectivity and truth cannot be dismissed merely as tools of oppression. Instead, approaching them as counter-narratives grounded in embodied experiences that have been violently erased by colonial apparatuses of knowledge production, this essay reclaims truth as situated and from below and as a potential vehicle of justice and epistemic resistance.References
Al-Taher, H., & Younes, A.-E. (2024). Lebensraum, geopolitics and race—Palestine as a feminist issue in German-speaking academia. Ethnography, 25(2), 142-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381231216845
Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. Verso.
Cvetkovich, A. (2012). Depression is ordinary: Public feelings and Saidiya Hartman’s lose your mother. Feminist theory, 13(2), 131-146. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700112442641
El-Kurd, M. (2025). Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal. Haymarket Books.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: An introduction. Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Vintage.
Funez-Flores, J. I. (2024). The coloniality of academic freedom and the Palestine exception. Middle East Critique, 33(3), 465-485. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2024.2375918
Halberstam, J. (2011). The queer art of failure. In The queer art of failure. Duke University Press.
Haraway, D. J. (1997). The Virtual Speculum in the New World Order. Feminist Review(55), 22-72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395786
Ivasiuc, A. (2025). Palestine as Method: A Public Anthropology against Empire. Public Anthropologist, 7(2), 345-371. https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10074
Kabel, A. (2024). Pedagogy and Epistemics of Witness: Teaching Palestine in a Time of Genocide. Social Text Online.
Kassamali, S. (2025). Palestine and Our University. Social text. https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/palestine-and-our-university/
Mahmood, S. (2009). Religious reason and secular affect: An incommensurable divide? Critical inquiry, 35(4), 836-862.
Mohamed, K. (2024). Epistemic Debilitation and the Erasure of Genocide. Social text. https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/epistemic-debilitation-and-the-erasure-of-genocide/
Munoz, J. E. (2006). Feeling brown, feeling down: Latina affect, the performativity of race, and the depressive
position. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 31(3), 675-688. https://doi.org/10.1086/499080
Pervez, A. (2025). Witnessing silence: the Palestinian genocide, institutional complicity, and the politics of knowledge. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2025.2513637
Stoler, A. L. (2016). Duress: Imperial durabilities in our times. Duke University Press.
Wind, M. (2024). Towers of ivory and steel: How Israeli universities deny Palestinian freedom. Verso books.
Zisakou, S., Ballin, S., & Manganini, I. (2025). You cannot pinkwash genocide: Why the (queer) refugee law studies community should be talking about Palestine–and why it is not. Feministiqa, (7-8). 256
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Sophia Zisakou
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Publications in Women, Gender and Research are licensed under Creative Commons License: CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
