Life beyond martyrdom: the poetics of necroresistance in Palestine

In light of the ongoing intensification of the Zionist entity’s genocidal actions against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, narratives of Palestinian agency are crucial to countering reductive notions of resistance and legitimacy. Despite the all-encompassing settler colonial ‘logic’ of elimination imposed on Palestinian life, a rich and complex culture of resistance thrives in Palestine. This paper explores the practices of hunger strikes and martyrdom operations in Palestine as acts of necroresistance, which enact collective agency by weaponising the body and death. These resistance repertoires are cultivated by the ‘poetics of resistance’: the practices, poems and rituals which encompass them and work to reinscribe death with hope, liberation and political possibility, using the vocabulary of body and land. Understanding praxes of self-sacrifice as poylsemic performances demands an analysis of the interaction between those enacting them and the surrounding discourse and ‘audience’ which allow these acts to emerge and hold power. Through this complex interaction, death is no longer an inevitable end but is reclaimed into an emancipatory and transformative practice which is inextricably linked to life and the continued vitality of the liberation movement. The enduring culture of resistance in Palestine involves a stubborn refusal to accept the conditions imposed by the Zionist entity and imperialist states in their continued attempts to inscribe the land and bodies of Palestinians with violence. Throughout this analysis, the body and land are repurposed and emerge as central tenets of anti-colonial resistance. This paper expands on the framework of necroresistance to analyse the ‘poetics of resistance’ which encompass the praxes of hunger strikes and martyrdom operations, highlighting the intricacies of these practices beyond simply struggles over life and death. As explored in this analysis, the ontological struggles, contested subjectivities and ‘poetics of resistance’ 5 involved in claiming collective agency demonstrate how resistance practices elude simple binaries and characterisation. Situated within an Indigenous studies framing, Palestinian narratives of agency have been centred in order to address the intricacies of resistance practices and provide a textured analysis of their wider ‘poetics’. By centring viewpoints of resistance, where liberation and decolonisation are the goal, this analysis aims to challenge dominant discourses around resistance and agency.