When You Can’t Say Palestine
Toward a Pedagogy of Encampment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/canlit.vi264.201744Keywords:
Occupy UofT for Palestine, Kill Bill 5, creative nonfiction, critical pedagogy, Black and anti-colonialism studies, cultural geographies, pedagogy of encampmentAbstract
In this creative scholarly and non-fiction essay, PhD candidate Nat Leduc reflects on their time at the People’s Circle for Palestine and Kill Bill 5 (de)occupations in order to address the silencing of advocacy for Palestine in the Canadian academy. The essay elaborates how naming the genocide in Palestine is taboo and subject to discipline. They consider tactics of response, including abandoning the University while remaining within it. Drawing on scholars of Black and anticolonial studies scholars including Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Katherine McKittrick, and Fred Hampton, and harnessing the formal affordances of autofiction, the author connects the historical and ongoing colonial genocides in Palestine and Turtle Island. They consider what the People’s Circle and Kill Bill 5 (de)occupations offer as examples of liberatory pedagogy. Ultimately, this essay argues for a pedagogy of encampment that abandons the University and demands that instructors orient themselves toward our students by embracing the margins and refusing the calls to join the privileged centre.
