Abstract
The symbolic landscape of Rashidieh camp, Lebanon, plays an important role in the Palestinian refugee cultural and political system there. Palestinian political factions produce and display wall paintings, posters and graffiti, which promote Palestinian nationalism by prompting people to recall popular discourses of their homeland. A close reading of this landscape reveals the political divisions between different factions, which share a commitment to Palestinian nationalism but diverge in their articulation of that nationalism and how to achieve the liberation of the homeland. The landscape is both an arena through which Palestinian factions attempt to communicate with people and produce and reproduce a sense of Palestinian identity and solidarity with the Palestinian nationalist movement, and an arena through which Palestinian factions compete with each other for support from the Palestinian populace. These efforts function as one of a range of power practices performed by the dominant political factions in the camp, but ordinary people's divergent and critical readings of the landscape's messages can shed light on the workings and failures of these processes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 69-99 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | ACME: An International e-journal for critical geographies |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2009 |
