To See in the Dark

Abstract

Abstract Seeing with Palestine was a constitutive possibility in the anticolonial way of seeing from the moment of the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. This article traces this way of seeing in the genealogy of visual culture that emerged in Britain in dialogue with Black British cultural studies and art practice, based on the practices of Stuart Hall, George Lamming, John Berger, and Jean Mohr. It then discusses Palestinian artist Randa Maddah, whose work Berger described as “landswept.” The conclusion speculates on how to “see in the dark” via the Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou Rahme.