On the Presence of Others:Performing Palestinian Absence in Bodies of Knowledge (2024) and For a Palestinian (2022)For 2025 Special Issue, ‘Scenographies of Absence/Scenes of Disappearance', accepted by Theatre and Performance Design

The discourse on embodied knowledge in the context of Palestine spans multiple academic disciplines and performance methods that highlight subjective storytelling and sensory knowledge production as counterhegemonic memory practices. As the diasporic condition requires the reimagination or rebuilding of alternative pasts and futures, we turn our attention to questions of Palestinian (self)representation in British institutions. Presenting the mixed-media installation Bodies of Knowledge by Palestinian artist Bint Mbareh and Barney Pau (2024) and the play For a Palestinian by Bilal Hasna and Aaron Kilercioglu (2022), we put art works in conversation with the archival discourse and representations of Palestinian bodies of knowledge in these productions during times of their cultural erasure. This approach to Palestinian knowledge production combines ethnographic observations and scholarly approaches to Palestinian archives across literary studies, cultural anthropology, and contemporary art scholarship. In using the term ‘bodies of knowledge’ as a way of describing how memory is produced, preserved, and performed, we aim to center the role of creative choices that call for ethical representation, visibility, historization, ambiguity, and care as guiding principles for artists, writers, and audiences in diaspora cultural productions.