Not, not citizen: art and the making of fugitive sociality in the settler colony

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper takes up the entwinement of citizenship and the political in the writings of Engin Isin in the context of the Palestinians in Israel. It opens with an invitation to think with an artwork by the Palestinian artist Durar Bacri as a staging of fugitivity through a refusing of that which has been refused. Out of this I pose the question of whether such an act of refusal is political or not. I start by thinking with this artwork to unpack the settler colonial nature of Palestinian citizenship in Israel and how the figure at the centre of the painting is refusing the citizenship that is being refused him. From this I posit that not only is there a refusal of citizenship, but more there is an ‘end’ or limit to the political itself, and with it the political subject. I conclude with a discussion of a fugitive sociality and its implications for understanding the struggle of Palestinians in Israel.