سياسات المحاكاة والمقاومة: قراءة ناقدة في تحوّلات أدب الأطفال الفلسطينيّ في الضفة الغربيّة (1987-2000)

Abstract

This article examines Palestinian children’s literature in the West Bank as both a cultural document and a vital space for postcolonial resistance, exploring transformations in its national narrative across two pivotal periods: the First Intifada (1987–1994) and the Oslo Accords era (1993–2000). Given the absence of a centralised national archive, the study relies on fieldwork to collect rare texts from authors’ private libraries and civil institutions. Through content analysis and the application of theoretical concepts by Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, the study argues that Palestinian authors have consciously challenged the notion that the subaltern is unable to speak under colonial hegemony, thereby transforming children’s literature from a marginal educational tool into a central arena for documenting historical narratives.

Furthermore, the study demonstrates a radical shift in resistance narratives. Stories of the First Intifada drew a sharp distinction between “us” and “them”—between the Palestinian Self and the Israeli Other—through the dehumanisation of the occupier and the glorification of collective Palestinian heroism. The Oslo era, however, reveals a more complex and ambivalent reality. In this phase, the focus shifted from direct engagement with the Israeli Other to Palestinian self-criticism and reflection on ideological and organisational divisions within society. Here, the authors employed irony and mimicry to deconstruct power relations while highlighting class differences, the impact of foreign funding, and the gendered constraints that subject women to “double colonisation”. Nonetheless, the corpus of Palestinian children’s literature in the West Bank between 1987 and 2000 forged an alternative space for resistance, enabling Palestinians to reconstruct a national memory threatened with erasure and to engage in a bold critical dialogue about the future state of society, free from direct political censorship.