Helga Tawil-Souri
Biographic Data
| ID | 757761 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helga Tawil-Souri |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helga |
| FAMILY NAME | Tawil-Souri |
| SIGNATURE | TAWIL-SOURI H |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 180 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Bitification and the Gaza genocide
Gaza’s “live-streamed genocide” is more than the circulation of images about genocide, but an infrastructure whose foundation is bits. Bitification is introduced as the process of the material transformation of the conditions of existence into digital data whose value to Israel’s settler colonial project become operational, manipulable and discardable. Palestinians and Palestine are continuously disassembled, reassembled, and processed into digit…
Producing Palestine
Palestine has often been defined and constructed in the global imaginary through conflict, resistance, oppression and violence. Its representation is so overridden with conflicting claims and associations that it remains inaccessible, even to Palestinians. Producing Palestine addresses the creative labour of producing Palestine, particularly in technological and media spaces that are defined by their porousness and by their intermediality – cross…
Spéculations sur l’écologie infrastructurelle
Cet article propose d’envisager le réseau internet par pigeon voyageur, ou Internet Pigeon Network (IPN), comme un prototype et un outil critique. Le premier pose l’hypothèse, pour la bande de Gaza, d’une infrastructure internet mise sur pied par la population locale, abordable et résiliente, à laquelle concourent deux approches différentes de la construction des réseaux de communication d’une part, l’histoire millénaire de la poste par pigeon vo…
Speculation on infrastructural ecology
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
Palestinian futures
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
Checkpoint Time
Surveillance Sublime
Gaza as metaphor
Open-air Prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma: irrespective of when, where, and to whom the word is uttered, Gaza immediately evokes an abundance of metaphors. Similarly, a host of metaphors also recall Gaza: Crisis, Exception, Refugees, Destitution, Tunnels, Persistence. This book brings together journalists, writers, doctors, academics and others, who use metaphor to record and historicise Gaza, to contextualise its everyday re…
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Digital Occupation
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
New Palestinian centers
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Digital Occupation
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
New Palestinian centers
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
Palestinian futures
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Speculation on infrastructural ecology
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
New Palestinian centers
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Digital Occupation
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Surveillance Sublime
Gaza as metaphor
Open-air Prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma: irrespective of when, where, and to whom the word is uttered, Gaza immediately evokes an abundance of metaphors. Similarly, a host of metaphors also recall Gaza: Crisis, Exception, Refugees, Destitution, Tunnels, Persistence. This book brings together journalists, writers, doctors, academics and others, who use metaphor to record and historicise Gaza, to contextualise its everyday re…
Checkpoint Time
Palestinian futures
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
Speculation on infrastructural ecology
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
Producing Palestine
Palestine has often been defined and constructed in the global imaginary through conflict, resistance, oppression and violence. Its representation is so overridden with conflicting claims and associations that it remains inaccessible, even to Palestinians. Producing Palestine addresses the creative labour of producing Palestine, particularly in technological and media spaces that are defined by their porousness and by their intermediality – cross…
Spéculations sur l’écologie infrastructurelle
Cet article propose d’envisager le réseau internet par pigeon voyageur, ou Internet Pigeon Network (IPN), comme un prototype et un outil critique. Le premier pose l’hypothèse, pour la bande de Gaza, d’une infrastructure internet mise sur pied par la population locale, abordable et résiliente, à laquelle concourent deux approches différentes de la construction des réseaux de communication d’une part, l’histoire millénaire de la poste par pigeon vo…
Bitification and the Gaza genocide
Gaza’s “live-streamed genocide” is more than the circulation of images about genocide, but an infrastructure whose foundation is bits. Bitification is introduced as the process of the material transformation of the conditions of existence into digital data whose value to Israel’s settler colonial project become operational, manipulable and discardable. Palestinians and Palestine are continuously disassembled, reassembled, and processed into digit…
Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (13 works) · Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · History (8 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Palestine (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works) · Art (6 works) · History (6 works)