Description
Book SynopsisJennifer Lynn Kelly explores the significance of contemporary solidarity tourism in Palestine/Israel, showing how such tourism functions both as political strategy and emergent industry.
Trade Review“In this sophisticated academic study, Jennifer Lynn Kelly probes the complexities of solidarity tourism in Palestine. . . . Kelly’s impressive field research yields a nuanced analysis rather than an uncritical celebration of solidarity tourism." -- Walter L. Hixson * Washington Report on Middle East Affairs *
"This book offers deep insights into the Palestinian memories of loss, and the cultural boundaries between insiders and outsiders. . . . The author succeeds in using a variety of materials (interviews, films, history, literature, etc.), mobilizing different tools of cultural studies to reveal the impasses of telling the past and the present of Palestine." -- Abdessamad Belhaj * Social Identities *
"Kelly makes a major contribution to the study of so-called solidarity tourism in Palestine, exploring its well-researched effect on national identity, lived experience, political strategy, and economic influence throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. . . . Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."
-- B. Osborne * Choice *
"A guide to how non-Palestinian researchers can conduct research that neither essentializes or erases Palestinian knowledge and experience. … Kelly's book is a welcome addition to the literature on global phenomenon in Palestine."
-- Charles Finn * Postcolonial Interventions *
"[Kelly's book] will inspire students to examine the past and benevolently imagine the future unflinchingly." -- Lynne Rogers * Al Jadid *
"Kelly’s
Invited to Witness is ripe with Palestinian moments that speak of the intricacy, beauty, and courage embedded in our ways of being and doing things. . . . the most illuminating aspect of Kelly’s book becomes what she herself represents in her study: a cultural translator, a US citizen writing to other 'Americans' about the responsibility involved in visiting and writing about Palestine. You cannot just witness it—you have to actively pursue its liberation and reflect it in your actions, scholarship, and your intentional conversations with others." -- Eman Ghanayem * Public Books *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Colonial Calculus of Veracity: Delegations under Erasure and the Desire for Evidentiary Weight 21
2. Asymmetrical Itineraries: Militarism, Tourism, and Fragmentation under Occupation 59
3. Recitation against Erasure: Planting, Harvesting, and Narrating the Continuities of Displacement 87
4. Itineraries under Duress: Tours across Three Occupations of One City 112
5. Colonial Ruins and a Decolonized Future: Witnessing and Return in Historic Palestine 138
6. “Welcome to Gaza”: On the Politics of Invitation and the Right to Tourism 179
7. Witnesses in Palestine: Imperfect Analogies, Acts of Translation, and Refusals to Perform 211
Conclusion: On Futurity, Failure, and Precarious Hope 245
Notes 253
Bibliography 287
Index 311
