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9.3 Moving Forwards

9.3 Moving Forwards

Based on my findings, slow erasure operates through multiple, interlocking technologies aimed at dismantling Indigenous identity, agency, and episteme. In response, Indigenous peoples employ strategies of resistance that range from the everyday to the extraordinary, from personal defiance to communal action, from remembering to imagining.

However, slow erasure is not confined to occupied territory, it extends into exile and diaspora, where Palestinian voices are often suppressed, misrepresented, or criminalised. Future research might explore how Palestinians in forced displacement sustain their identity and practice sumud across geographies, and how host states, through securitisation and legal constraints, participate in processes of erasure.

One promising area of inquiry is the role of hope and humour in sustaining resistance. While this thesis has focused on structural violence and political struggle, I believe there is scope to further explore how joy, laughter, and hope of liberation can act as subversive tools. Work on humour as nonviolent resistance (Sørensen 2008)1 and hope as political practice (Zournazi 2023; Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen 2020)2 3 reveals how even under the most repressive conditions, affective and cultural strategies play a vital role in sustaining community, morale, and vision.

By making the oppressor the subject of ridicule, humour destabilises hierarchies and reclaims narrative control. Similarly, hope asserts futurity in the face of slow erasure.

References

  1. Sørensen, Majken Jul. 2008. "Humor as a Serious Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression." Peace\ & Change 33 (2): 167--90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2008.00488.x. ↩

  2. Zournazi, Mary. 2023. Hope: New Philosophies for Change. 1st. ed. Routledge. ↩

  3. Lindroth, Marjo, and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen. 2020. "Politics of Hope: Transformation or Stagnation?" In The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies, edited by S A Hamed Hosseini, James Goodman, Sara C Motta, and Barry K Gills. Taylor\ & Francis Group. ↩