Rooted Movements: The Radical Poetics of Palestinian Space

Present in the heart of modern Palestinian literature is a pervasive sense of rootedness, sustained and nurtured by a deep care for land stewardship and embedded in a spatialized history. In Rooted Movements, Amanda Batarseh examines the epistemology of Palestinian Indigeneity based in a radical relationship to place. Against a colonial logic that often centers displacement as the chief lens through which to understand Palestinian connection to place and spatialized existence, Batarseh argues that Palestinian literature poses Indigeneity as a dialectic relying as much upon rootedness as on ideas of movement.

In elaborating this tension, Batarseh develops a methodology of reading Palestinian literature that foregrounds how Palestinians negotiate space and removal through liberatory mobilization and not as a symptom of zionist, colonial violence. Reading the poetry, creative nonfiction, essays, novels, and films of writers in Palestine and in exile--from Ghassan Kanafani to Naomi Shihab Nye, Hussein Barghouthi, Raja Shehadeh, Ibtisam Azem, and Randa Jarrar--she exposes the limitations of focusing on the geopolitical borders of a modern nation-state and offers alternative imaginaries not bound by colonial spatial control. Instead, the Palestinian poetics of space Batarseh articulates engage rooted movement as an Indigenous expression of deep-seated and enduring connections to place. Palestine, this place, is not static, enclosed by military boundaries, or frozen in time before or after the Nakba, but generative and looking toward a Palestinian future.

Author: Amanda Batarseh
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 10/21/2026
Series: Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms
Pages: 528
Weight: 1.77lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.19d
ISBN: 9780815612216