The Counter/Actual: Art and Strategies of Anti-Colonial Resistance

Abstract

The article explores how a number of artists have employed the counter/actual as a form of past-talk in a conscious intervention into socio-political and ethical issues arising from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I argue that such uses of the counter/actual more effectively foreground the injustices arising from the occupation while not only problematising the process of representation but also deconstructing the ways in which histories are intimately intertwined with relations of power and practises of legitimisation; they do not simply reproduce “the (f)actual” but work to repossess the past from the dominance of hegemonic interests.

Keywords

• palestine
• counter/actual
• spatialities
• vertical power
• the past
• history
• larissa sansour
• emily jacir
• china miéville
• khalid jarrar