Trauma i Katastrofa. Filmowe reprezentacje „nieustającej Nakby"
Trauma and Catastrophe: Cinematic Representation of the “Ongoing Nakba”

Summary/Abstract: The author analyses feature film representations of the 1948 Catastrophe in the context of trauma theory. As the Palestinian traumatic event par excellence, the Nakba structures Palestinian cinema. The article disputes the claim propagated by the Israeli historian Daniel Bar-Tal, according to whom the narratives supporting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are the main obstacle to its peaceful solution. In a broader political, aesthetic, and historical context, Palestinian cinema – as Edward Said puts it – problematizes the dialectic of visibility and invisibility, because the entire history of Palestinian struggles is related to the desire to be visible. The author of the article argues that this cinema gives form to Palestinian nationalism, tells Palestinian history, and places the everyday life of Palestinians within this history. The focalizers that she singles out are Palestinian women. Lena Jayyusi describes the type of narrative specific to Palestinians as the collective first-person voice. Using such a narrative strategy, the sense of loss is transferred from the level of individual suffering to the level of collective trauma.

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