ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Moreover , the ways in which aesthetics intertwine with “ the political ” are key to understanding the dynamics of cultural resistance and / or accommodation in this context . As David McDonald ( 2013 ) has noted , academic readings anchored in postcolonial studies tend to view cultural production largely through a binary lens of domination and resistive empowerment , and to romanticize “ resistance ” rather than interrogate its framing ( see also Saligh & Richter-Devroe , 2014 ; Swedenburg , 2013 ). This leads to particular “ regimes of representation ” ( Nooshin , 2017 ) anchored in aesthetic domains that marginalize wide swaths of cultural production and contribute to the essentialization of Palestinian identity ( ies ). In the case of Palestine , folklore — which has been indexed with liberation politics since the rise of the PLO in the 1960s — and more recently , hip-hop , are genres intuitively focused on as “ authentic ” models for , or soundtracks of , the politics of liberation . This article will show how Tchaikovsky and Mozart , associated with elite cultural production in the West , may be drafted to the politics of nation-building and resistance at a Palestinian cultural institution in ways that complicate the domination-resistance binaries of postcolonial readings , but are suited for an era in which the internationalization and culturalization of conflict go hand-in-hand .
The culturalization of conflicts in globalized arenas has been described by post-colonialist scholars ( Boletsi , 2013 ; Mamdani , 2004 ) as intimately entwined with the construction of narratives underscoring the “ clash of civilizations ” discourses ( Huntington , 1996 ) that emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War , most especially , after 9 / 11 . They explain this discourse as a shift in Western narratives about political violence occurring in articulation with the age of globalization , one in which political and economic differences have been recast as inherent and essentialized cultural differences between “ modern ” ( Western , rational , civilized ) societies and “ premodern ” societies ( equated with Muslim fundamentalism and non-liberal societies ). According to Mahmoud Mamdani ( 2004 ), within this narrative , “ premodern peoples ” are conceptualized as either lagging and in need of philanthropy or as immutably anti-modern , and hence to be feared and policed .
While Western aid interventions in Palestine since the 1993 Accords can be read as “ philanthropic ,” there is a different yet overlapping register through which the internationalization and culturalization of the conflict have become intertwined in the case of post-Oslo Palestine . As Edward Said ( 1988 ) has noted , ethnonational struggles over space and territory are also struggles for legitimization shaped through the currency of ideas , rhetoric , symbols , images , and representations . Images and representations of Palestinians commonly circulating in the West , which for decades had been aligned with the Zionist movement , were those of the Islamic zealot , the terrorist , or the irrational primitive ( Said , 1988 ). Oslo initiated a period in which Western brokership of the “ peace process ” meant that the Palestinian leadership directed its diplomatic efforts to the West ( and in accordance with Western directives ), a process that intensified following the second intifada ( 2000 – 2005 ). At the same time , the development of a robust , institutionalized culture industry in the Occupied Territories and popular interest in Palestine meant that new images , representations , and narratives of Palestine and Palestinians were now
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