Translation, Oral History and the Anarchive in Samia Halaby’s Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre
Keywords:
Experiential Translation, Oral History, (An)Archive, Art, Translation and Decolonization, Acknowledgements / Agradecimentos — not a standard QuickSubmit field; retain for editorial checking:, The author would like to thank Samia Halaby for kindly granting permission to reproduce her drawings in this article.Abstract
This article argues that translation can serve as a methodology for creating new embodied, affective, and experiential knowledge about the past. Using the concept of the ‘anarchive’, the article explores the creative-research translation practices artists engage in as they create historical documents that foreground the sensorial, material, and embodied dimensions of the past. To illustrate these arguments, the article analyses Samia Halaby’s (2016) Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre. Based on her own oral history interviews with the survivors, the artist visualizes the 1956 massacre during which Israeli border police killed 49 Palestinians and wounded 13 others. In this multimodal publication, Halaby presents the reader with her visual documentation of the massacre, the English transcripts of the testimonies she collected, and a reflection on the anarchival translation process she engaged in throughout the project. The article contributes to emerging debates on translation of lived experience, oral history, archives, and decolonial knowledge.Downloads
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