In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Huda Fakhreddine and Anthony Alessandrini about the unique manners in which literature can disclose the human significance of the historical and ongoing genocide in Palestine. Such revelation has to fight at least two things—the sheer brutality and inhumanity of this violence, and the active silencing of Palestinian voices by institutions that, ironically, profess to champion the humanities. Here, once again, we find a pernicious instantiation of the Palestine Exception. Despite these efforts to censor and silence, Huda and Tony delve deeply into the power of Palestinian poetry through translations and readings of some of the most remarkable literature in the world.
Anthony Alessandrini teaches English at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn and Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is also a member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of Decolonize Multiculturalism and of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey. He has also published a poetry chapbook, Children Imitating Cormorants. He is a Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, is on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association, is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, is a co-convener of the International Solidarity Action Research Network, serves as chair of his union’s Academic Freedom Committee, and is a proud member of CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), as well as the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Her creative writings include a work of creative nonfiction, Zaman Ṣaghīr Taḥt Shams Thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun), published by Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, in 2019, and a forthcoming collection Wa Min Thammata al-‘Ālam… (And Then, the World…), to be published by Manshurat Marfa’, Beirut, in 2025. She serves as co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and as an editor for the Library of Arabic Literature.
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Speaking Out of Place, which carries on the spirit of Palumbo-Liu’s book of the same title, argues against the notion that we are voiceless and powerless, and that we need politicians and pundits and experts to speak for us.
Judith Butler on Speaking Out of Place:
“In this work we see how every critical analysis of homelessness, displacement, internment, violence, and exploitation is countered by emergent and intensifying social movements that move beyond national borders to the ideal of a planetary alliance. As an activist and a scholar, Palumbo-Liu shows us what vigilance means in these times. This book takes us through the wretched landscape of our world to the ideals of social transformation, calling for a place, the planet, where collective passions can bring about a true and radical democracy.”
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues of literary criticism and theory, culture and society, race, ethnicity and indigeneity, human rights, and environmental justice. His books include The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, and Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Truthout, and other venues.
Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
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