Lundi 10 novembre 2025 | 15:30-17:30 (heure Paris), 17:30-19:30 (heure Amman) IISMM (salle B3-18), 54 Boulevard Raspail, Paris , à l’Ifpo (salle Mounif), Ammanet en ligne : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86752353405?pwd=ZWhRaE9wbE5CWUxvVHBLZitaRG9pdz09Rewriting the Fragments of Palestine : Women’s Poetry as a Living

Archive, by Izza ABU HAIJA (Freie Universität Berlin)

Credit : Ola Zerini, A Dream and a Memory, 2024

This presentation explores how Palestinian women poets have rewritten their histories despite the fragmentation of Palestine and of their own lived experiences, as well as the silencing imposed on their identity as Palestinian women.
Although female voices remain absent from the dominant literary canon, their works contribute to shaping an alternative archive of memory, identity, and resistance. By examining three poets writing from different parts of Palestine — the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel — and a fourth living in exile, this study traces how their poetic voices negotiate fragmentation to express Palestinian identity and to enact creative strategies of survival.
Despite the complex fragmentation of Palestine — whether geographical, political, or identitarian — these poets share a common commitment: to rewrite the past and present of their homeland through biblical and Canaanite imagery, testimonies of historical injustice, and the expression of trauma and silence. Their poetry transforms fragmentation into continuity, producing what Deleuze and Guattari term a rhizomatic identity: one rooted in multiple places, times, and experiences, yet resistant to erasure through the connections it weaves among them.
This presentation situates these works within the frameworks of postcolonial, feminist, and trauma studies, offering a critical reading of women’s poetry as a counter-canon and as a living archive. Together, we will reflect on how these poetic fragments, far from signaling absence, come to form a memory of resilience.

Izza Abu Haija is a PhD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin and an Einstein Doctoral Fellow. She currently teaches Arabic language, Palestinian literature, and dialect at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, multilingualism, and Palestinian women’s writing . Alongside her academic work, she volunteers with the Global University Academy (GUA) to support access to higher education for Syrian refugees in Jordan.