What to Do with the Histories No One Wants Told?

In this paper I revisit four episodes of my research on Palestinians’ history to reflect on the relationship between history as experienced and historical narrative backed by institutionalized power.

The first episode was an oral history with women involved in defending Wihdat refugee camp in Amman from Monarchist forces in the 1970 Civil War in Jordan. All of the survivors I spoke with problematized the “usefulness” of remembering the event when its spectre continued to haunt the present. The second episode involved research on the Israeli regime’s attempt to impose a native authority called the ‘Village Leagues’ in the early 1980s. None of today’s major players appear in a positive light in the story of the Village Leagues or that of the uprising that defeated them, leaving an uprising in living memory actively forgotten. The third was a life-history interview I did with one of the thousands of Palestinians who were left fending for themselves in exile after the surrender of the PLO at Oslo, and whose stories no longer contributed to any movement or organization with the infrastructure and interest to have those stories retold. The fourth experience draws on my research on the place of Palestine in the early decades of the global recording industry. I argue that Palestine’s absence from this story is due to its inseparability from the surrounding Arab urban centers in the production of musical commodities, the unintelligibility of “Palestine” out of context.

I draw on these experiences to pose a question to other historians on the place of stories no one wants told, and to argue for the value of decentralized, anarchic approaches to archiving and historical research, the importance of diversifying our methodological toolboxes, and taking seriously the responsibility created by being entrusted with such stories.