ATTEND | Theory from Below: Family Museums as Spaces of Knowledge Production and Epistemological Resistance in Palestine, w/ Mazen Iwaisi, 12/15/25

Theory from Below: Family Museums as Spaces of Knowledge Production and Epistemological Resistance in Palestine

This intervention examines how local Palestinian communities embody "theory in action" through family-based museums, challenging traditional museological frameworks and institutional practices. Drawing from ethnographic research on three family museums in the West Bank, I discuss how these grassroots initiatives represent a form of theory in action that emerges organically from community needs rather than institutional mandates. These museums operate as living experiences where theoretical concepts of heritage preservation, cultural memory, and community engagement are tested, adapted, and reimagined through daily practice.

The analysis reveals how family museums function as sites of epistemological resistance, deploying strategies that transcend mere preservation. These museums actively challenge hegemonic knowledge production systems of colonial archaeology by legitimizing local epistemologies that have been systematically marginalized. Through meticulous documentation of family histories and material culture, they directly confront Israeli settler-colonial narratives of terra nullius landscapes. By establishing autonomous spaces for knowledge production beyond the quasi-state apparatus and NGO networks, these museums engage in what I call 'epistemic disobedience.' Their approaches to preservation, curation, and community engagement generate theoretical innovations that emerge from lived experiences of resistance to dispossession - not as abstract academic exercises but as urgent responses to ongoing cultural erasure and spatial eradication.

By focusing on how theory emerges from practice in these settings, this intervention proposes a more grounded understanding of "theory in action" - one that recognizes local communities as theoretical innovators rather than just practitioners. This work contributes to broader discussions about decolonial museum practices, community-based heritage management, and the role of families in generating new theoretical frameworks for cultural preservation. The goal is to demonstrate how family museums represent not just the application of theory but the active creation of theoretical knowledge through lived experience and daily practice.

More info here.

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Mazen Iwaisi is a Palestinian archaeologist whose work is focused on the geopolitics of Palestinian archaeology practice and theory. He has obtained his PhD from Queen's University Belfast on the concept of archaeo-politics in the making of the Palestinian National Spatial Plan — his research centres on archaeology and cultural heritage and how they relate to spatial and urban planning.

S26 COURSE | From Ruins to Remains: Palestine & Archaeology w/ Brian Boyd

Anth GR5555 From Ruins to Remains: Palestine & Archaeology

“The ruins of Gaza will be the archaeology of the future” (Iwaisi & Barghouth 2023)

This course reexamines the idea of “ruins” in Palestine, reframing them as “remains” - material, social, and cultural presences that persist despite efforts of erasure by colonial, national, or ideological forces. Students will explore how archaeology, often misrepresented as a quest for ‘discoveries’, is always deeply entangled with politics, nationalism, colonialism, and cultural appropriation in Southwest Asia. The course emphasizes ‘remains’ rather than ‘ruins’, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s idea of fragments as revitalized pieces of the past. It traces European imaginaries from the classical writings of Josephus and others, through the medieval Crusades, to the 17 th and 18 th centuries, when the depiction and representation of a romanticized past of ‘biblical’ landscapes was vividly created by European writers, artists and cartographers. These Orientalist perspectives were formalized in the 1870s with the region’s mapping by the British Survey of Western Palestine (1871-77) – a meticulous survey of the ‘biblical’ places in Palestine. The map that resulted from this survey was subsequently used as the basis for the partition plan by the British government which took over southern Palestine from the Ottoman administration in 1917 (the British Mandate), and was also used as the base map to create the political boundaries of the state of Israel, established in 1947/8, involving the displacement of 750 000 Palestinians from more than 400 villages across the region. The materiality of the Nakba remains across the landscapes of contemporary Palestine and Israel, standing as an evidential archive. We will consider how the notion of ‘remains’ articulates with settler colonial appropriation of archaeological narratives that seek to keep evidence for a Palestinian presence in the landscapes of the region firmly in the past – as ‘ruins’.