Generic Topic Two

Debka and the nation

Debka troupe in the West Bank.

Symbols of national identity proliferate with cultural and historical significance for Palestinians. Many of these symbols originate in the period right before and after the upheaval of Al-Nakba (translated literally as “The Catastrophe”: and is used commonly in Arabic as referencing the 1948 dispossession of Palestinian refugees and violent creation of the State of Israel) (Sa’di, & Abu-Lughod, 2007). The trauma of Al-Nakba and the further dispossesion of Palestinians from their land after the Six Day War in 1967, created a conditions of disempowerment, violence, and isolation that continue to be a persistent part of Palestinian everyday life (Morris, 2004), (Sa’di, & Abu-Lughod, 2007). Although the dance of debka became culturally associated with resistance to ongoing occupation and dispossession, debka as a celebratory dance precedes Al-Nakba.

Palestinian children dance debka in a performance in the West Bank

National identity became an important unifying force for Palestinians from all regions of the area and all religious backgrounds after Al-Nakba and became inscribed in the everyday cultural practices of Palestinians. Villages created the cultural signifier of al-fellaha (the farmer/peasant) or fellahin (pl.) which became a signifier of attachment to the land and a claim to home for disposed Palestinians. This signifier is identified with not only by contemporary villagers, but also with middle class Palestinians, urban Palestinians, and refugees from camps both within Palestine and outside of Palestine.

Children Dance Debka in the West Bank

The use of this signifier is particularly poignant for Palestinians in that it is considered to have originated as an effect of the 1936 farmer revolt against the further loss of land due to the mass influx of Jewish proprietors under British mandate interested in furthering the Zionist initiative. This peasant revolt provided a signifier of peasant resistance to impending and continued occupation and later for national identification (Swendenburg, 1990). The simulacra of the fellahin functions as an ideologically unifying identity for Palestinians where debka becomes an intelligibly fellahin dance practice. (Swendenburg, 1990).

Palestinian men and women take up arms in 1936.

Dancing debka thus becomes an act of performing the nation-state, while the political sovereignty of a nation-state is denied. The performance becomes a cultural reenactment of the memory of Palestine, the dispossession from the land, and the denial of a nation-state with international legitimacy.