Haendeler, J., 2024.

Atlas al-'Ain: The Performativity of "return" and Common Memory Production

Theorizing landscape as a site where Palestinian "return" is enacted and performed allows us to better understand the intersections of memory construction, "return" and spatial practices. The atlas al-'ain is a collective, open-ended, and performative counter-archive of common memories. Ontologically and geographically the atlas revolves around the water springs of Al-Walaja and foregrounds the villagers' oral histories. This essay reflects on three assemblies from the atlas al-'ain in the light of their pedagogical, historical, material and theoretical implications. Grounded in the atlas, the essay puts forth "common memory" as a category that is inherently performative, shared and spatialized, mobilizing "to return" as a performative practice against the Nakba as an ongoing process of genocide and erasure.