brainstorming session entitled “The Archive and the Challenges of Protecting the Palestinian Memory,”

The IALIIS hold a brainstorming session entitled “The Archive and the Challenges of Protecting the Palestinian Memory,” presented by Mr. Raed Eshnaiwer. Mr. Eshnaiwer gave a theoretical introduction about the archive, based on Jacques Derrida approach in his book “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” in which he sees state archives as governmental components to control people. The researcher discussed two archival events which are establishing the Israeli national archive in 1949 and destroying the PLO research center in Beirut in 1982, pointing out to the Israeli unremitting attempts to destroy and to control the Palestinian memory, and their effort to build an Israeli memory on the ruins of the Palestinian one, seeking to impose their political control; Darrida says “There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory.” At the end, Mr. Eshnaiwer pointed out to the importance of the archive in the Palestinian case as a place to create knowledge and to formulate the national identity.