ABSTRACT
It is, at the very least, anomalous. Worse than that, it is embarrassing. Indeed, there is a strong case for regarding it as nothing less than shameful. “It” is the gap, silence or absence that Palestine has constituted within postcolonial studies. It is anomalous, firstly, in relation to Edward Said. Palestine was centrally important in the life and work of Said. Said has been centrally important in the development of postcolonial studies. How does it happen, then, that Palestine is not, and has not been, centrally important in postcolonial studies? That absence (more than any other, perhaps) is, or should be, deeply embarrassing for a discipline that likes to think of itself as critically insightful, politically savvy and the like, but which is incomprehensibly ignoring the most striking contemporary example of brutally-enforced colonialism. To the extent that the situation in Palestine represents arguably the greatest ethical scandal of the last half century, then the near-total silence of postcolonial studies on the subject is indeed shameful. 1 The discipline is, of course, far from alone in that silence, and this paper will attempt to address some of the modalities and the causes of that silencing and its accompanying absences. This is not the first time that I have voiced such misgivings but, as Said pointed out on many occasions, one of the sad facts about engaging with the Question of Palestine is that basic positions need to be repeated – and repeated.
