Mobile Phones and the Rise of Neo-Liberal Consumer Subjectivity in Palestine

Abstract

Despite the abundance of research on Palestine, studies of Palestinian political subjectivity and agency tend to adhere to the dominant analytical frames of Nationalism and/or Islamism. This has led to the neglect of a variety of socio-economic and political developments that do not fit these frameworks. Working against the dominant trend, the present paper hopes to theorize Palestinian politics in relationship to the recent globalisation of neoliberalism by exploring a variety of discourses and struggles that have developed since the late 1990s around the topic of mobile telephony in Palestine. While mobile telephony epitomises a diversity of social processes and ideas that are associated with the globalisation of neo-liberal subjectivity and desire, a study of discursive and concrete developments within this field builds up an image of a Palestinian political subject that is increasingly individualised, hybridised, and irrepresentable within the dominant discourses of nationalism and/or Islamism.