Subaltern Agency in the Cultural Industries: Palestinian Creative Labor in the Israeli Series Fauda

Authors

  • Amal Jamal School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs Tel Aviv University
  • Noa Lavie Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic College

Keywords:

subaltern agency, Fauda, cultural industries, Israel, Palestinian, creative labor

Abstract

This article advances the theorization of creative labor in cultural production in conflict zones. It argues that exploring minority creative workers’ behavior in media production in conflict zones helps to reveal patterns of othering of minorities and the coping strategies they develop to deal with being caught in the dominant narrative facilitated by the cultural industry. This venture is framed within postcolonial theorization, which contributes to revealing the unique impact of the interconnection between economic and symbolic factors on the behavior of creative labor. It also allows us to join other scholars in de-Westernizing creative labor studies and challenging the thesis of the silenced subaltern. To that end, we explore the meaning of “circumscribed agents” and “subaltern agency” through an analysis of ethnographic observations conducted during the production of the Israeli television series, Fauda. Examining the patterns of behavior of Palestinian–Israeli creative workers on the set of the series reveals three strategies of agency claiming—namely, authentication, self-orientalization, and mimicking.

Author Biographies

Amal Jamal, School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs Tel Aviv University

Prof. Jamal is faculty member of the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at the Tel Aviv University. His scholarly interest focus on several research fields that include State Structure and Civil Society, Political Democratization and Civil Liberalization, Social Movements, Media Consumption and Identity Construction, Minority Nationalism and Struggle for Civic Equality. He published several books on these topics in leading academic presses. His articles have been published in top ranking professional journals in four languages. He won several international grants and awards. Phone number: 00972-50-2405010

Noa Lavie, Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic College

Dr. Lavie is head of the Political Communication Unit at the School for Government and Society at the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College. Dr. Lavie is interested in sociology of culture and art, television studies and media industries labor. In recent years she has published in top ranked international journals. She has won several grants, among them the ISF (Israeli Science Foundation), together with her co-author, Prof. Amal Jamal.Address: Rabeinu Yeruham 2, Jaffa, Israel.

Downloads

Published

2020-04-13

Issue

Section

Articles