Práxis decolonial e palestinidade como lugares de agência e afeto: arte, cultura e Educação para a (trans)formação social e humana

This paper analyzes artistic and cultural manifestations in the identity affirmation of the Palestinian diaspora in Foz do Iguaçu, through the lens of Critical Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006) and Phenomenological-Humanist Cultural Geography (Kozel, Torres, & Gil Filho, 2022). The cultural interventions mobilized in this study—ranging from artistic workshops for children to Palestinian film festivals and the narratives of Palestinian women—are understood as fundamental languages of resistance and "re-existence." Consequently, they operate as a discursive strategy against epistemicide and as a denunciation of historical violence aimed at reconfiguring social reality. The investigation is grounded in the author’s praxis as a researcher, cultural organizer, and Palestinian woman of the diaspora. Through an autoethnographic approach, it presents critical accounts of these events based on the articulation of Palestinianness in dialogue with the concepts of subjunctive space (Schiocchet, 2015, 2022), counter-narratives (Said, 2007), historical response (Khalidi, 1997), Palestinian Sumud (Jabr, 2024), and Walsh’s decolonial pedagogies (2013). The study discusses how the creation of these places of affection contributes to the construction of arenas for negotiating Palestinianness (Schiocchet, 2015) and may allow the migrant subject to transcend mere survival in Palestinian exile, converting it into a space for producing emancipatory imaginaries. This process resonates not only within the diasporic Palestinian community but also within the subjectivities of their surroundings (Maher, 2007). In this way, the analyzed practices are configured as spaces for the education of the self and the environment, contributing to human and social (trans)formation: as a subjunctive space, where memories of the past and hopes for the future foster places of agency in the present, Palestinianness constitutes itself to cease being a lament and become a political instrument of emancipation and solidarity in the Global South.