The Re-Narration of the Rafah Massacre in Footnotes in Gaza: a Focus on Palestinian Women’s Eyewitness Accounts

Abstract

This thesis explores the multiple layers of translation in the production of the graphic novel Footnotes in Gaza (2009) and the agency of its producers, namely Joe Sacco (the author) and Abed Elassouli (the interpreter). The research investigates how Palestinian women's eyewitness accounts of the Rafah massacre in 1956, collected through fieldwork in Gaza in 2003, have been interpreted from Arabic into English and adapted in the English novel. Adopting a narrative approach, the research focuses on the textual elements of the re-narration of women's poignant recollection of the Rafah massacre fifty years after the event. The creative blending of two spatio-temporal contexts, the fieldwork genre and the novel genre, creates a mise en abyme of the transcreation process involving the characterization of Sacco’s and Abed’s persona in the graphic novel. The analysis of the transcripts of the interpreter-mediated interviews with Palestinian women survivors and the novel in English reveals multiple prisms of re-narration: women as victims, strong and fearless, and resilient. The interpreter-mediated investigation of the Rafah massacre in 2003 in Gaza is systematically re-narrated in the novel through empathy towards the victims and socio-political commitment to the Palestinian cause. Palestinian women's portrayal in Footnotes in Gaza, as smiling, loving, fighting, grieving, praying, laughing, epitomizes an alternative narrative for Palestinian activism and resistance.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Humanities and Social Science