CPD Paper Prize Winner 2024 - Affective Sovereignty: A decolonial politics of emotion in Palestine

Andy Hom, one of the editors of Review of International Studies, interviews Jamal Nabulsi, who won the BISA Colonial Postcolonial Decolonial Working Group's third annual Early Career Researcher Paper Prize.

Jamal Nabulsi’s article is eloquently written, theoretically complex and ethnographically grounded. It takes up a key theme in CPD’s conceptual repertoire, as to what sovereignty can embody through decolonial and Indigenous lenses. It does so at multiple registers: first, by refusing the fragmented framing of Palestinian lives and lands; second, by anchoring its central arguments in Palestinians’ ongoing and unending feelings of belonging to and longing for Palestine; third by working through how these constellations of feelings constitute what the author calls affective sovereignty; and finally, as the paper delves deeply into Palestinian music, art and culture as expressions of belonging, unity and sovereignty, it comes to the powerful conclusion, that sovereignty is sustained, affirmed and reproduced in part through feeling. In its foundational conversations intersecting the politics of emotion with Indigenous politics, it offers key ways forward for both the more material engagements of decolonial work and for those IR scholars attempting to grapple with the politics of emotion. We were captivated by this ambitious and powerful contribution that centres Palestine and Palestinian artistic production.