Decolonial enactments of human resilience: Stories of Palestinian families from beyond the wall

Abstract

Critical insights on multisystemic resilience are grounded in Global South knowledge on the complexity of human relationality, which underscores that resilience does not fit neatly into ecological models. These insights are rooted in colonized communities’ embodied and emplaced struggles for dignity and decolonization. Therefore, this chapter shares the author’s reflections on multisystemic dimensions of human resilience emerging from voices of two displaced Palestinian families who participated in one of the author’s previously completed studies in the colonized territory of the West Bank. When reading through the intergenerational narratives of the two Palestinian refugee families featured in this chapter, the author invites readers to accompany him in bearing witness to stories of profound suffering associated with colonial structural violence, yet also stories of radical rehumanization, which manifest as decolonial enactments of resilience.