Introducing Refusing Complicity

Over the past three years more than 7,000 writers and book workers signed on to the cultural boycott of Israeli institutions complicit in the genocide and occupation of Palestinian societies and their land. This is historic and unprecedented, and comes amid a surge of organizing across various artistic industries in response to the genocide in Gaza. As we approach the third year of genocide in Gaza, as Israel re-occupies southern Lebanon and the American-Israeli belligerence against Iran threatens lives in the region further, we ask and re-ask ourselves how to work, create, struggle, and be in relation to this disaster.

Can refusal itself be a way of building and seizing cultural power? What tensions exist between refusal and direct action, and what passageways might link them? This is an attempt to situate writing as it moves between expression and industry.

PalFest and The Poetry Project in New York City invited a small number of writers and book workers to think about some of these questions in short, reflective texts. The pieces were read at an event titled “Networks of Value,” held at the Project last October. We are publishing a selection here with you, with the addition of a newly commissioned text written by Adam HajYahia in response to Abdaljawad Omar.

This project is part of PalFest’s ongoing engagement at the intersection of boycott and cultural production. Some of these texts were previously published at The Poetry Project Newsletter. 

Read the five essays in the
Refusing Complicity project below.