120. Paraules robades / Stolen words

Fina Birulés reminds us that there is no common world without transmission. So, what is a culture without books? What happens to words in the face of an imposed silence?

In 1948, when the war broke out in Palestine as a phase prior to the announcement of the creation of the State of Israel, tens of thousands of books from private Palestinian libraries were looted by the Israeli authorities. Where did all these books end up?

Based on historical documents, the testimony of the thinker Khalil al-Sakakini, and the personal experience of the author herself, Adania Shibli denounces in this text linguistic repression and the dispossession of knowledge as strategies of colonial oppression.