Broadcast: Towards Collective Study in Times of Emergency (for 24 hrs/Palestine)

Timecodes:

00:00:00 Introduction, written and read by Nick Aikens
00:05:10 ‘We have been here before. Palestinian poets write back’, written and read by Rana Issa
00:31:57 ‘Everything will stay the same if we don’t speak up’, written by L’Internationale confederation and read by María Berríos, Sabel Gavaldon and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros
00:48:53 Vijay Prashad, taken from a forthcoming podcast for Radio Web MACBA

Music is taken from ‘Until Liberation II’ compiled by the Learning Palestine Group.

Welcome to ‘Towards Collective Study in Times of Emergency’, a radio segment put together by L’Internationale Online for 24 hrs/Palestine.

L’Internationale takes its name from the 19th century workers’ anthem written by Eugène Pottier, which calls for an equitable and democratic society with reference to the historical labour movement. It is in this trajectory and spirit of internationalist solidarity that we were honoured to participate in 24 hrs/Palestine, an invitation extended to us when we met members of the collective during an assembly in Ramallah convened by mutual allies at the Qattan Foundation.

What you will hear over the hour-long broadcast is a selection of material taken from the ongoing publishing series ‘Towards Collective Study in Times of Emergency’. It begins with a reading of ‘We have been here before. Palestinian poets write back’ by the researcher, translator and essayist Rana Issa - published in March 2024 and read here by Issa. In the piece she introduces, and reads, a selection of poems by poets living and working in Palestine, moving across the contexts of the 1940s and the time of the nakba to the 1970s and those writing in Gaza today.

The following contribution is titled ‘Everything will stay the same if we don’t speak up’ published under the name of L’Internationale in April this year. The text is a collective call to each other and to those in the cultural field to resist and speak out against ‘censorship, self-censorship, pre-censorship, language policing, cancellation, disinvitation and defunding of politically dissenting voices’ in the time of genocide. The text is structured through three voices - speaking from the voice of the confederation, an address to the many cultural workers silenced or canceled and a series of chronicles citing the ongoing archive of censorship.

In the final contribution historian and author Vijay Prashad reflects on the swell of social movements and the noise of younger generations as the dialectical opposite to the violence of silencing, endemic across cultural, academic and political spheres. Taken from a forthcoming episode of Radio Web MACBA recorded during his participation in the recent project ‘Song for Many Movements’, also at MACBA, Prashad offers hope as he stirringly states that ‘the silence will be eclipsed by the noise’.

Interspersing these recordings are excerpts from a live recording of Me, My Brother. The song opens the listening session ‘Until Liberation II’, compiled by the Learning Palestine group. The two listening sessions published in December 2023 and January 2024 each include over 12 hours of lectures, music and poetry, from the 1970s until today to understand ‘the history, the present, the reality, of the ongoing struggle for liberation and justice for Palestine’.

The selection was made by Nick Aikens and María Berríos on behalf of L’Internationale Online editorial board.
The programme was produced with Radio Web MACBA.
Special thanks to Anna Ramos and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros.
Thank you to the authors and readers for their time and commitment.
Thank you to the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah for introducing L’Internationale Online to 24 hrs/Palestine.