The personal as political: the function of the private space in contextualizing the ‘other’ in Jewish–Palestinian encounters

Abstract

The private/personal sphere is perceived to be a channel of empowerment that fosters processes of acknowledgment and recognition during encounters between participants from different cultural groups. Drawing on ethnographic research at an inter-cultural program that offered a space for engagement for Palestinian and Jewish educational trainees’, we followed the role played by the private sphere in the process of articulating a perception of the ‘Other’. Most participants from both groups chose to locate their position toward the ‘Other’ in their private sphere. The different ways through which the private sphere was preformed and justified by the participants reveals that for the Palestinian participants the private sphere served as a way to create particularity, while for the Jewish participants it served as a way to construct universalized claims. These justifications, which were tightly coupled with each groups’ social position and social power, were working in both cases to isolate the discussion from immediate historical, social, and political contexts. Thus, these findings deepen our understanding of the meaning ascribed to the private sphere and the common epistemology that defines the personal as political and contributes to advance warm relations between Palestinian and Jewish individuals that these educational frameworks seek to foster.