The Politics of Narrative

Join Alister Miskimmon and Dina Matar as they discuss the use and meanings of narrative employed in national, state and cultural identity formation with special reference to the Middle East. They will address the strategic use of narrative and myth making in contemporary conflict and politics, in particular reference to Israel and Palestine but also discuss wider current regional conflicts. The talk will aim to explore the idea of how history is constructed and validated through these narratives and consider how this has shaped recent conflicts and perception of the Arab World.

Dina Matar works on the intersection of politics, culture and communication in the Arab World. She is interested in narrative, media, cultural politics, social movements, oral history and memory, particularly in relation to Palestine. She is author of What it Means to be Palestinian, co-author of the Hizbullah Phenomenon and co-editor of Gaza as Metaphor and Narrating Conflict in the Middle East.

Alister Miskimmon is the head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Alister’s research interests are primarily in the areas of strategic narratives, German, European and global security issues and European integration. He has published two recent books on narratives and international politics with Ben O’Loughin and Laura Roselle: Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order, New York: Routledge in 2013, and Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, which will appear with the University of Michigan Press in 2016.