01 - September 2026
About Palestinian Magical Realism
The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive / Taken by Muner Anis Naser On 10 April 1998, this photograph shows an inscription carved on a stone in an old house in Birzeit city
This month, CENSORED explores Palestinian magical realism as a way of telling stories, thinking, and making visible what reality cannot always contain. From literature to visual art, from folk tales to contemporary narratives, this dossier traces the connections between memory, land, violence, history, and imagination — and the worlds that emerge in the spaces between them. Developed with Palestinian writer and cultural worker Sanabel Abdel Rahman.
Sanabel Abdel Rahman« Palestinian magical realism illuminated a way that did not escape the heaviness of reality but piercingly acknowledged it while offering ways to challenge it. »
Articles
CONVERSATION WITH SANABEL ABDEL RAHMAN : PALESTINIAN MAGICAL REALISM AND THE POLITICS OF IMAGINATION
Palestinian writer and cultural worker Sanabel Abdel Rahman shares her research:
“I thought to myself that there must be something more. More than ‘realism’ more than ‘trauma’, more than the crushing weight that Palestinians endure and convey in their literature. I wanted to look beyond the traveling pain that Palestinians are inflicted with without dismissing it.”
READING ROOM
(Coming soon)
Inside Sanabel Abdel Rahman’s cultural landscape: books, ideas, tools, and other references that shape the way she thinks and sees the world.
FOOTNOTES: TO UNDERSTAND MAGICAL REALISM, WE NEED TO LOOK AT COLONIAL VIOLENCE.
(Coming soon)
From a German art critic to Latin American literature and beyond, the history of magical realism is also a history of cultural translation, appropriation and colonial power. This article traces the origins and transformations of the term, and asks what it means to use it today.
WEB-WEAVING
(Coming soon)
A living moodboard of references, readings, podcasts, archives and discoveries gathered around each dossier.
New Sections
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Interviews with people whose research, ideas, or experiences shed light on the themes explored by CENSORED.
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A selection of references recommended by the interviewee to extend the conversation through books, texts, films, images, and other resources.
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Visual essays that start from an image to explore what it tells, what it makes visible, and the cultural narratives it carries.
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Texts, images, archives, and other finds unearthed in the depths of the internet or elsewhere, brought back into circulation.
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Web-Weaving brings together the CENSORED team’s research for each dossier: references, links, archives, podcasts, articles and other discoveries. A way to make our research process visible.
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Because ideas should not stop at the borders of language, CENSORED translates and republishes articles from a feminist, queer, or independent media outlet somewhere in the world.
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Unexpected stories, overlooked connections and little-known histories from the worlds of culture, art and ideas.
We’ve conceived the new sections as a toolbox: each month, we select the formats best suited to exploring the theme from different perspectives. Here’s an introduction to each of them.
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