MALE GENDER AND RITUALS OF RESISTANCE IN THE PALESTINIAN INTIFADA - ACULTURAL POLITICS OF VIOLENCE

This article examines ritualized inscriptions of bodily violence upon palestinian male youths in the occupied territories. It argues that be atings and detention are construed as rites of passage into manhood. B odily violence is crucial in the construction of a moral self among it s recipients, who are enabled to juxtapose their own cultural categori es of manhood and morality to those of a foreign power. Ritual as a tr ansformative experience foregrounds a political agency designed to rev erse relations of domination between occupied and occupier. Simultaneo usly, it both reaffirms and transforms internal Palestinian forms of d omination.