f The melting pot: Parafiction Art in Israel and Palestine

Art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty offers the term ‘Parafiction Art’ to describe an emergent genre of artwork in which the artist imitates, invents, fakes or makes up narratives, people or events that are perceived by the spectators, for different reasons and for different lengths of time, as true. These works play on the overlap between fact and fiction in a unique manner:

Like a paramedic as opposed to a medical doctor, a parafiction is related to but not quite a member of the category of fiction as established in literature and drama. It remains a bit outside. It does not perform its procedures in the hygienic clinics of literature, but has one foot in the field of the real. (Lambert-Beatty 2009: 54)

This is why Parafiction Art possesses the power to influence specific contexts, and to challenge their statuesque. Arguing for the special importance of Parafiction Art within political contexts that strongly adhere to specific truth-values, this article examines recent parafictional practices in Israel and Palestine, and how these works challenge the hegemonic regime in this problematic geopolitical context: the right-wing Israeli government on one hand and the terrorist attacks on the other. Hardly any English literature has been published on the subject to date.