Representations of Palestine by Joe Sacco in his book “Footnotes in Gaza” (2002- 2010)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to understand the worldview of American journalist Joe Sacco in his work “Notes on Gaza” after September 11 in the United States. In 2002, after working with Chris Hedge for Harpers magazine, Sacco returned to Palestine and produced “Notes on Gaza”. In his pages, the journalist depicted the attacks on the villages of Khen Younis and Rafah in 1956 that left more than 270 dead on the Palestinian side. The hypothesis behind this research takes into account the possibility of diverse discourses besides the media position of the mainstream media about the “War on Terror” and the need to resume the 1956 events in Palestine as a way to rethink the consequences of war against terrorism initiated by the United States and Israel in the Middle East. For this, the concept of representations of the French historian, Roger Chartier, collaborates to the understanding of systems of representations produced by distinct groups that aim at their strategies to communicate in an effective way, that is, to favor their ideologies and the legitimation of their actions. Being “Notes on Gaza”, the source and object of our research, we also understand that Sacco’s work is not unique and much less a groundbreaking work, but that its production was only possible through the various layers of other academic and journalistic works that expressed the most varied representations about the attacks and developments that the US “War on Terror” actions had unleashed in Palestine.