Scripting for Hollywood: Power, Performance and the Heroic Imagination in Abu Hanna's " Real Arabian Nights"

This article explores narratives of heroism among Palestinians in the Galilee in order to address broader concerns about the workings of historical transformation and the power of creative agency, the nature of historical consciousness and its relation to practices of everyday life. It considers how meaning is constituted through performances of heroism for tellers and listeners, what kinds of selves and others are distinguished by narrative constructions of heroism, and what kinds of authorities inscribe themselves within them. Three separate approaches to the logic of heroic narratives are developed: narratives of heroism as performance, as the production of truths, and as the product of a struggle for power.