Digital feminisms in Palestinian Hip Hop

This paper focuses on digital feminisms in Palestinian hip hop. Recently, Palestinian youth built a subculture they title the ‘alternative’ scene. Hip-hop is central and, lately, some rappers started making feminist tracks. In this paper, I analyse artists’ digital productions, as well as interviews with musicians, to examine what happens when hip-hop gets feminist and goes digital in the Palestinian context. My argument is twofold. First, I suggest that rappers circulate songs and videos on social media that transgress gender and sexuality norms. Second, however, while these productions ‘do’ critical identity work in Palestine, they also often iterate liberal 'solutions' to structural asymmetries. I therefore conclude that digital hip hop mediates multiple and often contradictory Arab feminisms as it travels online. Neither dystopic nor utopian, digital culture makes room for gendered critiques that co-exist and compete with depoliticised ideas about liberal personhood and individual agency.