Post by Lama Z. Khouri DPsa LCSW-R

Deeply honored to have my essay published in The Key. [T]he voice of the “conscripted container,” whom I once misnamed the House Palestinian. The House Palestinian operates within a legible structure of accommodation. She has, at some level, weighed her options. She knows the field exists. The conscripted container was not asked. The conscription happened below the threshold of choice, installed so gradually and so early that there was no moment of decision to look back on, no threshold she can point to and say: here is where I agreed. She did not sell out. She was drafted. The colonized subject is hollowed of her humanity: her history erased, her rights trampled upon, her belonging stolen. She is rendered an empty vessel into which imperially configured subjects project their monstrosity — their violence, their guilt, their unmetabolized dread of what they have done and continue to do. And yet she does not simply absorb the projection, she goes to extraordinary lengths to refuse it — to offer something different, to insist: I am not the monster you need me to be. She does so often to her own detriment.