CONFLICTS AND REPETITION: THE POLITICS OF POETIC REITERATION IN HEBREW AND ARABIC LITERATURES A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Liron Mor August 2015 © 2015 Liron Mor CONFLICTS AND REPETITION: THE POLITICS OF POETIC REITERATION IN HEBREW AND ARABIC LITERATURES Liron Mor, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 Conflicts and Repetition: The Politics of Poetic Reiteration in Hebrew and Arabic Literatures considers conflict as the basic condition of both politics and literature. In this study, I claim that although there are countless possible ways of conceptualizing conflict, normative perceptions have classified around a dichotomous notion of conflict as a zero-sum game, which I term the logic of judgment. As against this dichotomous logic, I suggest other, more productive logics of conflict by examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a comparative study of Hebrew and Arabic literatures. I focus on poetic devices of repetition—such as quotations, allusions, and metaphors—which multiply meanings and set them in certain conflicted relations to one another through sharp angles of refraction. I analyze works by Haim Hazaz, Emile Habiby, Dahlia Ravikovitch, and Ghassan Kanafani, detecting their specific employment of poetic reiterations, in order to develop three models of conflict: irony, humor, and parody. I argue that the ways in which these poetic models order conflicting meanings are translatable into politics, suggesting different models of ordering differences within society without reverting to the law, with its logic of judgment, as the organizing principle of our being in common. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Liron Mor holds a B.A. in History from Tel Aviv University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. iii To my parents, Ronit and Moshe Mor iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Neil Saccamano, for his close, careful guidance and for a kind, insightful, and witty conversation of this work throughout the past few years. I owe many thanks to all other members of my Special Committee, Ariella Azoulay, Bruno Bosteels and Deborah Starr, who were each a great source of inspiration and support throughout this long and arduous process. I would further like to thank my fellow graduate students, as well as the staff and faculty, at the Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University for their continuous help and rare generosity. Additionally, I am thankful to the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University for hosting me as an exchange scholar, and particularly to Gil Anidjar, who advised me during my year there. I am grateful to the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University, which has provided me with two summer travel research grants. I would like to express my gratitude to the Andrew W. Mellon foundation and Cornell’s Society for the Humanities for an unforgettable and incredibly beneficial year as a Graduate Fellow there and to all of the participants of the Society for the Humanities’ weekly seminar—particularly, Diana Allan and Camille Robcis. The Mellon foundation has also funded my participation in a Dissertation Writing Summer Seminar on the topic of translation, organized by Jacques Lezra and Emily Apter. I would like to thank the foundation as well as the organizers and participants of the seminar for this productive encounter. I am truly grateful for the advice and support of my unofficial mentors and advisors, Elias Khoury, Tracy McNulty and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite. Many thanks also to my former advisor, Adi Ophir, and my friends and colleagues at the School of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, v who have helped lay the ground for this project, and especially to Adam Aboulafia, Shakhar (Freddy) Kislev, Roy Wagner, Yuval Kremnizer and Naama Katiee, for many years of conversation. I am deeply indebted to my dear friends and interlocutors, Oded Erez, Shira Shmueli, Itamar Mann, Danielle Drori, Sarah Hawas and Tatiana Sverjensky, who have accompanied this project, reading drafts of this work and providing me with their always-wise commentary as well as much needed moral support. Finally, a special thanks to my family, whose doubts in the path I had taken has kept me going, and to James Robertson, who has been willing to bear with me over these past few years. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Bibliographical Sketch ...................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................v Preface.....................................................................................................................................................ix Introduction............................................................................................................................................1 Repetitions and Conflicts: Three Forms of Reiteration and Collectivity in Edmund Burke’s Political and Aesthetic Writing ........................................................................................1 I. The Problem of the Law............................................................................................................................................6 II. Imitation: The Humor of Politics of Succession......................................................................................... 14 III. Ambition: The Tragic Irony of Absolute Innovation .............................................................................. 24 IV. Sympathy: The ParoDic Selectivity of Well-ManageD Darkness........................................................ 33 V. A Digression: Karl Kraus’ Satirical Genius.................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 1...............................................................................................................................................48 “There is Simply No Comparison!”: Absolute Difference and Disorienting Irony in Haim Hazaz’s “The Sermon” ...........................................................................................................48 II. For Power has its Limits but Suffering has None: The Socratic Ironic StanDpoint .................... 63 III. Moonlight Psychology: Irony as Discrepancy Between two OpposeD Meanings ...................... 68 IV. “Come anD I Shall Not See It”: The TrageDy of Irony.............................................................................. 74 V. “The End of All This”: The Irony of Irony...................................................................................................... 80 Chapter 2...............................................................................................................................................84 What’s Funny about Occupation?: Humor in Emile Habiby’s Pessoptimist and His Reappropriations of Voltaire’s Candide .....................................................................................84 I. The Pessoptimist ...................................................................................................................................................... 86 II. The Strange Circumstances of Disappearance........................................................................................... 91 III. “The AmaZing Similarity between SaeeD anD CanDiDe” ....................................................................... 99 IV. Humanitarian Militarism..................................................................................................................................113 V. Conclusions: Anti-Solutionism ........................................................................................................................119 vii Chapter 3............................................................................................................................................ 125 Nihilism and Repetition: Dahlia Ravikovitch’s Reiterations as Critique ..................... 125 I. “After all, he haD his orDers”: Ravikovitch’s Critique of the Law.......................................................132 II. "The Poetics of MoDerate Physical Pressure": Ravikovitch’s Quotations.....................................140 III. “I am Not Here”: Ravikovitch’s Allusions..................................................................................................145 IV. "AnD Their Cry Went Up Night after Night": Eternal Return as RaDical Nihilism ...................153 V. "Violence is Not Everything": Conclusions.................................................................................................158 Chapter 4............................................................................................................................................ 161 Returning to Metaphor: Judgment, Conflict and Time in Ghassan Kanafani’s “Returning to Haifa”....................................................................................................................... 161 I. Disasters of Analogy..............................................................................................................................................167 II. Creative Metaphors: “Breaking Things Open, Breaking WorDs Open”..........................................174 III. “But