Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East
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Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation McQuady Blecker Al-Masri, Allison. 2019. Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42029648 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East A dissertation presented by Allison McQuady Blecker Al-Masri to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2019 © 2019 Allison McQuady Blecker Al-Masri All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor William Granara Allison McQuady Blecker Al-Masri Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East Abstract The subject of this dissertation is the representation of the environment in the modern and contemporary literature of North Africa and the Middle East. I focus on texts that consciously engage with their landscapes, most commonly through descriptions of the natural world, personal and communal readings of space, and evaluations of ecological crises, which often take the form of what Rob Nixon has called “slow violence.” Critique of environmental disasters and challenges is formulated through the lens of eco-alterity, enabling a vision of the ecological indigenous “self” that is articulated against an occupying, imperialist, or colonial “other” that exploits or degrades the shared landscape. That “other” is variously identified as American, European, or, in the case of Palestinian literature, Jewish Israeli. Through this framing, a right to the land is asserted that encompasses an effort to undermine counterclaims, which may also be based on narratives of stewardship. The environments discussed in the texts in this dissertation are primarily local. However, the invocation of the rhetoric of alterity creates spaces that contain both the self and the other, offering new imaginative possibilities for translocal, transnational, and even universal ecological responsibility. The slow violence of environmental crisis often defies effective representation in literature. The literary works analyzed in this dissertation propose solutions to this challenge through their employment of one or a combination of three motifs: 1) ecological ḥanīn (feelings of nostalgia and yearning) accessed at the aṭlāl (ruins); 2) the figure of the ecological native and iii the “ecoambiguity,” to use Karen Thornber’s term, that complicates it; and 3) the creation of al- makān–al-matāh (the wandering place), Adūnīs’s coinage that I adopt here to refer to a literary space created through the movement of texts and their authors. This space provides access to otherwise inaccessible geographies by framing them as translocal or universal. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments viii A note on conventions xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Ecological Ḥanīn at the Aṭlāl 19 I. The Cry of Ḥanīn 28 II. The Aṭlāl as a Meeting Point for Past, Present, and Future 44 III. Palestinian and Israeli Co-Presence in Palestinian Literature 49 IV. Palestinian and Israeli Co-Presence in Israeli Hebrew Literature 57 V. Crowded Aṭlāl 65 VI. Ḥanīn, Interrupted 72 VII. Conclusion 76 Chapter 2: The Figure of the “Ecological Native” in the Desert Literature of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula 78 I. The Covenant of the Amāna 84 II. The Figure of the Ecological Native in the Wilderness of the Desert 102 III. Women and Gazelles 126 IV. Conclusion 135 Chapter 3: The Figure of the “Ecological Native” in Spaces of Cultivated Nature 138 I. Palestinian Pastoralism 141 II. The Figure of the Fallāḥ/a as Ecological Native 154 III. Ecoambiguous Natives 170 IV. Ṣumūd in the Wilderness and in the Courtroom 181 v V. Palestinian Cosmic Pastoralism 189 VI. Conclusion 195 Chapter 4: Lost Landscapes Found in The Wandering Place 197 I. The Translocal and the Universal 200 II. The Space of the Desert in the Arabic Novel 207 III. The Space of Palestine 231 IV. Conclusion 253 Epilogue: Nature Overtakes the City 256 Works Cited 268 vi For my parents, Susie and Ira Blecker. And for Maryam. vii Acknowledgments I am deeply thankful to the three people who oversaw the writing of this dissertation. Foremost among them is William Granara, who has provided guidance and support in untold official and unofficial capacities from the earliest years of my graduate studies. His careful, perceptive reading of my work is evident on every page, from whatever poetry there is to be found in my translations to the soundness of the logic holding my arguments together. Karen Thornber’s scholarship on the environmental humanities has served as a touchstone for me throughout this project. Her advice, feedback, and encouragement showed me the way forward, often before I even realized I was lost. Margaret Litvin gave generously of her time and attention. Her sharp insights reframed my thinking and pointed me to new resources and avenues for exploration. I am grateful to the late Wolfhart Heinrichs, whose training opened the door to the premodern literature and classical Arabic philology that informed much of the framework of this dissertation. On a personal level, his love of animals encouraged me in my belief that the nonhuman world is a subject worthy of seriously attention by students of Arabic literature. Special thanks to Eva Misho and the rest of the NELC staff, past and present, for their help and assistance. I am particularly appreciative of their unfailing attention to details and deadlines. My deepest gratitude to everyone who watched over Maryam with love and patience so I could write in long, uninterrupted stretches. The efforts of my mom and Maryam’s teachers, Jeanne, Joe, Teanna, Courtney, and Debbie, were especially heroic. I would like to acknowledge the remarkable friends who stood beside me during this (at times, seemingly endless) process: Alison Morse, Benjamin Smith, Gina Guddemi, Kate viii VanEmrik, Greg Halaby, and especially my oldest and dearest friend, Natalia Jhaveri. I am grateful for the phone calls, visits, raised glasses, and messages of encouragement over the years. I am thankful to my parents, Ira and Susie Blecker. As far back as I can remember, my dad has always countered any mention of writer’s block on my part with the suggestion that I write about him. In so many ways, I have done just that in the pages that follow, with the caveat that the space he occupies is shared in equal part by my mom. My parents nurtured in me the love of literature and the natural world that is the beating heart of this dissertation. My dad made time to read with me every night until past the age when most of my peers had moved on to other things. And, when I graduated to reading on my own, stealthily devouring books under the covers by flashlight long past bedtime, my mom stood ready with a constant stream of new titles to feed my imagination. Together, the three of us would spend summers visiting state and national parks, as well as other protected “wild” spaces across the United States and beyond. In between searching for bison and scrambling up hillsides, my parents fostered in me a concern for the environment that my scholarly pursuits have further nurtured and complicated. I am grateful to my husband, Khaled Al-Masri, for his thoughtful feedback, his encouragement, and his boundless confidence in me and this project. In 2006, Khaled and I visited a book store in Amman, Jordan. There, he selected a pile of novels and short story collections for me as a gift, among which were works by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Munīf and Ibrāhīm al- Kūnī, two of the authors I discuss in this dissertation. At the time, I struggled through them, paperback dictionary never far from my hand. During that same trip, Khaled and I journeyed to the Ḍānā Biosphere Reserve, Jordan’s largest nature reserve. It was here that I first thought to look into some of the environmental protection programs and initiatives across North Africa and the Middle East, as well as their histories and impact. Which is to say that Khaled was beside me ix even as the first seeds of this dissertation were being sown, several years before the significance of these experiences to my scholarly development and work would begin to come into focus. Always my first reader, ready to serve as critic or cheerleader as needed, this dissertation is stronger for his love and support. Finally, I am thankful in ways I cannot fully put into words to my daughter, Maryam, whose strength, determination, kindness, and bravery guide and inspire me every day. This project began well before she came into this world, but it was her appearance, in all its chaos and joy, that provided the final push I needed to see it through. Everything I’ve written since her birth has been, in one way or another, because of her. x A note on conventions I use the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) system for translating and transliterating Arabic, with the following exceptions: - I use ’ for hamza and ‘ for ‘ayn. - I keep diacritics when transliterating Arabic proper nouns, including author names, and titles of books and articles, with the following exceptions: - For authors writing in English, I use their preferred English spelling for their own names as well as character names.