Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Brown, Sophia (2017) Forms of Exile: Contemporary Palestinian Life Writing. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/63878/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Forms of Exile Contemporary Palestinian Life Writing Sophia Brown Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Postcolonial Studies Total Word Count: 99,888 School of English University of Kent 2017 THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of contemporary exilic Palestinian life writing in English. Attentive to the ongoing nature of Palestinian dispossession since 1948, it focuses on how exile is narrated and the ways in which it informs models of selfhood within a context of conflict and loss. This involves adopting a framework of settler colonialism in order to understand the conflict. Broadly speaking, the thesis conceives of Palestinian life writing as a form of testimony posing an urgent and necessary counternarrative to the hegemony of the Israeli discourse on Palestine/Israel. The thesis examines life writing by different generations of Palestinians, from those who experienced the Nakba of 1948, to those born as second-generation Palestinians in their parents’ adopted homelands. It does not limit itself to examining the work of those at a geographical distance from Palestine but also looks at narratives by those who live, or have lived, under Israeli occupation. This has required paying particular attention to the difference between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ exile. Recognising that Palestinians who live in Palestine/Israel still sometimes articulate their experience as a form of exiling is an integral aspect of this research. The thesis argues that while the ongoing conflict impacts the identity formation and experiences of all the writers under consideration, nonetheless each author is inevitably guided by distinct geographies, temporalities, imaginings and frames of reference, which ultimately determine their relationship to Palestine and what it means to consider themselves exiled. I am, therefore, particularly mindful of the plurality of exilic experience, even while ideas of communality are still hugely important. The thesis consists of three author-led chapters – on Edward Said, Ghada Karmi and Rema Hammami – followed by a final chapter on anthologised life 2 writing, which looks at the work of seven authors. Raising questions of form and how one deals with both the commonality and complexity of exile, this final chapter aims to show recent developments in English-language Palestinian life writing. By demonstrating the distinct ways in which exiled Palestinians relate to Palestine/Israel, this thesis seeks to contribute in particular towards two areas of study that have, for the most part, failed to engage substantially enough with Palestine (or, indeed, with each other): postcolonial and auto/biography studies. These subfields of cultural criticism and their wealth of scholarship therefore provide the necessary tools for this research, but they are also held to account for the relative lack of attention paid to Palestine and the extant nature of the conflict. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that exilic Palestinian life writing sheds its own light on matters of great import to postcolonial and auto/biography studies – matters such as statelessness, belonging, testimony, selfhood and self- representation – and that there are intersecting aesthetic and ethical reasons for ensuring the visibility of Palestine within these areas of study. This thesis follows the latest (8th) edition of the MLA referencing style. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis owes most to the guidance and encouragement of Professor Caroline Rooney, who has made my time as a doctoral student so rewarding. Her wise and perceptive feedback at every stage has been instrumental in helping me form my ideas. She has also made it possible for me to publish, undertake research trips and participate in conferences. I could not have asked for more in a supervisor and I feel very fortunate. Sincere thanks must also go to Bashir Abu-Manneh, who has provided valuable insight and perspective. I have been lucky to receive academic advice (and often moral support) from many brilliant people during my doctoral studies. In particular: Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek, Hannah Boast, Norbert Bugeja, Joe Farag, Cynthia Franklin, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Claire Gallien, Anna Hartnell, Alice Hazard, Jade Munslow Ong, Nora Parr and Irene Fernandez Ramos. Special thanks are due to Barbara Franchi, who has always been so generous with her advice and support. On my research trips to Palestine/Israel, I met many kind people, especially at the University of Birzeit, where I spent a term in 2013. I want to thank in particular Ashjan Ashour, Rema Hammami and Islah Jad. I also want to thank the organisers of the International Conference of Critical Geography 2015 in Ramallah and East Jerusalem, which brought together so many inspiring scholars and generated ideas and knowledge I still call on. Thanks also to the people I met at the Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah, The Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem (especially Ahmad!) and the Kenyon Institute in Sheikh Jarrah. I thank my Arabic teacher, Nizar Taha Hajj Ahmad, for his knowledge and encouragement, as well as always going above and beyond to share material that he thought I would appreciate and benefit from. 4 To my friends Hazel Driver, Elena Hall, Georgie Hayden and Tatyana Guveli, for always helping me get perspective on things. Particular thanks to Jo Maxwell, who has been nothing short of amazing, offering boundless support and wisdom. I am lucky to call you my friend. To my parents, Ulla and Jonathan Brown, for their inexhaustible love and kindness. You have helped shape the person I am, and whatever qualities I have, I owe to you. To my sister Anna Brown, for her unstinting encouragement and genuine interest in my work; you have made everything so much easier. To my grandmother, Elina Mikkonen: kiitos mummi kaikesta tuesta ja huolenpidosta. Se on merkinnyt minulle paljon. To Jonathan Liew, for his exceptional patience and good humour. I’m sure this is a relatively routine admission for a PhD student to make to their partner but I am sincerely grateful for everything. For being the best subeditor I could have hoped for and for giving me his time, even when under his own substantial work pressures and writing deadlines, I am beyond thankful. Finally, I owe a great deal to Bart Moore-Gilbert. Attending Bart’s MA courses at Goldsmiths over ten years ago opened my eyes to Palestinian life writing (and more) and changed the way I look at the world. Subsequently, Bart became a friend and mentor and I will always be so grateful to him for his encouragement, his guidance – especially when I was navigating a return to academia and unsure of how to proceed – and most of all, for his belief in me. For all the ongoing conversations cut short by his death in 2015 I continue to feel a sense of loss, but I am and will always be deeply appreciative of his work and everything he did for me. This thesis is therefore dedicated to him. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Thesis Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 8 Internal and External Exile 15 Settler Colonialism and Postcolonial Studies 21 Palestinian Life Writing and Auto/biography Studies 31 Outline of this Thesis 46 Chapter One – ‘There are things to be learned’: Edward Said’s Sublimation of Exile 53 Exile and the Intellectual 55 Exile and Palestine 59 Irreconcilability 61 After the Last Sky 64 Actual and Metaphorical Exile 68 Defensive Nationalism 73 Intertextuality 78 Out of Place 90 Illness and Out of Place 93 Being Out of Place: Becoming Palestinian 100 Out of Place: ‘A form of freedom’ 111 Conclusion 114 Chapter Two – The Primacy of Place: Exile and Return in the Work of Ghada Karmi 119 Place and Space 122 In Search of Fatima 126 The Loss of Home: Trauma and its Repercussions 127 Palestine: ‘The tortured love affair that waited inescapably for me’ 139 ‘The source, the origin, the very place’: Returning to Palestine 145 Return 152 Compelled to Return 153 ‘This denuded Palestine’: Returning ‘home’ 159 6 Disconnections and Despondency 163 Conclusion 173 Chapter Three – Returning to Internal Exile: Rema Hammami’s Negotiation of Inside and Outside 177 East Jerusalem 185 Qalandiya Checkpoint 203 Jaffa 218 Conclusion 233 Chapter Four – The Commonality of Exile: Anthologised Palestinian Life Writing 237 Anthologising Palestinian Life Writing 239 Disrupted Belonging: Narrating Internal Exile 251 Raja Shehadeh 251 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Sarah Ihmoud 258 Reaching for Palestine: The Denial of Return 267 Rana Barakat 268 Randa Jarrar 274 Ties to Palestine: The Inheritance of Exile 280 Mischa Hiller 281 Najla Said 288 Conclusion 296 Conclusion 299 Bibliography 315 ! 7 INTRODUCTION There are many different kinds of Palestinian experience, which cannot all be assembled into one. One would therefore have to write parallel histories of the communities in Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, and so on.