https://e-journal.unair.ac.id/LAKON Lakon: Jurnal Kajian Sastra dan Budaya 2020, Vol. 9(2), 52-61 DOI: 10.20473/lakon.v9i2.26348 FEATURES OF RESISTANCE LITERATURE IN THE PALESTINIAN LITERATURE: GHASSAN KANAFANI’S WORKS AS EXAMPLES Heba A. S. Wadi Program Studi Magister Kajian Sastra dan Budaya Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Universitas Airlangga Address: Jl. Dharmawangsa Dalam Selatan, Kampus B, Surabaya, Indonesia 60286 E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This paper attempts to explore resistance in Palestinian literature and its impacts on various aspects of colonized people's lives and interpretations in the field of literature. The paper focuses on Ghassan Kanafani's perspectives for the simple reason that he is recognized as the one who laid the foundation of resistance literature in Palestine. Ghassan Kanafani (1941-2008) was one of the lofty figures who believed in the importance of the word and transformed it into a resistance weapon. Kanafani is a well-known contemporary Palestinian writer and genius author who made a great contribution to the literature of Palestinian resistance against colonialism and the Israeli occupation. He loved his country with all of his heart. As the results, his novels served as a luminous flame to awaken the subconscious and remind the patriots of the Palestinians or all the Arabs of their usurped rights. Therefore, his novels and short stories also spilled like thunder on the Zionist forces. They stirred human emotions and shocked the minds of the international community. Keywords: Resistance-Literature, Palestinian Literature, Ghassan Kanafani, Features, Land Right INTRODUCTION Palestinian people, the word, literature, and resistance culture are Resistance culture and its weapon in response, resistance literature have always confrontation, and arousal of been a weapon in the hand of the motivation. oppressed people whose countries are invaded and their history is This article indicates that obliterated, and which is the last Ghassan's resistance expressions can castle to protect their heritage, be interpreted in terms of positive history, and culture from obliteration self-representation and negative self- and distortion, in defense of their representation with various existence and their right to live in references (i.e., Palestine, freedom and dignity, and the Palestinians, Israelis, or Zionist mobilization of the masses and urging occupation). As in the works of them to resist. Thus, local powers are Ghassan Kanafani, he revealed that challenged to manage a balance the author's political status between preserving traditions and influenced their speech of resistance maintaining the pace of development, and their perceptions of themselves and also dealing with globalization in relation to Palestine, the (Riyanto, 2017). In the life of the ©2020 Heba A. S. Wadi. Published in Lakon: Jurnal Kajian Sastra dan Budaya. Published by Universitas Airlangga. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. 52 Heba A. S. Wadi Palestinians, and the Israeli Definitions of Resistance aggression (Kilpatrick, 1976). Literature: Therefore, the current article Edward Said’s interpretations attempts to address the following in his study of Intellectuals in the inquiries: Post-Colonial World are widely influential, and his critical analysis of 1. As a Palestinian author, how the idea of intellectual resistance does Ghassan Kanafani characterize holds much more importance and his resistance in his writing? meaning than many practicing theorists in the field (Said, 1986). 2. Do Ghassan Kanafani's According to Said’s theory of cultural political beliefs and life experiences resistance, the intellectual's role in shape his idea of resistance and his public life is important because the self-perception of Palestine, intellectual should reflect "liberation, Palestinians, and the Israeli enlightenment, and the experiences of occupation? the oppressed, those who are incapable of being represented, and those who Resistance was born with are powerless." (Said & Barsamian, people and has remained with them 2003). since the inception of creation because they are resistant creatures Researchers have come up by nature and innate to everything with multiple definitions that define that they consider an element that the literature of resistance, the works against them, whether this following concepts are some element belongs to their definitions of resistance literature: environment, or it is from other different people or groups. Barbara Harlow in Resistance Literature points out that the Whereas language was and literature which emerges under or as still is a tool for communication and a result of any kind of colonization or confrontation; Man used it as an oppression falls under the category of influential component of self-defense. ‘resistance literature’ (Harlow, 1996). We find in history many evidences of Resistance literature was born as a its influence, which later turned into result of and as an answer to the literature, poetry, rhetoric, and attempts made by Western Europe others. Therefore, it is possible to say and the United States to dominate that the literature of resistance is an economically and politically not only expression through language that has the lands of other nations but their become a text and a platform for culture and beliefs as well (Harlow, defending a person in his battle with 1987). the aggressor other, with the multiplicity and diversity of this other It may be every word, text, poem, and its characteristics. Therefore, the novel, article, song, cultural, subject does not deviate from this intellectual and literary position formative historical path. facing the occupier, the oppressor, and his aides. This occupier may not only manifest 53 Lakon: Jurnal Kajian Sastra dan Budaya Volume 9. No. 2, November 2020 itself in the external enemy, Biography of Ghassan Kanafani: through military occupations, displacement, demolition of Ghassan Kanafani is homes, and the killing of people considered one of the most important through the bullet and the shell, writers of the resistance literature in but may be formed by Palestine, and his importance as an confronting the injustice inflicted activist writer may have led to his on the individual, and the group, assassination in Beirut in 1972, by an authority, ruler, or class according to the orders of Golda Meir, that crushes a society. the former prime minister of the Zionist enemy. Ghassan's literature The literature of resistance is and literary production was always considered a literature of interacting with his life and the lives awareness and urging to of people, and in everything he wrote overcome popular crises, wars he depicted a reality he lived or was and oppression, and it tries to affected by. In his novel, Returning To mobilize the desire for jihad, self- Haifa, he described the journey of the awareness and identity, and deals citizens of Haifa as they moved to with the themes of heroism in the Acre, and he was aware of this, and he face of aggression, injustice and was still a child sitting, watching and occupation. The mechanisms of listening. The Land of Sad Oranges resistance differ in different eras tells the story of his family's journey among writers, some of them from Acre. The death of Bed No. 12, take the story or the novel as a which was inspired by his stay in the tool for calling for resistance, and hospital, due to illness. Then, Dora of some of them use poetry as a his fictional works, Men in the Sun, in means of urging defense. As which he talked about Palestinian poetry was more widespread and men who were pushed by oppression influential in stirring up to try to sneak into Kuwait inside an motivation, as it occupied a wide empty water tank to end their lives space in the concept of Resistance on its borders with Iraq, the burning Literature. sun, which was widely known, and later turned into a cinematic work. It is literature that talks about Ghassan was an artist whose eye was unknown and known collective clear and delicate. and individual heroisms against invaders and dictators, and the Ghassan Kanafani was born in social dimension in resistance Acre on April 9, 1936, and lived his literature is one of the important childhood in Jaffa, from which he was dimensions that are added to forced to flee, as thousands were both the human and national displaced after the 1948 Nakba, and dimension, and the literature of he began his working life as an art resistance focuses on education teacher in the schools of contemporary popular struggle the Palestinian refugee agency (Jayyusi, 1992). UNRWA. He moved to Kuwait in 1956, where he worked as a teacher of drawing and sports in its official schools. Meanwhile, he worked in 54 Heba A. S. Wadi journalism and the beginnings of his and always engaged as if the stage literary works appeared. had chosen Ghassan and her children to raise the banner of resistance In 1969, he founded Al-Hadaf literature that witnessed the Nakba, newspaper, which he remained accompanied the journey of loss and editor-in-chief until the day of his witnessed the birth of the revolution. death on July 8, 1972, after a mine exploded in his car, killing 17-year- METHOD old daughter of his sister Lamis Negm, along with him. His books This study deployed a include: Death of Bed 12 (1961), Land qualitative approach to explore the of Sad Oranges (1963), A World Not themes of resistance literature in the for Us (1965), Of Men and Rifles works of Kanafani as a Palestinian (1968), Um saad (1969), Men under literature. The paper is concerned the sun (1963), and If You Were a with interpretations of Ghassan Horse . .'" (1961). In the unsparing Kanafani works (G. Kanafani, 1966; G clarity of his writing, Kanafani offers Kanafani, 1968, 1969, 2000), besides the reader a gritty look at the his novels also the concept of agonized world of Palestine and the resistance literature in his book adjoining Middle East (Abd Al-Hadi, (Literature of Resistance in Occupied 1990).