Dying for Palestine: Metonymy, Metaphor, and/or Solidarity

Abstract

Through a close reading of several poems by Maḥmūd Darwīsh, this article argues for the critical distinction between the concepts of metaphor and metonymy in Darwīsh’s work, expanding on the claim that in Darwīsh’s poetry, “Palestine endured and became metaphor.” It argues that metonymy, which might be understood as a form of direct replacement, forecloses imaginative possibilities (both poetic and political) in a way that is related to the work of colonial violence. Metaphor, by contrast, represents a form of imaginative work that opens out onto possibilities that are concealed by the literal and is thus structurally similar to the work of solidarity. Metaphor, as deployed by Darwīsh in his poetics, can become a mode of recapturing possibilities from a past that the present has attempted to obliterate. It can thus be read as pointing towards a different sort of future, one that aligns with the struggle for decolonization (more specifically, the decolonization of Palestine). The essay concludes by outlining the critical work that would be receptive to such a poetics as a form of solidarity.