Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.2.0111
Ahmad Qabaha, Abdel Karim Daraghmeh
Inspired by the tenets of postcolonial ecocriticism, theories of settler colonialism, and indigenous ecologies, this study examines the connection Mahmoud Darwish establishes between the colonized people and natural elements in his poem “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man” while making reference to Native American oral traditions and Chief Seattle’s speech. This article argues that Darwish’s poem expresses an inclusive perspective that requires appreciation of the interconnection between the national and ecological struggle of the colonized. The analysis in this article is premised on Darwish’s dictum in this poem that the resistance of the colonized against loss of homeland is also a resistance against loss of nature; that is, Darwish seems to argue that the ecological ethos is inherent in the resistance of colonized people against settler colonialism. In “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man,” Darwish expresses consciousness of a history of colonial domination that aggressively exploitated natural resources and destroyed natural habitations that natives had nurtured and depended on for their subsistence over the years. In other words, the poet represents the central ecocritical argument that environmental issues are integral to the existence of colonized peoples.
{"title":"A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man”","authors":"Ahmad Qabaha, Abdel Karim Daraghmeh","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.2.0111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.2.0111","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by the tenets of postcolonial ecocriticism, theories of settler colonialism, and indigenous ecologies, this study examines the connection Mahmoud Darwish establishes between the colonized people and natural elements in his poem “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man” while making reference to Native American oral traditions and Chief Seattle’s speech. This article argues that Darwish’s poem expresses an inclusive perspective that requires appreciation of the interconnection between the national and ecological struggle of the colonized. The analysis in this article is premised on Darwish’s dictum in this poem that the resistance of the colonized against loss of homeland is also a resistance against loss of nature; that is, Darwish seems to argue that the ecological ethos is inherent in the resistance of colonized people against settler colonialism. In “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man,” Darwish expresses consciousness of a history of colonial domination that aggressively exploitated natural resources and destroyed natural habitations that natives had nurtured and depended on for their subsistence over the years. In other words, the poet represents the central ecocritical argument that environmental issues are integral to the existence of colonized peoples.","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66270725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0264
Bansidhar Pradhan
The indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip by the Israeli war machine, during July–August 2014, marked yet another phase in the long-drawn-out Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. The large-scale death, destruction, and displacement on the Palestinian side underlined a particular pattern of Israeli State behavior vis-à-vis the Palestinians in Gaza. This article argues that the 2014 operation, code named “Operation Protective Edge,” was but a part of Israel’s long-term, well-thought-out, and consistently pursued policy of crushing Palestinian resistance and eliminating Palestinian identity and nationalism.
{"title":"OCCUPATION VS. RESISTANCE","authors":"Bansidhar Pradhan","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0264","url":null,"abstract":"The indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip by the Israeli war machine, during July–August 2014, marked yet another phase in the long-drawn-out Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. The large-scale death, destruction, and displacement on the Palestinian side underlined a particular pattern of Israeli State behavior vis-à-vis the Palestinians in Gaza. This article argues that the 2014 operation, code named “Operation Protective Edge,” was but a part of Israel’s long-term, well-thought-out, and consistently pursued policy of crushing Palestinian resistance and eliminating Palestinian identity and nationalism.","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136257025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.17265/1539-8080/2014.03.008
Dima, Tahboub
This paper presents war literature as a distinctive genre intertwined with various schools of social thought and literary criticism including nationalism, social realism, and commitment. It puts forward a definition of war literature and the history of its emergence. It also attempts to explore some gray areas in war literature, relating to its artistic and creative modes of writing, its biases and prejudices. It questions the principles of authenticity and representation in this literary genre, addressing the contestation between reality and fiction, aesthetics and ideology, which dominate the discourse of postcolonial studies. The paper chooses Palestinian literature as a model case study, discussing the effects of the Sartrean school of commitment, Arabized in the concept of Adab al-Iltizam, on the creativity and individuality of writers. It discusses some of the general characteristics and themes of Palestinian literature, moving from early war literature (1948) to more contemporary works (1990s-), and presents how some writers manage to walk the thin line between literary representation and national commitment and succeed, without falling into the quagmire of propaganda or mundanity, to depict a national cause still subjected to colonialism in a postcolonial era.
{"title":"The Cutting Edge between Nationalistic Commitment (Iltizam) and Literary Compulsion (Ilzam) in Palestinian Literature","authors":"Dima, Tahboub","doi":"10.17265/1539-8080/2014.03.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17265/1539-8080/2014.03.008","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents war literature as a distinctive genre intertwined with various schools of social thought and literary criticism including nationalism, social realism, and commitment. It puts forward a definition of war literature and the history of its emergence. It also attempts to explore some gray areas in war literature, relating to its artistic and creative modes of writing, its biases and prejudices. It questions the principles of authenticity and representation in this literary genre, addressing the contestation between reality and fiction, aesthetics and ideology, which dominate the discourse of postcolonial studies. The paper chooses Palestinian literature as a model case study, discussing the effects of the Sartrean school of commitment, Arabized in the concept of Adab al-Iltizam, on the creativity and individuality of writers. It discusses some of the general characteristics and themes of Palestinian literature, moving from early war literature (1948) to more contemporary works (1990s-), and presents how some writers manage to walk the thin line between literary representation and national commitment and succeed, without falling into the quagmire of propaganda or mundanity, to depict a national cause still subjected to colonialism in a postcolonial era.","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67488781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.1.0061
Mohammed A. Bamyeh
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of Postcolonial Charisma","authors":"Mohammed A. Bamyeh","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.1.0061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.1.0061","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66270601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0212
M. Khalifa
This article discusses the traces of two Early Modern Arab figures dramatized in The Moor’s Account (2014) by Laila Lalami and Leo Africanus (1992) by Amin Maalouf. Marginality, nomadism, and humanism are dramatized in the lives of Mustafa Al-Zammouri/Estebanico a black Arab from Zammour taken as a slave and sold to a Spanish conquistador who joined the Narváez Expedition and Leo Africanus/Alhassan Alwazzan who was captured by Spanish pirates and sent as a gift to Pope Leo X (1475–1521) around the same time. The lives of those two Early Modern Arab travelers provide the flesh for a bicultural humanism that avoids jingoistic nationalism that is centered around ideas of the canon that excludes narratives and texts from “the other world.” Bicultural humanism, I argue, is a unique space where both Maalouf and Lalami exercise their talent of recovering the lives of the silenced other and in doing so, challenge Orientalist stereotypes by creating dynamic narratives of Arabs and Muslims as complex nomad characters not essentialized violent multitudes enraged at Western modernity.
{"title":"Amphibious storytellers in Leo Africanus and The Moor’s Account","authors":"M. Khalifa","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0212","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the traces of two Early Modern Arab figures dramatized in The Moor’s Account (2014) by Laila Lalami and Leo Africanus (1992) by Amin Maalouf. Marginality, nomadism, and humanism are dramatized in the lives of Mustafa Al-Zammouri/Estebanico a black Arab from Zammour taken as a slave and sold to a Spanish conquistador who joined the Narváez Expedition and Leo Africanus/Alhassan Alwazzan who was captured by Spanish pirates and sent as a gift to Pope Leo X (1475–1521) around the same time. The lives of those two Early Modern Arab travelers provide the flesh for a bicultural humanism that avoids jingoistic nationalism that is centered around ideas of the canon that excludes narratives and texts from “the other world.” Bicultural humanism, I argue, is a unique space where both Maalouf and Lalami exercise their talent of recovering the lives of the silenced other and in doing so, challenge Orientalist stereotypes by creating dynamic narratives of Arabs and Muslims as complex nomad characters not essentialized violent multitudes enraged at Western modernity.","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66270895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0249
Haneen Al-Zboon
{"title":"Hamdi, Tahrir. Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity","authors":"Haneen Al-Zboon","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0249","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66271017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0191
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar, Wadha R. Alathba
Qatar has been heavily critiqued for its alleged inability to be hospitable to fans and tourists from different cultural, gender, and religious backgrounds (Todman, 2022). It has been damagingly portrayed as an “unwelcoming and closed conservative country” (Al-Ansari & Zahirovic, 2021: 203). This article examines Qatar’s paradoxical positioning of hospitality. It draws on the Derridean notion of hospitality to conceptualize the Qatari cultural and sociopolitical context as being conditioned by “hostipitality,” a term that Derrida coined to explain the contradictory nature of hospitality, “a word which carries its own contradiction incorporated into it, a Latin word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite, ‘hostility’” (2000b: 3). This article, therefore, utilizes Derrida’s theory of “hostipitality” to deconstruct the Western mindset of liberalism and the alleged unconditional respect for all. Two examples are used, the Qatari World Cup and Souq Waqif, to further contextualize and problematize the paradoxical positionality of Qatari hospitality. How can applying the Derridean hostipitality help negotiate Qatar’s controversial hospitality positioning? How do the cases of the World Cup and Souq Waqif exemplify the paradoxical aspect of conditioned hospitality? Additionally, the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment is used to situate the paradox and help reconcile hospitality with hostility to form an emerging conception of negotiated conditioned hospitality. This study invokes the paradox of the “Ship of Theseus” to respond to the Derridean contradictory notion of hostipitality and further problematize Qatar’s positionality of hospitality.
{"title":"A Derridean approach to Qatar’s paradox of hospitality","authors":"Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar, Wadha R. Alathba","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0191","url":null,"abstract":"Qatar has been heavily critiqued for its alleged inability to be hospitable to fans and tourists from different cultural, gender, and religious backgrounds (Todman, 2022). It has been damagingly portrayed as an “unwelcoming and closed conservative country” (Al-Ansari & Zahirovic, 2021: 203). This article examines Qatar’s paradoxical positioning of hospitality. It draws on the Derridean notion of hospitality to conceptualize the Qatari cultural and sociopolitical context as being conditioned by “hostipitality,” a term that Derrida coined to explain the contradictory nature of hospitality, “a word which carries its own contradiction incorporated into it, a Latin word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite, ‘hostility’” (2000b: 3). This article, therefore, utilizes Derrida’s theory of “hostipitality” to deconstruct the Western mindset of liberalism and the alleged unconditional respect for all. Two examples are used, the Qatari World Cup and Souq Waqif, to further contextualize and problematize the paradoxical positionality of Qatari hospitality. How can applying the Derridean hostipitality help negotiate Qatar’s controversial hospitality positioning? How do the cases of the World Cup and Souq Waqif exemplify the paradoxical aspect of conditioned hospitality? Additionally, the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment is used to situate the paradox and help reconcile hospitality with hostility to form an emerging conception of negotiated conditioned hospitality. This study invokes the paradox of the “Ship of Theseus” to respond to the Derridean contradictory notion of hostipitality and further problematize Qatar’s positionality of hospitality.","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66270841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0302
{"title":"Imagining Palestine: From The Margin to the Center","authors":"","doi":"10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.45.4.0302","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44343,"journal":{"name":"Arab Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136257020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}