This book analyses two literary experiences (American and Palestinian) at different historical moments (interwar modernist period and post-1948, respectively) around two notions of “expatriation” and “exile,” and through a “contrapuntal reading.” The author is invested in drawing a clear distinction between the two experiences of expatriation and exile. Exile, he argues, in the Palestinian case especially, is a “political catastrophe”; it is banishment by a colonial power. Unlike expatriation (“a choice of a foreign land over one’s own”), exile is a “political rather than an artistic concept,” forced rather than voluntary. While exile can be emancipatory, it is always an “unwelcome loss.” In addition to its historical dimension, exile also entails a different perception of return than does expatriation, one that does not involve the choice available to expatriates. He evokes expatriates as quintessentially American, and particularly intellectuals and artists seeking a space of creativity and social dissidence in the experience of living away from home. At the heart of both literary discourses, however, is a preoccupation with “home”, “belonging” “identity”, “language”, “homecoming”. The author considers different conceptions of departures (voluntary, involuntary) in the work of Malcolm Cowley and Fawaz Turki as well as of mobility in the work of Ernest Hemingway and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, where centrifugal movement is seen as one leading to freedom and centripetal movements as a desire for return. He also looks at notions of “voyage out” and “voyage in” in the work of Gertrude Stein and Edward Said respectively. For Said, “voyage in” leads to identification with his people and “the (re-) construction of a Palestinian national narrative;” for Stein “voyage out” is necessary for creating a “personal narrative out of the collective national narrative.” In the final chapter, he addresses the question of return (“roots”, “routes”) in the work of Thomas Wolfe and Mourid Bargouthi.

العنوان

Ahmad Rasmi Qabaha

الناشر

Palgrave

بلد الناشر

المملكة المتحدة

نوع المنشور

مطبوع فقط

المجلد

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السنة

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الصفحات

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