New Book: Cohen, Literary Imagination in Israel-Palestine

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Aryeh

Cohen, Hella Bloom. The Literary Imagination in Israel-Palestine. Orientalism, Poetry, and Biopolitics, Postcolonialism and Religions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

literary imagination

This book presents a cutting-edge critical analysis of the trope of miscegenation and its biopolitical implications in contemporary Palestinian and Israeli literature, poetry, and discourse. The relationship between nationalism and demographics are examined through the narrative and poetic intrigue of intimacy between Arabs and Jews, drawing from a range of theoretical perspectives, including public sphere theory, orientalism, and critical race studies. Revisiting the controversial Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre, who championed miscegenation in his revisionary history of Brazil, the book deploys a comparative investigation of Palestinian and Israeli writers’ preoccupation with the mixed romance. Author Hella Bloom Cohen offers new interpretations of works by Mahmoud Darwish, A.B. Yehoshua, Orly Castel-Bloom, Nathalie Handal, and Rula Jebreal, among others.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction to Israeli-Palestinian Literature and Postcolonial Studies: An Uneasy Relationship
2. Reading Freyre in the Holy Land
3. “The Synthetic Principle”: Darwish’s “Rita”
4. “Intimate Histories”: Internal Miscegenation in A. B. Yehoshua’s A Late Divorce
5. “Mixed Syndicate”: Poetics of Fabric under Occupation
6. Reading past Freyre: Disembodied Miscegenation
Notes
Bibliography
Index

HELLA BLOOM COHEN is an assistant professor of English at St. Catherine University, USA. She previously held a visiting assistant professorship at Elon University, and has published on material culture and global literature.

New Article: Sazzad, Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry as Sumud

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Aryeh

Sazzad, Rehnuma. “Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry as Sumud. Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Occupation and Subjugation.” Interventions (early view; online first).

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1079493

Abstract

This essay makes explicit the connection between Palestinian resistance to Israeli control and the principle of sumud. Drawing on Raja Shehadeh and Ismail Shammout, I define this concept and show its strategic role in the resistance. Arguably, critics have identified Darwish’s constant pursuit of aesthetics and his deep commitment to the Palestinian cause without linking them to the narrative of sumud. I suggest that his contribution to the narrative is built on the ground that his aggressors lack the intrinsic tie to the land, which his people perennially possess. Whereas the Israelis produce mythical claims on the land, the indigenous Palestinians are like their olive trees – unswervingly there. In particular, the creativity of the people makes present their absented homeland. Darwish’s exile renders the second phenomenon more comprehensible. Even though he was physically removed from his homeland at a young age, his imagination remained implanted there throughout his life, which resulted in a rich oeuvre.