New Book: Cohen, Literary Imagination in Israel-Palestine

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

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

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.

 

 

ToC: Holy Land Studies 13.1 (2014)

1  Nakba Memoricide: Genocide Studies and the Zionist/Israeli Genocide of Palestine

Haifa Rashed, Dr Damien Short and Professor John Docker

25  Liberating Methodologies and Nakba Studies: Palestinian History and Memory from below as Sites of Lifelong Learning

Professor Nur Masalha 

71  Pedagogy under Siege in Palestine: Insights from Paulo Freire

Najwa Silwadi and Professor Peter Mayo

89  Resisting Colonialism through Nature: An Ecopostcolonial Reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s Selected Poems

Dr Hamoud Yahya Ahmed and and Dr Ruzy Suliza Hashim

Book Reviews

• 109 Palestinian Cultural Production
  Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). xvi+ 223 pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-88862-2. Hardback

  Professor Bart Moore-Gilbert

• 111 Challenges to Zionism: Christian Perspectives
  Carole Monica Burnett (ed.), Zionism Through Christian Lenses: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Promised Land (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2013). 201 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1610977715. Paperback

  Dr Mark Braverman

• 114 Philosophical Reflections on Zionism and Jewish Thought
  Eyal Chowers, The Political Philosophy of Zionism: Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 274 pp. ISBN: 9781107005945. Hardback

  Professor Oren Ben-Dor

• 117  Instrumentalising the Bible
  Nur Masalha, The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (London: Acumen, 2013). 295 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1844656578. Hardback

  Ramona Wadi

  Books Received

• 121 Citation