“That hateful limit” : Narrative distancing and Palestinian subjectivity in the post-sumud fiction of Adania Shibli

AlAmmar, Layla (2022) “That hateful limit” : Narrative distancing and Palestinian subjectivity in the post-sumud fiction of Adania Shibli. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 58 (4). pp. 554-567. ISSN 1744-9855

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Abstract

This article argues that Adania Shibli’s fiction explores the limits of individual and collective Palestinian subjectivity in order to emphasize a profound sense of estrangement from representational systems, which strikes at the heart of the redemptive function of postcolonial literature. Through concerted acts of narrative distancing in her novellas, Touch, We Are All Equally Far from Love, and Minor Detail, Shibli pushes the reader into a suspended state of jarring alienation, which results in a foregrounding of tensions between empathy and the ethics of representation. In doing so, these works of fiction become performative of a Palestinian identity that has been evacuated by the processes of postmemory in addition to continued erasure as a result of an ongoing state of coloniality and present-day injustices. The article concludes that Shibli’s fiction hails a new era of Palestinian literature, a post-sumud (steadfastness) sensibility, which is marked by unbearable fragmentation, futility, and melancholic despair.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1208
Subjects:
?? palestinian literaturepostmemoryempathypostcolonial traumaadania shibliethics of representationliterature and literary theory ??
ID Code:
174161
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
04 Aug 2022 12:55
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 22:51