Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity
Tahrir Hamdi2023 Winner of 12th Palestine Book Award
All national identities are somewhat fluid, held together by collective beliefs & practices as much as official territory & borders. In the context of the Palestinians, whose national status in so many instances remains unresolved, the articulation & ‘imagination’ of national identity is particularly urgent.This book explores the ways that Palestinian intellectuals, artists, activists & ordinary citizens ‘imagine’ their homeland, examining the works of key Palestinian thinkers & writers such as Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Ghassan Kanafani & Naji Al Ali.
Deploying Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘Imagined Communities’ & Edward Soja’s theory of ‘Third Space’, Tahrir Hamdi argues that the imaginative construction of Palestine is a key element in the Palestinians’ ongoing struggle. An interdisciplinary work drawing upon critical theory, postcolonial studies & literary analysis, this book will be of interest to students & scholars of Palestine & Middle East studies & Arabic literature.
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Tahrir Hamdi is Professor of Decolonial Studies at Arab Open University, Jordan. She is on the editorial board of several prestigious journals & has published widely on resistance literature.