Inter-textual Nation: Novel Paradigms of Palestinian Community

How are a people imagined as a nation? How might Palestinian fiction re-think the parameters for nation-ness?

The nation-state as the dominant model of national community, in both literature and politics, is imagined as a sovereign and bordered space that takes on collective meaning through linear (historical) time. In order to be what Benedict Anderson called an ‘imagined national community’ (Anderson 1991), a nation must style itself through the writing of a retrospective narrative, set within a no-less retrospective understanding of its territorial borders. The nation exists as a bordered and historical entity; as a sort of fish tank, whose corners fill up with ‘homogeneous empty time’.

It is this model of the nation that Anderson sees imagined through fiction. In Imagined Communities, he wrote that ‘[T]he novel is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation’ (1991: 21, 26). In the national novel, he showed characters are imagined as connected, because they inhabit the same national space in national time. However, this way of imagining comes undone in the Palestinian novel, which must imagine a nation that is neither limited nor sovereign, and which gathers myriad timelines and trajectories into a single model.

Nevertheless, Palestinian authors have been using the techniques of the novel to write about their nation for more than half a century. In this research, therefore, I read back from the novels to understand how the model community is being imagined. Examining the techniques used for relating individuals, locations, and periods of time (for example post-Oslo Ramallah, Civil War era camps in Lebanon, and society in 17th-century Galilee under Dhaer al-Umar), I identified a model, the ‘nation constellation,’ that fit the diverse modes and means of writing the Palestinian experience. This model provided a tentative answer to the question posed by Edward Said: ‘[I]s there any place that fits us, together with our accumulated memories and experiences?’ (Said and Mohr 1986: 152). The nation constellation, crafted in Palestinian novels through diverse techniques of inter-textuality, offers a model of the nation that is multi-cited, flexible and open-ended. It is a model that understands the centrality of place in the Palestinian experience, without the imaginative limitations of sovereignty or linearity. For the works analysed, the nation is not conceived of as a bounded or linear concept, but conjured as a constellation, where nodes or stars are connected through the imaginary processes of nation building. These create a set of inter-linked spaces, times and structures of power that challenge the singular authority of the nation-state system as a political construct, and form the basis for imagining a Palestinian national community.

The results of the research were put before workshops before attempting to publish a model of Palestinian community; this enabled feedback and insights from Palestinian writers, readers and critics to be incorporated. Preliminary findings were workshopped and presented in English and Arabic, thanks to the language training made available at the British Institute. The preliminary results were presented during the 12 months of my CBRL fellowship at three conferences, a CBRL-Ifpo joint lecture series and through a series of seminars at Bethlehem University. Additional material was collected and worked into the research to broaden project conclusions. Research findings were first presented in Amman, during a formal lecture on the concept of ‘nation constellation’ and its possible implications. The author, Ibrahim Nasrallah, who was born in 1954 in Wihdat, Amman, and whose works form the core of the research project, was an honoured guest at the event. One of Palestine’s best known contemporary writers, Nasrallah’s presence was also a chance to begin a series of interviews that would feed back into the project and form the basis for further work on the author. Informal meetings with local and international literary critics, as well as with academics in and around Amman, showed initial support for, and interest in, seeing the model published. Mapping of the literary community and responses to the project reinforced not only the legitimacy of the findings, but also the need for publication.

Across the Jordan River, another series of conferences led to further public engagement and continued to affirm the place for ‘nation constellation’ as a model for national imagination. A presentation at the international Benjamin in Palestine conference, co-hosted by Birzeit University and the Sakakini Cultural Centre, tested the theoretical possibilities of the project. The conference began with the idea of the ‘constellation’, a concept developed by the German-Jewish writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), and examined the complex ways it is embodied in the Palestinian context. From plot ‘lines’ that resemble spider webs, to sequences that eschew the linear by developing almost 3D story structures, Palestinian fiction was shown not only to imagine the nation as a constellation, but to imagine the specificities and nuances of the relationships between each of its stars. The nuanced feedback received from these events highlighted the particularly Palestinian contribution to philosophical thinking.

With the focus on giving meaning to national space without delimited territory, Nasrallah’s work was explored alongside the nation’s pre-eminent poet Mahmoud Darwish at a special panel on Palestinian Literature at the Modern Languages Association (MLA) annual conference in Austin, Texas. A paper titled ‘Finding Place in a Paradox: Ibrahim Nasrallah from Present Absence to Eloquent Silence’ explored the relationship between space and language in Arabic literature. An in-depth look at Darwish’s exploration of language as a container for historical meaning gave insights into Nasrallah’s grappling with the form of the national novel as a hegemonic structure that delimits the actions, and even the imagination, of the individual. This expanded the notion of ‘eloquent silence’ and the frequent use of ellipses as a narrative device in Palestinian fiction. It showed how structural elements of the text are used to undermine and expose violent structures, including the structure of language itself. The simultaneous writing and undermining of writing was used as a mechanism for stories (often frame stories) and characters escaping authoritarian structures. Within the notion of the ‘nation constellation’, this broadened the narrative possibilities of the ‘empty’ and ‘silent’ spaces between nodes.

Upon my return to the Kenyon Institute, connections with scholars in Bethlehem lead to an invitation to teach five seminars on Palestinian Literature to students enrolled in that course. Teaching with the theory of the constellation revealed its possibilities as a super-structure for diverse Palestinian texts, as well as its clarity as a concept for thinkers at all levels. Joining, and later founding, an independent Arabic Literature Reading Group in Jerusalem provided me with the first opportunity to explain and express the full concept of the nation constellation in Arabic. As a result of this reading group, I encountered problems with expressing the idea in Arabic, and turned my attention to developing means to make the concept ‘translatable’ between languages. Contacts with local scholars and feedback from a presentation at the 10th annual Palestinian Literature Conference at Bethlehem University resulted in a repository of workarounds for the expression of the theory in Arabic, but more significantly illuminated a productive gap in the field that links literary theory to translation studies. This element of the research will continue to be developed.

Work done during my time as a visiting scholar for CBRL will result in a published article and a combined series of interviews, including a translation project based on conversations with Ibrahim Nasrallah. These will collectively feed into a monograph based on the initial proposed project, Inter-textual Nation: Novel Paradigms of Palestinian Community. This will be the third monograph in English dedicated to Palestinian writing in its original Arabic, and the first to explore notions of Palestinian national identity through the works of Palestinian authors. The final published work will also be among a growing number to propose non-traditional solutions to the problem of the modern state, based on the experience and insights of once ‘peripheral’ locations. It will present a Palestinian framework to challenge and change linear and bounded discourses about the nation, history and phenomenology. Support from CBRL not only allowed for critical language training, but also time to reconnect research with the community upon which it is based, building valuable networks and providing invaluable insights.