Edward Said's Concept of Exile: Identity and Cultural Migration in the Middle East

Description

Edward Said was an exiled individual – the ‘out of place’ Palestinian in the USA. He saw the consequences of the 1948 dismantling of Palestine and the establishment of Israel through his parents' experiences and through the collective statelessness imposed on the Palestinians. His own personal experience of exile intensified when he moved to the USA. Yet despite the significance of exile to Said’s life and work, no scholarship has yet focused on this theme in his writings or traced its ongoing applicability and importance. Rehnuma Sazzad fulfils this pressing need in literary and cultural research by providing the first comprehensive definition of Said's theory of exile and reveals its legacy in relation to five Middle Eastern intellectuals: Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine. By selecting a novelist, poet, feminist, filmmaker and essayist, Sazzad shows how, for Said, the ideal intellectual is a metaphorical exile, demonstrating a willing homelessness. This book creates a portrait of redoubtable intellectual practice and in the twenty-first-century context, when the frontiers of belonging are being constantly redrawn, Edward Said’s Concept of Exile adds new depths to discourses of resistance, home and identity. Cover Author bio Endorsement Title page Copyright information Dedication Table of contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Exile and Intellectual Practice Said and the executive view of exile Said’s explorations of exile 2 Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals The reflection of Said’s ideas in contemporary Arab literature and film The Arab artists and exilic intellectual practice 3 Exile as Resistance Resistance against supremacist ideologies Resistance as an emancipatory project 4 The Place of Writing in Exile Adornian model: ‘Happy with the idea of unhappiness’ Auerbachian model: cultivating ‘the pleasures of exile’ ‘The last Jewish intellectual’: Saidian legacy 5 Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Nationalism and voyage in: postcolonialism in perspective Postmodernism and the exilic stance on established narratives Contrapuntal rather than postcolonial or postmodern criticism Conclusion Notes 2 Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals 5 Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Bibliography Books Journal, magazine and newspaper articles Websites Audiovisual materials Index