Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories [Paperback]

Catastrophe and Exile?in the Modern Palestinian Imagination explores the cultural memory of al-Nakba (1948 Israeli independence, or The Catastrophe as it is known in Palestine) and its significance to the modern Palestinian imagination. Ihab Saloul addresses central concepts to debates over identity such as nostalgia and trauma, notions of home and forced travel, and geopolitical continuity of loss of place. Through an integrated method of close narrative and discursive analysis of diverse literary texts, films, and personal narratives, this study offers an analytical account of the preservation of cultural optimism in the face of the ongoing catastrophe, as well as the ways in which aesthetics and politics intersect in contemporary Palestinian culture.
Introduction Nostalgic Memory and Palestinian Identification Traveling Theory: On the Balconies of Our Houses in Exile Exilic Narrativity: Audiovisual Storytelling and Memory The Performance of Catastrophe and Palestinian Identity Mankoub: Narrative Fragments of an Ongoing Catastrophe Afterword: Telling Memories in a Time of Catastrophe

'The Palestinians' expulsion from their homeland is a piece of history we cannot revisit too often. In this compelling book, Saloul shows how narrative intersects with the memory of exile in a uniquely reflexive type of cultural analysis, transforming the catastrophe of loss into an empowerment to speak, imagine, and reclaim.' - Rey Chow, author of Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture

The Palestinian al-Nakba is an on-going reality rather than solely a past event. In this book, memories and everyday life are textually interwoven, as Saloul skillfully explores how the Palestinian past and present unite. Saloul's is the authentic voice of the insider, and a refugee living in a state of exile. Exile, as he shows, is both a metaphor and a practice, and through fine cultural analysis, the concept's multiple meanings are revealãe