Summary
Scholar whose analysis (2007) of the competing heroic and tragic narratives of Palestinian nationalism Bernard uses in Chapter 5 of Rhetorics of Belonging to read Sahar Khalifeh’s The End of Spring.
Details
- Khalili argues the foundational narrative of Palestinian nationalism is the ‘heroic liberationist narrative’, part of third-world liberationist thought, but since the defeat in Lebanon the idea of national liberation has competed with a ‘tragic discourse’ emphasizing the suffering and victimization of Palestinian individuals (2007, 21, 34, as presented PDF p.139).
- The two narratives are differently gendered: the liberationist hero is a valiant, virile man, while the protagonist of the ‘trauma drama’ is ‘a suffering woman carrying a limp child’ (2007, 37, quoted PDF p.139).
- Khalili is also cited among left critics of human rights discourse for the argument that victimization language transforms the Palestinian individual into a ‘victim subject’ (2007, 36–37) defined by suffering, and ‘smuggles in a depoliticization of action and agency’ (2007, 38, quoted PDF p.140); Bernard reads Khalifeh’s redeployment of that language as a strategic appropriation instead (PDF p.140).