Suchergebnisse

Negotiating human conditions is an emblematic critical impetus of diaspora informed by multiple cultural possibilities practiced through the creation of multiple spaces that cross the realm of the 'self' to that of the 'other'. It offers a locale to cross from the oppressed 'self' to an understanding of an oppressor 'other'. Yet, diasporic negotiation is politically involved in the most responsible manner; it engages the contextual social realities in order to enable creative possibilities for overcoming the logic of the politics altogether. It invites a kind of political involvement that assures the 'situatedness of the ethical' in a framework of moral humanistic realisations. The realisation of diasporic negotiations is dialogically engaged in manners that will give birth to new possibilities for human togetherness. In this essay, I trace the signs of diasporic negotiations of politics, love and trauma in Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin by focusing on the Diasporic identity of Amal (the central character). I consider the intersections between diaspora, dislocation of identity and the creation of negotiating spaces that qualify an 'epistemology of Diaspora' against essentialised and ethnocentric construction of realities. I argue that Abulhawa creates diasporic spaces and immense moral scenes to transcend a particular stance of politics via transcending love in opposition to suffering and tribulation. I contend that Abulhawa's conceptualisation of Diasporic negotiations enables her to depict and gauge two extreme human sentiments: love and trauma, yet, without yielding or compromising the right of just resistance and dissent.Keywords: Diaspora, humanism, Trauma, identity, negotiating difference, and 'Otherness'

This paper reviews the concept and the corpus of English literature and its development in the context of culture and the academy from the 18th Century onwards. I argue that the category of literature is a 'liquid' notion best understood as a form of 'social action' (after Eagleton) relevant to wider social, cultural, and political contexts that produce and 'consume' it. In the academy, through extending the notion of the institution to a wider social and political context, literature could be best understood as an 'institutional reality' reflecting perceived relations of power. Deeming literature as an ideological tribute is crucially important to arguing against the monolithic and essentialist (Anglo-American literary tradition) as embodying a universal value that still prevail in post-colonial institutions. This argument helps conceptualise and interrogate the cultural constructs embodied in English literature, in general, and the English canonical texts, in particular; it also makes it possible to refute the claim that literature transcends its local boundaries and nationalist sentiments to articulate the universal concerns and values of all people. In my approach to these claims and assumptions, I resort to a critical narrative review to the 'story' of the English literature in cultural, political, social, geographical and institutional contexts. In academy, particularly in post-colonial settings, I conclude that the adopted literary tradition reflects a matrix of relations of power and institutional affiliations. Such conceptualisation of literature helps to challenge the claim that English literature largely embodies a humanistic enterprise of universal values and uniform human experience.