Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity

Abstract

Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity is a groundbreaking response to the continuous attempts at silencing the Palestinian narratives. Inspired by Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Tahrir Hamdi breaks away from the imposed silences, to motivate intellectuals in the so-called Third World to engage the silences. The book’s title provides an intriguing synchronization of the very imagining of Palestine. The very phenomenon of imagining is intricately and inevitably linked to the discourses of resistance in all its different forms. Moving from critical theorization, Hamdi addresses resistant discourses from the context of occupied Palestine, beginning with the contributions of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani and others and ending with Naji Al-Ali’s drawings on the wall. To widen the cause, Hamdi has intentionally shifted from the works of Palestinian writers, such as Mourid Barghouti, to those who advocate solidarity for the Palestinians. More importantly, the shift from poetry and novels to writing on the wall signifies and enriches different forms of resistance alongside the process of imagination – an imagination that entails recovering all the constituencies of the nation. Every aspect of Palestinian culture has been involved in the process of imagination, ranging from works of literature to science, songs, and art. In so doing, Hamdi assures the importance of recovering the lost culture of occupied Palestine as a top priority that would lead to the process of decolonization and the liberation of the nation and its discourses. Hamdi’s book imagines Palestine within the context of the post-1948 catastrophe, or “Nakba,” an imagining that entails reconfiguring or reformulating the nation after the catastrophic ethnic cleansing. All Palestinians deeply believe in their right to return to their motherland, which was taken by the Zionist colonial entity. Hamdi goes on to argue that such a return is best characterized by the old key that appears on the book’s cover; the key represents the Palestinians as the real owners of occupied Palestine. However, Hamdi points out the absence of Palestine from the map of the world, except for a few parts that had existed geographically. She questions the name “West Bank.” Hamdi calls on the Palestinians to think about the implication of such a controversial naming of the actual eastern part of historic Palestine. This is what Mourid Barghouti calls “verbicide” (2–3).