Code-Switching, Memory and the (Im)possibility of Return in Ghada Karmi’s Return: A Palestinian Memoir

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of code-switching in recreating the place, Palestine, that contemporary Palestinian memoirist Ghada Karmi was expelled from by providing a close analysis of the code-switched expressions and the plurality of voices and perspectives that this linguistic and cultural phenomenon imply in her work Return: A Palestinian Memoir. While code-switching is a feature of diasporic writings, Karmi uses many code-switched expressions related to food, clothes, honorific titles and the historical event of Nakba so as to linguistically return to Palestine. However, Karmi’s engagement with Palestine from past to present, her exploration of the political transformation of Palestine and her inability to feel connected to today’s Palestine raises the spectre of co-existence between Palestinians and Israelis if Palestinian refugees return physically to Palestine. This possibility of co-existence between the two warring nations is further highlighted by Karmi’s use of Hebrew code-switched words, which exist alongside code-switched words related to precolonial Palestine.