Between complicity and subversion: Body politics in Palestinian national narrative

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 102, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 747-772

  Amireh, Amal ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33644748469     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-102-4-747     Document Type: Review

References (82)

1. According to Sharif Kanaana, legends are "narratives, tales, or stories set in familiar locations in the recent or historical past. They are circulated by word of mouth in contemporary society and focus on a single episode related to a socially important and controversial theme. The episode is usually presented as true but miraculous, bizarre or otherwise improbable. It exists in multiple forms and is usually recreated with every new telling" (Kanaana, "The Role of Women in Intifada Legends," in Annelies Moors, Toine Van Teeffelen, Sharif Kanaana, and Ilham Abu Ghazaleh, eds.. Discourse and Palestine: Power, Text, and Context [Amsterdam: Het Sphinsus, 1994], 153-61; quotation from 153). This particular legend appeared in printed form, which gave it a factual dimension. I would like to thank Margaret Yocom for drawing my attention to the "legend" as a narrative genre relevant to this essay
2. Virginia Quirke, "Politics-Middle East: Women Look at Their Contribution to the Palestinian Uprising," November 8, 2000, online at www.oneworld.net (June 17, 2002)
3. A year earlier a similar scare was reported in Egyptian newspapers. For a discussion of that episode see Mai Ghoussoub, "Chewing Gum, Insatiable Women and Foreign Enemies: Male Fears and the Arab Media," in Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb, eds., Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Saqui Books, 2000), 227-35
4. See Al-Ayyam and Al-Quds newspapers in May, June 1997
5. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1998), 26-67
6. There is now a growing body of literature on gender and nationalism. One interesting question concerns the relation between feminism and nationalism in colonial and postcolonial societies. There are two schools: One argues for the compatibility of the two, showing how in many third world countries, feminism and nationalism were linked in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that nationalism and feminism fed each other (see Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World [London: Zed Books, 1986])
7. The other argues that things have changed since, and now there is tension between the two, with nationalism trying to subsume feminism and thus no longer playing a progressive role vis-à-vis women's liberation (see Valentine M. Moghadam, ed., Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993]
8. and Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies [London: Zed Books, 1994]). This dichotomy between good nationalism versus bad nationalism, I believe, is in need of serious interrogation
9. For feminist scholarship on gender and nationalism see Nira Yuval-Davis, "Gender and Nation," in Rick Wilford and Robert L. Miller, eds., Women, Ethnicity, and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition (London: Routledge, 1998), 23-35
10. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, and Minoo Moallem, eds., Between Woman and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Feminism, and the State (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)
11. Wilford and Miller, Women, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
12. For a collection that includes significant discussion of masculinity in relation to gender and nationalism, see Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1992)
13. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 57
14. Timothy Brennan, "The National Longing for Form," in Homi Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), 44-70; quotation from 48
15. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991 [1983]), 27, 36
16. Mary Layoun argues that nationalism is constructed as a narrative (Mary N. Layoun, "Telling Spaces: Palestinian Women and the Engendering of National Narratives," in Parker, Russo, Sommer, and Yaeger, Nationalisms and Sexualities, 407-23; argument on 411)
17. For other discussions of the connection between nationalism and narrative, see Bhabha, Nation and Narration
18. Aijaz Ahmad contested this claim because it homogenizes third world literature and denies issues of class, race, and gender that are strongly present in this literature. While Ahmad makes a compelling argument, Jameson's emphasis on the centrality of nationalism to third world literature is valid because often in this literature issues of race, gender, and class are entangled with the nationalist question. See "Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the 'National Allegory," in Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (London: Verso, 1992), 95-122
19. Edward Said, "Permission to Narrate," in The Edward Said Reader, ed. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage, 2000), 243-66
20. Anton Shammas quoted in Ammiel Alcalay, "1001 Palestinian Nights," Village Voice, March 18, 2002
21. Leela Gandhi, Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 152
22. I have written about this tendency in Amireh, "Framing Nawal El-Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a Transnational World," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26.1: 315-428
23. Yuval-Davis, "Gender and Nation," 29
24. Abu Salma, "I Love You More," in Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 97
25. Mahmoud Darwish, "A Lover from Palestine," in The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Resistance Poetry, comp. and trans. A. M. Elmessiri (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1982), 127
26. 'Abd al-Latif'Aql, "Love Palestinian Style," in Elmessiri, The Palestinian Wedding, 117-19. This poem has become one of the popular songs by the Palestinian group Sabreen
27. Muhammad al As'ad, "A Song," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 121
28. Samira 'Azzam, "Bread of Sacrifice," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 389-99
29. For a similar discussion of the wedding as a familiar trope in Palestinian culture, see Mary N. Layoun, Wedded to the Land? Gender, Boundaries, and Nationalism in Crisis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 147-48
30. Abu Salma, "My Country on Partition Day," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 95. Because of the idea that the martyr is a groom whose funeral is his wedding procession a Palestinian mother is urged to ululate in celebration upon hearing the news of the martyrdom of her son
31. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)
32. Issam Nassar, "Khamsoun 'aman 'ala a-Nakba: I'adet al tafkeer fee kitabat tareekh al hadath" [Fifty years since the catastrophe: Rethinking the writing of history], online at the Palestinian Ministry of Information Web site, www.pna.org (January 12, 2003)
33. According to the "Brief History of Palestine: Al Nakba wal Sumud," Al-Nakha is the central event. It is the beginning of the narrative; online at www.pna.org (March 18, 2002)
34. This is not to say that Palestinian nationalism was created by 1948 or by the conflict with Zionism in general. As Muhammad Y. Muslin explains, "What Zionism did was provide the Palestinians with a focus for their national struggle. . . . The origins and growth of Palestinian nationalism as a distinctive force. . . can be found in the inter-Arab processes" (delineated in Muslin, Origins of Palestinian Nationalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 217)
35. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 195
36. The Palestinian groom in Michele Khleife's film Wedding in Galilee is impotent. The bride takes her own virginity to avoid scandal. Mary Layoun, in her otherwise insightful discussion of the film, does not recognize the lack of male virility as a trope in Palestinian culture (Layoun, "A Guest at the Wedding: Honor, Memory, and (National) Desire in Michel Khleife's Wedding in Galilee," in Kaplan, Alarcón, and Moallem, Between Woman and Nation, 92-107)
37. Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (Boulder, CO: Three Continents Press, 1997), 21
38. Julie Peteet, "Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence," in Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb, Imagined Masculinities, 103-26
39. Kanafani, Men in the Sun, 27, 24-25
40. th Anniversary of the Palestinian Catastrophe Al Nakba," online at the Palestine Ministry of InformationWeb site, www.pna.com (January 12, 2003)
41. For the centrality of armed struggle to Palestinian national identity, see Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997)
42. Kawar, Daughters of Palestine, 47
43. See also the chapter "Feday: Rebirth and Resistance" in Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 209-39. The full text of the Palestine National Anthem can be found at www.national-anthems.net (April 12, 2003)
44. Palestine Liberation Organization Charter (in Arabic); online at www.palestineaffairs council.org (March 15, 2002)
45. For a discussion of the concerns the Palestinian women's movement have with the male definition of Palestinian identity as articulated by the PLO charter, see Islah Jad, Penny Johnson, and Rita Giacaman, "Transit Citizens: Gender and Citizenship under the Palestinian Authority," in Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 143-44
46. Mahmoud Darwish, "Mahmoud Darwish's Speech at the Occasion of the Nakba" (1998), online at the Palestine Ministry of Information Web site, www.pna.com (January 11, 2003)
47. Waleed al Halees, "Days in the Life of a Palestinian Boy," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 163
48. Nira Yuval-Davis, "The Jewish Collectivity and National Reproduction in Israel," in Khamsin Collective, Women in the Middle East (London: Zed Books, 1987), 61
49. Quoted in Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 30
50. Tawfiq Zayyad, "Here We Shall Stay," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 227-28
51. Darwish, "Identity Card," in John Mikhail Asfour, ed. and trans.. When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945-1987 (Ontario: Cormorant Books, 1988), 199
52. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the fertility rate in the West Bank and Gaza (excluding East Jerusalem) in 1996 was 6.24. It is 5.61 for the West Bank and 7.44 for Gaza (Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, The Demographic Survey in the West Bank and Gaza: Preliminary Report [Ramallah: Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 1996])
53. Jad, Johnson, and Giacaman, "Transient Citizens," 153
54. Yuval-Davis notes, "A common Palestinian saying a few years ago, for instance, was: "The Israelis beat us at the borders but we beat them in the bedrooms'" (Yuval-Davis, "Gender and Nation," 31)
55. The most recent version of this "procreation machismo" goes like this: "Sharon is losing the demographic war with the Palestinians. What do you expect people locked-up in their homes to do, especially when the power is out and no TV?" (Ghassan Abdallah, "Palestinian Humor: Daily Life under Israeli Occupation," online at www.miftah.org [January 16, 2003])
56. Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns (London: Al Saqui Books, 1985), 174, 126
57. Ghareeb 'Asqalani, "Hunger," in Jayyusi, Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, 381- 88
58. Liana Badr, The Eye of the Mirror, trans. Samira Kawar (London: Garnet Publishing, 1994), 264
59. Geraldine Heng and Janadus Devan, "State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore," in Parker, Russo, Sommer, and Yaeger, Nationalisms and Sexualities, 349
60. This emphasis on women as producers of the nation or the collectivity is not restricted to Islamic ideology. See Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation. Also it has been a bone of contention between feminists and Marxists in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas (Moghadam, Gender and National Identity, 5)
61. "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)," (August 18, 1988), online at MidEast Web Historical Documents, www.mideastweb.org/history.htm (January 14, 2003)
62. Bassam Jarrar, "Women's Rights or a Clash of Civilization?" Al-Ayyam, March 3, 1998
63. Much has been written about the Palestinian women's role in the first intifada. See Islah Abdul Jawwad, "The Evolution of the Political Role of the Palestinian Women's Movement in the Uprising," in The Palestinians: New Direction s, ed. Michael C. Hudson (Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1990), 63-76
64. Rita Giacaman, "Palestinian Women in the Uprising: From Followers to Leaders?" Journal of Refugees Studies 2.1 (1989): 1-10
65. Joost R. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
66. Suha Sabbagh, ed., Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998)
67. Palestinian Ministry of Information, "The Palestinian Declaration of Independence" (1988; in Arabic), online at the Palestinian Ministry of Information Web site, www.pna. org (January 14, 2003)
68. For examples of other stories or legends about the role of women in the intifada, see Kanaana, "The Role of Women in Intifada Legends." Even when celebrating the heroism of the woman, these legends contain an embarassing if not humiliating moment for the young man. Suha Sabbagh, "Palestinian Women Writers and the Intifada," Social Text 22 (1989): 62-78; quotation from 62
69. See Salim Tamari, "Eyeless in Judea: Israel's Strategy of Collaborators and Forgeries," Middle East Report 164-65 (1990): 39-45. But what concerns me here is the hysteria regarding this phenomenon during the intifada and its cultural meanings and ramifications for gender relations
70. Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 88-90
71. Edward Said, Afler the Last Sky (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986), 271
72. Sahar Khalifeh, Bab el-Saha [The door of the courtyard] (Beirut: Dar al-Adaab, 1990), 63
73. Peteet, "Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance," 122 n 11
74. Rema Hammami, "Women, the Hijab and the Intifada," Middle East Report 20.3-4 (1990): 24-31
75. Peteet, "Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance," 121
76. Khalifeh, Bab el-Saha, 219
77. For a rare critical discussion of the Palestinian unforgiving attitude toward "fallen women collaborators," see Muhammad Bayyoumi, Thaherat Tasfeyat al 'Umala': at-Tareekh wa Juthour al-Azma [The phenomenon of liquidating collaborators: The history and roots of the crisis] (Palestine: al-Hay'a al-Khayreya, 1994), 157-59- The author criticizes Palestinian culture from a nationalist-Muslim perspective, not a feminist one
78. Layoun, "A Guest at the Wedding," 94-95
79. Jamal Bannoura, Intifada (Ramallah: Dar Al-Shorouq, 1998), 143
80. Sahar Khalifeh, Al-Miraih [The inheritance] (Beirut: Dar al-Adaab, 1997), 316
81. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 54
82. Rima Hamami and Eileen Kuttab, "The Palestinian Women's Movement: Strategies Towards Freedom and Democracy," News from Within 15.4 (1999): 1-7