Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination

Book excerpt: Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination explores the cultural memory of al-Nakba (1948 Israeli independence, or The Catastrophe as it is known in Palestine) and its significance to the modern Palestinian imagination. Ihab Saloul addresses central concepts to debates over identity such as nostalgia and trauma, notions of home and forced travel, and geopolitical continuity of loss of place. Through an integrated method of close narrative and discursive analysis of diverse literary texts, films, and personal narratives, this study offers an analytical account of the preservation of cultural optimism in the face of the ongoing catastrophe, as well as the ways in which aesthetics and politics intersect in contemporary Palestinian culture.