1.Mersal, “Writing on the Threshold.”
2.For an overview of recent debates about world literature, see Damrosch, What Is World Literature?; Casanova, World Republic of Letters; and Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature.”
3.Gunn, “Introduction,” 19.
4.For a broad overview of cultural and political issues involving the Arab diaspora and its relation with the so-called West, see Salhi and Netton, Arab Diaspora.
5.For a historical and critical discussion of Arab Anglophone literature produced worldwide, see Al Maleh, Arab Voices in Diaspora. On the development of the Arab novel in English from its early stages to its most recent examples, see Gana, Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel. For an examination of the post–civil war Anglophone Lebanese novel, see Hout, Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction.
6.The only exception is Nadine Ltaif’s collection Ce que vous ne lirez pas. A selection of poems has been translated into English by Christine Tipper in the collection Journeys. However, the book was published in the spring of 2020 when the chapter on Ltaif had already been completed.
7.On Said’s notion of the contrapuntual, see Culture and Imperialism, 51. For an in-depth and fascinating illustration of Said’s practice of contrapuntual criticism, see Radhakrishnan, Said Dictionary.
8.Ramazani, Transnational Poetics, x.
9.Ramazani, xiii.
10.On the theorization of diaspora from a feminist and poststructuralist perspective, see Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora. On recent developments in diasporic literature and theory, see Shackleton, Diasporic Literature and Theory. For an analysis of diaspora in connection to identity, locality, and religion, see Alfonso, Kokot, and Tölölyan, Diaspora, Identity, and Religion. In Global Diasporas, Cohen has examined the changes the term diaspora has undergone on a global scale. On the theoretical and methodological debates relating to diaspora and transnationalism, see Bauböck and Faist, Diaspora and Transnationalism.
11.On the potential of poetry and the imagination for changing traditional visions of geography, see Dematteis, La geografia come immaginazione.
12.Holzhey, Tension/Spannung, 7.
13.Kuhn, Essential Tension, 227.
14.Lee, “Foreword,” x.
15.Arkoun, Essais sur la pensée islamique, 10, emphasis in the original.
16.My translation from the original French, which reads: “La société musulmane contemporaine est en pleine effervescence révolutionnaire. Pour la comprendre et s’addresser à elle, il importe de s’installer dans sa proper perspective qui est socio-dynamique et dialectique,” 291.
17.Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 70.
18.Said, Reflections on Exile, 145.
19.On the underreppresentation of women as agents in migration and diaspora studies, see Andrijasevich, Migration, Agency and Citizenship. See also Boyd, “Immigrant Women in Canada” and “Family and Personal Networks.” On the increasing vulnerability of migrant women to structural inequality, see Boyd and Pikkov, “Gender Migration, Livelihood, and Entitlements.” On the contribution of feminist theory to migration studies, see, among others, Nawyn, “Gender and Migration.” Among critical works countering the invisibility of women migrants in the arts, see Willis, Toscano, and Nelson, Women and Migration. Ruba Salih has explored the challenging experience of Moroccan women living in-between Morocco and Italy in Gender in Transnationalism.
20.Arendt, Men in Dark Times, ix.
21.Arendt, ix.
22.Arendt, ix.
23.Cooke, Women Write War.
24.Cooke, War’s Other Voices, 27.
25.Ngai, Ugly Affects, 1.
26.Rancière, Disagreement, 99.
27.Hirsch, “What We Need Right Now,” 1779.
28.On the ways in which ordinary people in the Arab region contribute to introduce political change through everyday actions, see Bayat’s Life as Politics.
29.Among the first anthologies that have contributed to map the field of Arab-American literature, see Orfalea and Elmusa, Grape Leaves; Mattawa and Kaldas, Dinazard’s Children; Mattawa and Akash, Post Gibran; and Charara, Inclined to Speak. For an anthology of writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian feminists, see Kadi, Food for Our Grandmothers.
30.For a literary and social analysis of modern Arab American fiction, see Salaita, Arab American Literary Fictions and Modern Arab American Fiction. For a far-reaching exploration of the vast literature produced by Arab émigrés writing in English, see Hassan, Immigrant Narratives. On present-day articulations of US citizenship by Arab American writers and their lasting connections to the land of their ancestors, see Fadda-Conrey’s Contemporary Arab-American Literature. The political engagement of contemporary Arab-American poets and their literary acts of resistance have been explored by Sirène Harb in Articulations of Resistance. For a broad overview of Arab-American aesthetics across different media, see Pickens, Arab American Aesthetics.
31.Romeo, “Racial Evaporations,” 231.
32.Dimock, Wai Chee, “Literature for the Planet,” 174.
1.For more information on Nye’s biography see the Poetry Foundation’s website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye (accessed March 12, 2022).
2.Felski, “Introduction,” 609.
3.For a thorough exploration and critical evaluation of modern and contemporary Palestinian art, see Boullata, Palestinian Art; and Ankory, Palestinian Art. On the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and his relationship to the Palestinian cause, see Mattawa, Mahmoud Darwish. On the living legacy of Mahmoud Darwish’s experimental aesthetics and its impact on the practice of contemporary Palestinian artists, see Rahman, In the Wake of the Poetic. Fadwa Tuqan’s autobiography A Mountainous Journey published in 1990 offers useful insights into her lived experience, poetic work, and political stance.
4.Felski, “Introduction,” 608.
5.Nye, Tender Spot, 60.
6.Nye, 60, emphasis in the original.
7.See Said, Orientalism; and Covering Islam.
8.Hornung and Kohl, Arab American Literature and Culture, 1.
9.De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 612.
10.Nye, Tender Spot, 60.
11.Nye, 31.
12.Nye, 31.
13.Nye, 31.
14.Kaplan and Ross, “Introduction to Everyday Life,” 3.
15.Nye, Tender Spot, 55.
16.Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 27.
17.Diprose, Corporeal Generosity, 151, 102.
18.Nye, Tender Spot, 55.
19.Derrida, among others, has raised questions regarding the media construction of certain incidents as “major events.” See on this, Derrida’s dialogue with Habermas in Philosophy in a Time of Terror.
20.Bonazzi, “Touching Tender Spots,” 17.
21.Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 164.
22.Nye, Tender Spot, 41.
23.Nye, 41.
24.Najmi, “Naomi Shihab Nye’s Aesthetic,” 168.
25.Nye, Tender Spot, 41.
26.See Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, particularly chapter 1.
27.Nye, Tender Spot, 41.
28.Bennett, “Force of Things,” 353–54, emphasis in the original.
29.Nye, Tender Spot, 41.
30.Nye, 42.
31.On this ambiguity, see Marchi “Engaging with Otherness.”
32.See Harb, Arabic Poetics, 202.
33.Gardiner, Critiques of Everyday Life, 35.
34.Gardiner, 208.
35.On magic states and animated objects in the Arabian Nights, see Warner, Stranger Magic.
36.Warner, 5.
37.Nye, Tender Spot, 98–99.
38.As a surname, Flinn is an anglicized version of an Old Gaelic form meaning “son of a red(dish) person.” See the Surname DB, https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Flinn (accessed March 12, 2022).
39.Derrida, Shibboleth, 36
40.Derrida, “Passages,” 377.
41.Derrida, 378.
42.On the Oklahoma City car bomb attack, see Johnston, “At Least 31 Are Dead.”
43.Nye, Words Under the Words, 99.
44.Derrida, Spectres of Marx, 18, emphasis in the original.
45.Nye, Words Under the Words, 112–13.
46.Nye, 112.
47.Mercer and Strom, “Counter Narratives,” 37.
48.Nye, Tender Spot, 112.
49.Mercer and Strom, “Counter Narratives,” 37.
50.See Hass, “How Israel Prevents Palestinian Farmers.” On problems and prospects involving the Palestinian Agricultural Sector, see UNACTAD, Besieged Palestinian Sector.
51.Kurson, “Poet Naomi Shihab Nye.”
52.Nye, Words under the Words, 28.
53.Nye, 28.
54.Nye, 28.
55.Darwish, “Edward Said,” 181–82.
56.Butler, “What Shall We Do,” 48–49.
57.Kerouac, On the Road.
58.For a nuanced and intimate literary biography of Jack Kerouac as a writer struggling to come to terms with his mixed ethnic identity, see Johnson, Voice Is All.
59.Cavarero, Inclinations, 40, 43.
60.Aart, Molini, and Nye, “Poet’s Humble Answers.”
1.For more information on the avant-gardism of the Daughter of the Earth Group, see Hammad, “Other Extremists.” As Hammad explains, the members of the group managed to negotiate their own space of action in opposition to three major forces: the authoritarian state, the Islamists, and Western-funded activism. For a compelling investigation of feminism in Egypt and the broader Muslim world, see, among others, Badran, Feminism in Islam; and Sorbera, “An Invisible and Enduring Presence.”
2.See Mersal’s biography on Arab World Books, https://www.arabworldbooks.com/en/authors/iman-mersal (accessed March 17th, 2022).
3.For an analysis of the poets of the seventies in Egypt, who prepared the ground for the rebellion of the subsequent generation, see Mehrez, “Experimentation and the Institution.”
4.See Fakhreddine, “Prose Poem,” 243–45. As Mersal explains on her blog, her own poetry is more influenced by the Iraqi prose poets of the 1990s, such as Sargon Boulos and Salah Faiq. They had revitalized this poetic form, which had been first inaugurated by Nazik al-Mala’ika together with Mahmoud Matloub, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Ali Ahmad Bakatheer in the first half of the twentieth century. For a discussion of Mersal’s own poetic choices, see Mersal, “S. J. Fowler interviews Iman Mersal.” For a review of al-Mala’ika’s pioneering role in the free verse movement, see Stevens, “Iraqi Woman’s Journey.”
5.Creswell, City of Beginnings, 19.
6.Mattawa, “Introduction,” in These Are Not Oranges, vii.
7.On the turbulent and rough poetry developed in Cairo in the 1990s by the so-called Locusts, see Metwalli, Angry Voices.
8.For a discussion of Edwar El-Kharrat’s experimental work, particularly its rich intertextuality, which deeply influenced the members of the 1990s generation, see Deheuvels et al., Intertextuality in Modern Arabic Literature, particularly 133–48 and 149–60. On El-Kharrat’s modernist revolution and his role as mentor and supporter for a whole generation of young novelists and poets, see Amireh, “Edwar al-Kharrat and the Modernist Revolution.”
9.Warner, “At the Tate Liverpool.”
10.For an in-depth study of the Art and Liberty Group, see Bardouil, Surrealism in Egypt. For an overview of the recent exposition on this transnational artistic group organized at the Tate Museum, see Warner, “At Tate Liverpool,” 28–29.
11.See Gioni et al., Here and Elsewhere.
12.Stanley Moss, back cover of Mersal, These Are Not Oranges.
13.Abu-Lughod, “Egyptian Melodrama,” 116.
14.Mattawa, “Introduction,” ix.
15.Mersal, Mamarr mu‘tim yaṣluh lita‘llum al-raqs, 53.
16.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 20.
17.On the traditional Egyptian shadow theatre, see Amin, “Shadow Theatre.”
18.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 14.
19.Mersal, Mamarr mu‘tim yaṣluh lita‘llum al-raqs, 46.
20.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 14.
21.Bayat, Life as Politics, 142.
22.Mersal, Mamarr mu‘tim yaṣluh lita‘llum al-raqs, 51.
23.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 19.
24.Mersal, 71. This is the original Arabic version of the poem from the collection Jughrāfiyā badīla, 63:
رأسٌ واحدةٌ ترسل إشارات آمرةً إلى كل هده القلوبِ والأطرافِ والأعضاءِ التناسلية
25.Mersal, 71. This is the original Arabic version:
جيلٌ لا يحتاجه أحدٌ
26.Mersal, 72. This is the original Arabic version of the poem from the collection Jughrāfiyā badīla, 53:
،أما عنّي
فأنا أقفُ على أطرافِ أصابعي منذ سنواتٍ، خلفَ شُبّاكه، أتلصّصُ عليه، لكنی
لا أستطيتع متابعةَ الشاشِ التي يتسمَّر ٲمامها
27.Mersal, 72. This is the original Arabic version from Jughrāfiyā badīla, 54:
حيث أنه لم يغادر الكنبة منذ سنين
28.For a selection of works that have drawn attention to the creative spirit and explosion of cultural forms of expression witnessed during and after the 2011 Egyptian revolution, see Mersal “Revolutionary Humor”; Gröndahl, Tahrir Square; Mehrez, Translating Egypt’s Revolution; and Mehrez and Abaza, Arts and the Uprising.
29.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 72.
This is the original Arabic version from Jughrāfiyā badīla, 54:
ولا أتصوّر أن اللّه يرسلُ له الفرينش فرايز هنا كمتعبدٍ تطْعمُهُ الدنيا طعاماً ليس هناك ما هو أشهى .منه ولا أزكى
30.See Ahmed, Politics of Happiness.
31.See Rakha, “This Is Not Literature.”
32.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 59.
This is the original Arabic version from Jughrāfiyā badīla, 9:
لماذا جاءت إلى البلاد الجديدة؟ هذه المومياء؛ موضوع الفُرجة
.ترقد بزينتها في كتّانٍ رماديّ: حياةٌ متخيلةٌ في فترينة متحف
33.On the ways in which Egypt’s ancient pharaonic cultural heritage has been historically perceived, appropriated, and contested both by European colonial and imperial forces and by the nascent Egyptian nation, see Reid, Whose Pharaohs? On the pharaonist movement of the 1920s and the post-1967 rise of pharaonist discourse, see Selim, “New Pharaonism.” On the recent use of the Pharaonic tradition by Coptic social movements in their protests, see El Gendi, “Coptic Commemorative Protests.”
34.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 59.
35.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 10.
36.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 59.
37.Mersal, 59.
38.Ahmed, Politics of Happiness, 152.
39.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 12.
40.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 60.
41.Mersal, 61.
The is the original Arabic version from Jughrāfiyā badīla, 14:
:ما تعلّمتَهُ هنا لا يختلف عمّا تعلّمتَهُ هناك
.القراءةَ كتذكرةِ مرورٍ إلى تغييبِ الواقع
42.Mersal, 62.
This is the original Arabic version from Jughrāfiyā badīla, 17:
.لا شيء جدير بأن تتمرد عليه
.أنت مرْضيٌّ وميتٌ
والحياةٌ من حولكَ تبدو مثل يدٍ رحيمةٍ
أضاءت الغرفةَ لعجوزٍ أعمى
.ليتمكّن من قراءة الماضي
43.Love, Feeling Backward, 147, and Mersal, “Eliminating Diasporic Identities” 1583.
44.Ahmed, 157.
45.Brown, Walled States, 7.
46.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 77.
47.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 83.
48.Brown, Walled States, 33.
49.Gordon, Naked Airport, 13.
50.Gordon, 238.
51.The Ventotene Manifesto, whose full title is For a Free and United Europe: A Draft Manifesto, was completed by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi in 1941 when they were both confined on the island of Ventotene. Its first, clandestine edition was released in 1944 and established “the equal rights of all nations to organize themselves into independent States” as well as the “equal rights of all citizens to participate in the State” and “the value of the spirit of criticism against authoritarian dogmatism.” It further promoted an extensive social, political, and economic reform. See Spinelli and Rossi, Per un’Europa libera e unita. Il manifesto di Ventotene. On the ways in which politicians in Europe have helped promote fear of migrants and a hostile social and political environment, see Malik, “How We All Colluded”; and Trilling, “Irrational Fear of Migrants.”
52.Brown, Walled States, 25.
53.Brown, 42.
54.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 47.
55.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 69.
56.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 47.
57.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 69.
58.Atkinson, “Constructing Italian Africa,” 19.
59.De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 121.
60.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 48.
61.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 69.
62.De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 123, emphasis in the original.
63.Mersal, Jughrāfiyā badīla, 49–50.
64.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 69–70.
65.On the pioneering experience of the Mahjar Group, see Majaj, “Arab-American Literature.” For an interesting discussion of how writers of the mahjar group both participated in and resisted Orientalism, see Hassan, Immigrant Narratives, especially chapter 2. For a social and historical study of emigration, gender, and the middle class in Lebanon (1890–1920), see Khater, Inventing Home. Elizabeth Claire Saylor and Marjorie Stevens have compiled a story map of the involvement of women writers in the Mahjar Group; see “Mapping Women Writers.”
66.See Mersal, “Eliminating Diasporic Identities,” 1584.
67.Mersal, 1583.
68.Ngai, Ugly Feelings, 1.
69.Mersal, “S. J. Fowler Interviews Iman Mersal.”
70.Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 124.
71.Mersal, “Eliminating Diasporic Identities,” 1583. For an anthology collecting both classics and less-known texts produced during the nahḍa in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, see El-Ariss’s bilingual anthology, Arab Renaissance. See also El-Ariss, Trials of Arab Modernity. For a critique of the typical binaries (East/West, modernity/tradition) commonly used to discuss the nahḍa, see Halabi, Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual, particularly chapter 1.
72.Mersal, “S. J. Fowlers Interviews Iman Mersal.”
73.Said, Culture and Imperialism, 6.
74.Said, 6.
75.Lamm, “Seeing Feminism in Exile.”
1.See Gnisci, Nuovo Planetario Italiano, 178–79.
2.Kosic and Triandafyllidou, “Italy,” 185.
3.Kosic and Triandafyllidou, 194.
4.Ceola, Migrazioni narranti, chapter 7, note 165.
5.Boulhanna, “Immigrata,” 178. This and the following translations from Italian to English are mine. This is the original version: “Nebbia, questa mia / È casuale, il mio cammino Eppure sono molto attenta.”
6.Hajdari, Ombra di cane / Hije qeni, 50.
7.Mersal, These Are Not Oranges, 59.
8.Romeo, “Racial Evaporations,” 231.
9.Lakhous, “Maghreb,” 155–87, particularly 157.
10.Sayad, “El-Ghorba,” 166–67.
11.Sayad, 166–67.
12.Boulhanna, “Immigrata,” 178. This is the original version: “Il mio cielo è grigio Alberi e rami spogli Aria gelida, umida.”
13.See Eliot, “Waste Land.”
14.For an introduction of Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory, see Braidotti, Nomadic Theory; on the relation between individual and global nomadism, see D’Andrea, “Neo-Nomadism.”
15.Boulhanna, “Immigrata,” 179. This is the original version: “Triste questa mia vita / Il mio destino che me l’ha scelta.”
16.Eliot, “Waste Land.”
17.Lombardi-Diop, “Postracial/Postcolonial Italy,” 175.
18.Boulhanna, “Africa,” 179. This is the original version: “Grappolo d’uva nera Dolce, calda e vera.”
19.hooks, “Eating the Other,” 380.
20.Boulhanna, 179. This is the original version: “Africa, semplice e sincera Selvaggia, spontanea Vittima della malvagità / Del tormento e della natura.”
21.Boulhanna, 179. The original version is: “E chi ti capisce? / Sei nera e brutta / Sei povera maledetta / Sei l’Africa da rimanere in Africa.”
22.Morrison, Playing in the Dark, x.
23.On the paradoxes, coverups, and hypocrisies of cultural expeditions sponsored by colonial France in the African continent, see Leiris, Phantom Africa.
24.On the persistence of negative representations of Africa in Western media, see Poncian, “Persistence of Western Negative Perceptions”; and Tsikata, “Historical and Contemporary Representation of Africa.” For an examination of the international media coverage of sub-Saharan Africa, see Bunce, Franks, and Paterson, Africa’s Media Image.
25.Morrison, Playing in the Dark, xi.
26.On the representation of tropes of vision, visibility and vocality in postcolonial literature and film, see Moore, Arab, Muslim, Woman. For an analysis of imperial and postcolonial iconographies of Africa, see Landau and Kaspin, Images and Empires.
27.On the visual and material representation of gender, sexuality, and race by colonial powers, see Blanchard, Bancel, Boëtsch, Thomas, Taraud, Sexe, race et colonies. The book has sparked controversy, particularly regarding its unproblematic and morbid reproduction of erotic images of colonial bodies with little or no contextualization and its accumulation of degrading images and reactivation of violence on colonial bodies. On these two critiques, see Schneidermann’s “Un beau livre des viols coloniaux”; and the indignation expressed by le Collectif Cases Rebelles.
28.For a contrapuntal reading of the Black Atlantic with today’s Mediterranean, see Covi and Marchi, “Sweetly Dancing.”
29.Ben-Ghiat and Fuller, Italian Colonialism, 3, emphasis in the original.
30.For a history of Italian colonialism in Africa, see Labanca, Oltremare; see also Labanca, La guerra italiana per la Libia and La guerra d’Etiopia. For a gender-based approach on Italian colonialism, see Stefani, Colonia per maschi. For a critique of the myth of “the good Italian,” see Del Boca, Italiani, brava gente? On the topic of racism in contemporary Italy, see Lombardi-Diop and Giuliani, Bianco e nero; and Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, Postcolonial Italy. For an overview of everyday embarassing gaffes and “minor” misunderstandings as well as of episodes of violent racism in present-day Italy, see the creative works of Komla-Ebri Imbarazzismi and Nuovi Imbarazzismi; Aden, Fra-intendimenti; and Yimer, Va’ Pensiero.
31.See Aden, Fra-intendimenti; Farah, Piccola madre; Ghermandi, Regina di fiori e di perle; Scego, La mia casa è dove sono, Adua, and La linea del colore; and Brioni’s documentary Aulò. For a creative unearthing and remapping of Rome’s denied colonial traces, see Scego and Bianchi, Roma negata. See also the interactive map “Roma imperiale” on “Postcolonial Italy,” https://postcoloniality.com/roma-imperiale (accessed March 19, 2022). For a theoretical engagement with the durable impact of colonial histories on the present, see Stoler, Duress.
32.Cooke, Göknar, and Parker, Mediterranean Passages, xiii.
33.See Contreras, “Lybia.”
34.Bensaad, “Mediterranean Divide,” 56.
35.Bensaad, 52.
36.Adouani, Ṣaḥrā’u al-baḥri/Meerwüste.
37.Bensaad, “Mediterranean Divide,” 59.
38.Generale, “When Migrants Do Not Arrive.”
39.Dal Lago, Non-persone.
40.Butler, Precarious Life, xii–iii.
41.Malette, Kingdom of Sicily, 6.
42.Malette, European Modernity, 92.
43.Malette, 92.
44.Malette, Kingdom of Sicily, 30.
45.See Devet, van Belleghem, and Herrera Tobón, Subjective Atlases.
46.For a biography of Ibn Rushd/Averroes and a reflection on its legacy, see Sonneborn, Averroes; and Campanini, Averroè.
47.Maraini, Ballando con Averroè, 36.
48.Maraini, 36.
49.Maraini, 36.
50.Maraini, 38.
51.Maraini, 37. For a historical reconstruction of the dialectical relationship between Islamic scientific thought and the scientific discoveries in Europe during the Renaissance, see Saliba’s Islamic Science. On the essential contribution of Arab astronomers to the field of astronomy and its influence on Copernicus, see Saliba’s History of Arabic Astronomy.
52.Maraini, Ballando con Averroè, 38.
53.Maraini, 40.
54.See Campanini, Averroè, 113.
55.See Menocal, Ornament of the World, 201.
56.Maraini, Ballando con Averroè, 42.
57.Romeo, “Racial Evaporations,” 231.
58.Merolla and Ponzanesi, Migrant Cartographies.
59.Said, Beginnings.
60.Morrison, Playing in the Dark, ix.
61.Said, Beginnings, 34.
62.Woolf, Room of One’s Own.
1.This and the following translations from French into English are mine.
2.Gauvin, “Introduction,” 10, emphasis in the original.
3.Ltaif, “Écrire pour vivre l’échange,” 82. The original version sounds: “L’arabe reste l’inconscient de mon texte: le rythme qui scande la phrase, la composition musicale du poème. C’est comme chanter en français une langue arabe.”
4.Dupré, “Women’s Writing in Quebec,” 21.
5.See Lalonde, “Speak White”; and Vallières, Nègres blancs d’Amérique. Lalonde’s poem has inspired later revendications. In 1989, Marco Micone wrote a direct response to that poem and published it as “Speak What.” This time, Micone complained about the social and cultural marginalization that writers belonging to the non-Francophone minority were experiencing at the end of the 1980s. During the student contestations of 2012 following the 2008 global economic crisis, the poem underwent another metamorphosis, this time at the hands of Marie-Christine Lemieux-Couture, who wrote “Speak Rich en Tabarnaque.” The poem attacked multinationals, wild capitalism, xenophobia, and political maneuvers aimed at shaping docile and disciplined citizens through terror.
6.For an extensive survey of the literature produced by Native and ethnic authors in Canada, see Kamboureli, Making a Difference.
7.Ireland and Proulx, Textualizing the Immigrant Experience, 2.
8.Some selected poems included in this collection have been recently translated into English by Christine Tipper in the volume Journeys.
9.Mailhot and Nepveu, La poésie québécoise, 10–11.
10.Verduyn, “Perspectives critiques,” 84–85.
11.Carrière, “Des méprises identitaires,” 67.
12.Carrière, 67.
13.Dahab, Voices of Exile, 4.
14.For a fascinating reflection on the possibilities offered by a “history without documents” to historians and artists, see El Shakry, “History without Documents.”
15.Ltaif is not the only artist engaged in creative processes precariously positioned between historical and fictional narration aimed at recreating a missing historical archive or one that has been intentionally destroyed. See, among others, the artistic project The Atlas Group created by Walid Raad to fabricate an alternative, unofficial, and bottom-up archive of the Lebanese Civil War. For critical work that discusses this project, see Nakas, Schmitz, and Raad, Atlas Group. On the use of the imagination to fill-in historical gaps and absences, see Bowen, “This Bridge Called Imagination.” On the presence of contradictions and anxieties, hidden and contested meanings in colonial archives, see Stoler, Along the Archival Grain.
16.The entire section “Exil Andalou, Espagne Novembre 2006” has been translated in English by Christine Tipper in Journeys, 13–27.
17.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 19.
18.Faradj, “‘Guernica’ Connection.”
19.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 100.
20.For more information about Sevilla and the history of its cathedral, see Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sevilla,” https://www.britannica.com/place/Sevilla-Spain (accessed March 20, 2022). On the expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492 and of the Moriscos in 1609, see Kamen, “Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews”; Jónsson, “Expulsion of the Moriscos”; and García-Arenal Rodriguez and Wiegers, Expulsion of the Moriscos.
21.Menocal, Ornament of the World, 271.
22.Menocal, 11. For works that critically analyze the conflicting reconstructions and interpretations of al-Andalus and its myths from a historical perspective, see Akasoy, “Convivencia and Its Discontents”; Fanjul, Al-Andalus; Rubiera and De Epalza, “Al-Andalus”; Calderwood, “Invention of al-Andalus”; and Sardar and Tassin-Kassab, “Reclaiming al-Andalus.”
23.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 21. This is the original French version: “Une tour / et des murs / qui séparent les cultures / entre la cathédrale / somptueuse / tellement écrasante / de catholicité / et la tour arabe / à l’écriture épurée dans le Vieux Séville / dans le Veracruz—certains crimes / pouvaient rester / impunis.”
24.On the ways in which religious ideas produced difference-making in the form of “race,” see Heng, Invention of Race. For an unusually broad study of questions of gender, ethnicity, and religious identity in al-Andalus, see Coope, Most Noble of People. On the complexities of intimate interfaith relations in al-Andalus, see Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines.
25.See Irving, Tales of the Alhambra; and Calderwood, “Invention of al-Andalus.”
26.Calderwood, “Franco’s Hajj,” 1102.
27.For an analysis of how the two historical events were later manipulated and became the basis for the creation of canonical Spanish and French medieval epics staging a Christian vs. Muslim holy war, see Menocal, Ornament of the World, particularly 58 and 71.
28.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 29.
29.See Lewis, “Jami Masjid of Delhi.”
30.Warner, Stranger Magic.
31.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 67. This the original French version: “Tantôt sans voix tantôt / philosophe Sapho / tantôt danseuse du Temple / Ishtar la prostituée sacrée / ou cariatides grecques / Une compagne me suit / Je fais sa rencontre dans divers lieux / Tantôt mère / tantôt soeur.”
32.For an overview of the diatribe concerning temple prostitution in ancient times, see Boudin, Myth of Sacred Prostitution; and Faraone and McClure, Prostitutes and Courtesans.
33.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 69. This is the original French version: “Yamouna n’a pas voulu être choisie / par le Maharajah pour faire partie de son harem / Elle reste collée à Radika et ses autres soeurs / À neuf elles auront la force de l’éléphant / pour combattre l’injustice . . . Dans leur cages dorées / elles vivent un exil.”
34.Ltaif, 73. This is the original French version: “Je suis surprise / comment comprendre / cette offrande / ce désir de se dévoiler / à nous qui venons / d’Occident?”
35.Ltaif, 75.
36.For an in-depth analysis of the belated encounter between nineteenth-century French and British writers and the Orient, see Behdad, Belated Travelers. The lives of the Maharanis in India have been the object of movies and memoirs, which have attempted to reconstruct from an insider’s perspective their experiences of oppression and rebellion. See Devi, Princess Remembers; and Herpreet Kaur, “Rebel Queen.”
37.See Booth, Harem Histories.
38.On this topic, see Elsadda, Gender, Nation, and the Arabic Novel.
39.On this debate, see Vince, “France, Islam and laïcité.”
40.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 36.
41.Simon, Cities in Translation, 147.
42.Abou-Hsab, Le fleuve, 37, my translation.
43.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 79.
44.Ltaif, 82.
45.On the fraught relationship between state-sponsored amnesia and personal commemoration in Lebanon, see Sawalha, Reconstructing Beirut; and Hanssen and Genberg, “Beirut in Memoriam.” On the reconstruction carried out by Solidère’s developers and the popular contestations it provoked, see Makdisi, “Laying Claim to Beirut”; Fricke, “Forever Nearing the Finish Line”; and Larkin, “Reconstructing and Deconstructing Beirut.”
46.Makdisi, 662.
47.Fricke, 171.
48.Makdisi, “Laying Claim to Beirut,” 664.
49.On the recreation of an alternative, unofficial, and bottom-up archive of the civil war, see Raad, Atlas Group.
50.Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tyre.”
51.See Cartwright, “Tyrian Purple.” For a comprehensive history of how the trade of textiles impacted far-flung locations stretching from the Mediterranean basin to the Indian subcontinent, see Phillips, Sea Change.
52.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 91. This is the original French version: “Mais soudain Tyr m’appelle et m’obsède / Elle est vide / Elle est vidée de ses habitants / C’est une ville morte / Ils ont tous fui les bombes ennemies.”
53.Ltaif, 91.
54.Pflitsch and Neuwirth, “Crisis and Memory,” 15.
55.Dahab, “Introduction,” 5, emphasis in the original.
56.Bordeleau, “Andrée Chédid,” 58. This is the original French version: “C’est aussi le paysage de l’enfance, ce paysage qui nous impressionne jusqu’à la mort. Ainsi, quand j’entends un klaxon dans n’importe quel coin du monde, ce sont toutes les rues du Caire qui ressurgissent tout d’un coup.”
57.On the ways in which a buried past of mass murder and violence breeds resentment, promotes impunity, and may open the way to new injustices, see Adam, Hushed Voices.
58.See Hanru and Ferracci, Home Beirut.
59.See Elkhoury, “Le plus beau jour.”
60.For a historical study of the Bourj and its controversial reconstruction project, see Khalaf, Heart of Beirut.
61.Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 39.
62.Hassan, Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions, 79.
63.For an overview of the ways in which Muslim and Western travelers moved mutually across lands and cultures for worship or for thirst of knowledge, see Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore.
64.For an overview on the gender politics at play in colonial ethnography, see Behdad, Belated Travelers.
65.Behdad, 95, 98.
66.Behdad, 24.
67.Hout, “Last Migration,” 144–45.
68.Al-Ali, “On Not Travelling Lightly.”
69.Bordeleau, “Andrée Chédid,” 56.
70.Bordeleau, 58, emphasis in the original.
71.Ltaif, Élégies du Levant, 27.
72.Butler, Frames of War, 59.
73.On the contemporary revival of the “standing by the ruins” trope in postwar Lebanon, see Seigneurie, Standing by the Ruins. On the tensions between memory and forgetfulness in postwar Lebanon, see Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon; and Westmoreland, “Catastrophic Subjectivity.”
74.Brossard, “Au fil de la narration,” 7–8. This is the original French version: “L’album de photos ne me rend pas nostalgique il me stimule, m’incite à observer et à questionner le visible et l’invisible de notre présence au monde. Il faut entretenir notre mémoire comme on entretient un jardin, avec ses racines et son cycle de vie, car en elle se cache en grande partie ce qui constitue notre identité vivante.”
75.Butler, Frames of War, 171.
76.Ltaif, Ce que vous ne lirez pas, 92. This is the original French version: “Voilà que tout est à recommencer, reprendre de zéro, la pelouse, l’herbe, les premières pousses, les tiges, les plantes, et ainsi de suite.”
77.Tuéni, “Beyrouth.”
78.Kadir, Memos for the Besieged City, 94.
79.Ltaif, Ce que vou ne lirez pas, 100–101.
80.Ltaif, “Écrire pour vivre l’échange,” 82. This is the original French version: “Il a été un temps où la désignation ‘écriture migrante’ était nécessaire. Elle nous donnait une voix. Mais cette même désignation a fini par nous enfermer dans une boîte d’où nous trouvons difficile de sortir aujourd’hui.”
1.Rich, Arts of the Possible, 159.
2.Rich, 109.
3.Juvonen and Kolehmainen, Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships.
4.Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 113.
5.Love, Feeling Backward, 24.
6.Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 105.
7.For an in-depth analysis of the (changing) institution of marriage and married life in the Arab world, with a specific focus on Egypt, see El Feki, Sex and the Citadel, particularly chapter 2.
8.Badiou, In Praise of Love, 7.
9.On the tripartite structure of the qaṣīda, see Al-Musawi, Arabic Poetry, 238. For a general discussion of the themes and variations in Umayyad ghazal poetry, see Jacobi, “Theme and Variations.” For modern and contemporary English rewritings of the ghazal form, see Ali, Ravishing Dis-Unities.
10.Al-Musawi, Arabic Poetry, 2–23.
11.Al-Musawi, 18–19.
12.See Poetry Foundation, “Sappho.”
13.Obbink, “Chapter 2.”
14.See Poochigian, “Note on the Text.”
15.For an overview of the London-based exposition, see the Crypt Gallery website, cryptgallery.org/event/radical-love-female-lust/ (accessed March 21, 2022) and Pollman’s review “Lust for Life” in the Art Radar Journal. The classical Arabic poems that inspired the artists can be found in Al-Udhari’s bilingual anthology Classical Poems by Arab Women.
16.Berlant and Edelman, Sex, or the Unbearable, 120.
17.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 11.
18.See Grosz and Probyn, Sexy Bodies, xi.
19.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 40.
20.Al-Massri, 11.
21.On the stickiness produced by certain affects, see Ahmed, “Affective Economies.”
22.Ostle, “Romantic Imagination and the Female Ideal.”
23.Dorigo Ceccato, “Figure of the Lover,” 28.
24.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 11.
25.See Kaltner and Mirza, Bible and the Qur’an, 63.
26.See Corrao, Poeti arabi di Sicilia.
27.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 37.
28.Al-Massri, 39.
29.Aghacy, Masculine Identity, 7, emphasis in the original.
30.Cavarero, Inclinations, 4.
31.Cavarero, 3.
32.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 45.
33.Kilpatrick, “Introduction,” 15.
34.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 17.
35.Cavarero, For More than One Voice, 117.
36.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 19.
37.Al-Massri, 21.
38.Pratt and Rosner, Global and the Intimate, 3.
39.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 50.
40.Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, viii.
41.See Overton, Novel of Female Adultery.
42.Alharthi, Celestial Bodies.
43.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 35.
44.Cavarero, Inclinations, 8.
45.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 95.
46.Al-Massri, 62.
47.Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 105.
48.Smith, “Giorgio Morandi Creates a Universe.”
49.Al-Massri, 27.
50.Ahmed, Politics of Happiness, 59–60.
51.Lorde, Sister Outsider, 87.
52.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 49.
53.Ngai, Ugly Feelings, 27.
54.Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 215–16.
55.See Jayyusi, quoted in al-Musawi, Arabic Poetry, 98.
56.Malti-Douglas, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word, 6.
57.Stewart, Ordinary Affects, 86.
58.Hazm, Ring of the Dove. The treatise illustrates love’s principles, misfortunes, and accidents together with its vileness and virtues. Ibn Hazm’s work has been read as an important Islamic source of courtly love, which had a prolonged and significant impact. In more recent times, the treatise has been accused of racism and misogyny. See Hickman, “Ibn Hazm”; and Fox Jr., “Ring of the Dove.”
59.El Feki, Sex and the Citadel, 55.
60.For critical debates on these novels, see Al-Rasheed, “Economies of Desire”; Qualey, “Layla al-Othman”; and Laachir, “Saudi Women Novelists.”
61.On Yusuf Idris’s short stories, see Allen, Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris, particularly Cobham’s “Sex and Society in Yusuf Idris”; and Malti-Douglas’s “Blindness and Sexuality,” respectively 77–84 and 89–96. On Layla al-Uthman’s short stories, see Adang, Ansari, and Fierro, Accusations of Unbelief in Islam, particularly 360–62. See also Hassan, Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions, 386; and Tijani, Male Dmination, Female Revolt. On Ghada Samman’s poetry, see Homsi Vinson, “Ghada Samman.”
62.Badiou, In Praise of Love, 6.
63.Badiou, 79.
64.Reich, Mass Psychology of Fascism.
65.Reich, 44.
66.Aghacy, Masculine Identity, 9.
67.Mina qtd. in Aghacy, 61.
68.Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 227.
69.Sharabi, Neopatriarchy, 7.
70.Aghacy, Masculine Identity, 94.
71.Naber, Arab America, 9.
72.Baier, Moral Prejudices, 130.
73.On an alternative conceptualization of cultures and forms of kinship as creolized rather than pure, see Covi, “Creolizing Cultures and Kinship.”
74.Love, Feeling Backward, 145.
75.Al-Massri, Red Cherry, 18.
1.See Hammad, Drops of This Story. See also Nathalie Handal’s interview, “Drops of Suheir Hammad.”
2.Allen, Introduction to Arabic Literature.
3.Hartman, “Dreams Deferred,” 64.
4.Hartman, “This Sweet / Sweet Music,” 146. On the cultural influences and political solidarities between African Americans and Arab Americans, see Hartman, Breaking Broken English.
5.Pickens, New Body Politics, 6.
6.On spoken word poetry, see Eleveld, Spoken Word Revolution; Smith and Kraynak, Take the Mic; and Olson, Word Warriors. On dub poetry, see Habekost, Verbal Riddim; and Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, particularly Bucknor’s “Dub Poetry.”
7.Naber, Arab America, 241.
8.Hammad, breaking poems, 35.
9.Reyes, “Suheir Hammad.”
10.Hammad, breaking poems, 11.
11.Hammad, 11.
12.Hammad, 11.
13.Hammad, 13.
14.Hammad, 13.
15.Hammad, 13.
16.Hammad, 14.
17.Hammad, 14.
18.Hammad, 13.
19.Hammad, 15.
20.Hammad, 14.
21.Kadir, “What Does the Comparative Do for Literary History?,” 648.
22.Kadir, 650.
23.Hammad, breaking poems, 14.
24.Johnson, Feminist Difference, 13.
25.Hammad, breaking poems, 20.
26.For a in-depth analysis of Hammad’s indebtedness to Arab popular music icons, see Marchi, In filigrana, particularly the analysis of Hammad’s poem dedicated to the singing Diva Umm Kulthum “bint el-nil” included in the second chapter “Saldature afro-arabe.”
27.See Frishkopf, Music and Media in the Arab World; and Frishkopf, “Tarab in the Mystic Sufi Chant.” For an extensive study of tarab, see Racy, Making Music in the Arab World.
28.For a comprehensive analysis of the formation of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its deep influence on the production and reception of literature and art in the United States, see Smethurst, black art movement; and Bracey, Sanchez, and Smethurst, SOS. For an overview of the vitality and the generative force of the Harlem Renaissance, see Huggins, Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. On the experimental poetry of the Black Mountain poets in the 1940s and 1950s and their strong connections with the Beats, see Dewey, Beyond Maximus; and Olson’s manifesto “Projective Verse,” in which he theorized an improvisational, poem-form approach to poetic composition driven by breath and utterance. On the aesthetics of spontaneity and immediacy of the Beats, see Elkholy, Philosophy of the Beats, particularly chapter 3. For an introduction to the lives and works of the representatives of the Beat Generation as well as for an exploration of its long-overlooked female members, see Tytell, Naked Angels; and Knight, Women of the Beat Generation.
29.Habekost, Verbal Riddim, 96.
30.Hammad, breaking poems, 20.
31.Chakravorty, “Dead That Haunt Anil’s Ghost,” 555.
32.For a more conflicting view on hip-hop and rap music, see Hurt’s documentary film Hip-Hop.
33.Lubin, Geographies of Liberation, 163.
34.Jordan, “Moving towards Home,” 91.
35.Jordan, 92–93.
36.Hammad, breaking poems, 18.
37.Ahmed, Politics of Happiness, 70.
38.For an analysis of the contemporary reappropriation of the “standing by the ruins” topos, particularly in the Lebanese context, see Seigneurie, Standing in the Ruins.
39.Ahmed, Politics of Happiness, 218.
40.Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 72.
41.Hammad, breaking poems, 35.
42.Hammad, 35.
43.See Hoffman-Ladd, “Mysticism and Sexuality.”
44.Hammad, breaking poems, 35.
45.Hammad, 27.
46.See Breeze, “Wife of Bath Speaks.”
47.Hammad, breaking poems, 27.
48.Cavarero, Inclinations, 174.
49.Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass.
50.For an overview of Islamic feminism, see Cooke, Women Claim Islam; and Badran, Feminism in Islam. For specific examples of Islamic feminists’ theorizations and practices, see Mernissi, Islam and Democracy; Wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad; and Khorasani, Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures. See also Lamrabet’s recent works Women in the Qur’an and Femmes et hommes dans les Coran.
51.Djebar, Far from Medina. Anjuli I. Gunaratne and Jill M. Jarvis have curated a fascinating collection of essays on Assia Djebar, which appeared in the journal PMLA in January 2016. See Gunaratne and Jarvis, “Introduction.”
52.Cooke, Women Claim Islam, 65–66.
53.Hammad, ZaatarDiva, 59.
54.Warner, Stranger Magic, 216.
55.Warner, 220.
56.Trías, “Thinking Religion.”
57.Rich, Arts of the Possible, 111.
58.Pickens, New Body Politics, 26.
59.Augé, Future, 56.
60.Lorde, Sister Outsider, 37.
1.See Friedman, “Why Not Compare?,” 758.
2.Samekh, “Neo-Classical Arabic Poets,” 36.
3.Al-Musawi, Islam on the Street, 211.
4.On the experience of the Bauhaus (1919–1933), see Magdalena Droste, bauhaus, 1919–1933; and the bauhaus-archiv, www.bauhaus.de (accessed March 21, 2022).
5.For a critique of conceptualizations of the public space as an ensemble of docile and monitored subjects, see Marchi, “Alchemy of Rawi Hage’s Fiction.”
6.Shohat, Talking Visions, 8.
7.See Koshy, “Minority Cosmopolitanism,” 594.
8.See Sollors, Multilingual America, 2.
9.See Menocal, Ornament of the World, particularly 47 and 78; and Mallette, European Modernity, particularly 170.
10.Mattawa, “Resisting the Lapse into Monologue,” 61.
11.Mattawa, 62.
12.Feminist scholars have written extensively on this complex issue from multiple perspectives. See, among others, Pepicelli, “Rethinking Gender in Arab Nationalism”; Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism”; and Hammad, “Other Extremists,” as well as Mojab and Zia, “Race, Class, and Agency”; Newman, “Spaces of Power”; Rottenberg, Rise of Neoliberal Feminism; Badran, “Understanding Islam, Islamism, and Islamic Feminism”; and Jad, “Islamist Women of Hamas.”
13.See Al-Ali, “On Not Traveling Lightly.”
14.Al-Ali.
15.Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
16.Menocal, Ornament of the World, 24.
17.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Globalectics, 81.
18.Darwish, “Tibaq/Antithesis.”
19.El-Enany, “Preface,” viii.
20.Gallien, “Decolonial Turn in the Humanities,” 28.
21.Cassano, Southern Thought, lii.
22.Said, “Globalizing Literary Studies,” 65.
23.Said, 64.
24.Izzo, “American Studies in Europe,” 187.
25.Johnson, “About This Journal.”
26.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Globalectics, 85.
27.Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature.” For recent theorizations of world literature, see Damrosch, What Is World Literaure?; Casanova, World Republic of Letters; and Moretti, Distant Reading. For a reflection on the challenges of teaching world literature, see Damrosch, Teaching World Literature.
28.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Globalectics, 58.
29.Auerbach, “Philology and Weltliteratur,” 13–14.
30.Auerbach, 15.
31.Monroe qtd. in Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 174.
32.Mufti, Forget English!, 7.
33.Radhakrishnan, “World Literature, by Any Other Name?,” 1398. For other critical views on world literature, see Cooppan, “Ethics of World Literature”; Apter, “Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading”; Burns, Postcolonialism after World Literature; Bhattacharya, Postcolonial Writing; and Cheah, What Is a World?.
34.Hiddleston, “Writing World Literature,” 1388.
35.Cooppan, “Ethics of World Literature,” 38.
36.See Edwards, After the American Century, xv.
37.Edwards, xv.
38.Darwish “Edward Said.” This the original Arabic version:
،لنذهبْ
،لنذهبْ إلى غدنا واثقين
/بصدْق الخيال، ومُعْجزةِ العُشْبِ