Carrying Palestine: Preserving the "Postmemory" Palestinian Identity and Consolidating Collective Experience in Contemporary Poetic Narratives
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Date
2014-11
Authors
Uebel, Carly M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The Israel-Palestine Conflict is referred to in modern dialogues as perhaps "the world's most intractable conflict," engendering for contemporary Israelis and Palestinians alike a self- and national-perception that is fettered by narratives of historical persecution and exile. This thesis evaluates the effect of a specific process of memory-transmission, termed by writer and psychologist Marianne Hirsch as "postmemory," in the case of Palestinians born after 1967 and, in large part, outside of Israel/Palestine. I argue that as a result of the postmemorical transmission of narratives from mid-century Palestinians to the generation of Palestinians born after the Naksa, this younger generation of Palestinians has adopted responsibility for consolidating otherwise disparate accounts in the Palestinian diwan of mutual strife and resilience, and reinvesting in the ancient Arabic literary tradition of the poetic forum as grounds for revolutionizing collective consciousness and reviving once vibrant tenets of what it means to 'be Palestinian,' more specifically. It is within poetry, then, that many of these younger generation Palestinians are allowed opportunities to experience a homeland beyond the Conflict which has so come to define the region of Israel/Palestine in contemporary discourse.
Description
81 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Anthropology and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, Fall 2014.
Keywords
Palestinian identity, Palestine, Cultural anthropology, Postmemory, Arabic poetry, Al-Nakba, Al-Naksa, Identity