Mahmoud Darwish: The Politics of Mourning and Catastrophe

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/bethunivj.38.2021.0095
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Pages: 95-126
• Author: Tayseerتيسير Abu Odehأبو عودة
• Subject Matter: Mahmoud Darwish,poetry,memory,mourning,catastrophe,resistance,exile,الذاكرة,الرثاء,النكبة,المقاومة,المنفى

95

Bethlehem University Journal 38 (2021)

Mahmoud Darwish: The Politics of Mahmoud Darwish: The Politics of

Mourning and CatastropheMourning and Catastrophe

Tayseer Abu Odeh1

1Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Al-Ahliyya

-Amman University

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Mahmoud Darwish’s contrapuntal

notion of memory, catastrophe, and mourning exhibit an aesthetic of freedom,

intransigence and resistance. Darwish’s intellectual and aesthetic project is

primarily premised upon the pleasures and pitfalls of memory and catastrophe

as a site of spatial and cultural resistance. For Darwish, memory and catastrophe

are not only about the absence and presence of geography and home, but they

are also metaphorical in every way. In The Presence of Absence (2011), Darwish

argues that metaphors form a peculiar mode of geography and space. Drawing on

Edward Said’s notion of late style and Judith Butler’s argument on the politics of

mourning, this article sets out to examine the ways in which Darwish’s Memory

for Forgetfulness and In the Presence of Absence embody a radical form of

aesthetic and intellectual praxis, writing against the grain and the politics of

mourning.

Keywords: Mahmoud Darwish, poetry, memory, mourning, catastrophe,

resistance, exile

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article do not represent the

opinions of the Journal’s editorial board and staff of the Dean of Research at Bethlehem

University. The accuracy of the material and any errors in this publication are the sole

responsibility of the author.

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96 Bethlehem University Journal 38 (2021)

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Bethlehem University Journal 38 (2021)

Introduction

Why didn’t you knock on the sides of the tank?

Why didn’t you say anything? Why?

The desert suddenly began to send back the echo: Why didn’t you knock on

the sides of the tank? (1999, 74)

Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun

The above-quoted lines sum up Kanafani’s novella Men in the Sun in a tragic way,

where three Palestinian refugees, Abu Qais, Assad, and Marwan, seek to escape

the horrendous and unbearable conditions of refugee camps in Iraq heading to

Kuwait. They look for a decent life in Kuwait. To avoid the checkpoints on their

way to Kuwait, they are forced to be dehumanized and smuggled in the back of a

large water truck, where they die in an absurd and surreal way. The driver of the

lorry, Abul Khaizuran, utters the last words in the novella repeatedly in a tragic

tone that echoes a voice of mourning and catastrophe: “Why didn’t you knock

on the sides of the tank?” (74). His same question echoed to the back of the

desert. The desert here seems to have symbolized the colonial and postcolonial

condition of Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of the Nakba. Such an appalling

condition haunts Palestinian refugees in various ways.

In a similar vein, it is interesting to point out that the catastrophe of the above-

mentioned three Palestinian refugees is also intimately aligned with the personal

and collective consciousness of Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness and In the

Presence of Absence. However, amidst the colonial and historical effacement of

the Israeli state, Palestinian refugees, exiles, and “mankoobeen” (the adjective

of the Nakba in Arabic or the oppressed) should not stand still and submit to

the rhetoric of defeatism and silence. Darwish demonstrates aesthetically and

intellectually that memory and mourning can be transformed into an agency of

resistance and writing back against Israel’s historical and cultural imperialism

and its political and ideological allies, namely, the US and the Eurocentric camp.

For Mahmoud Darwish, the question of memory, mourning and resistance was

a long-standing preoccupation that prompted the subject matter of Memory of

Forgetfulness and In the Presence of Absence. In trying to come to grips with

how memory and catastrophe inform the depth and breadth of Darwish’s poetics,