Literature
- Type
- Reading dossier
- Course
- Academic methodology (AR00105) · Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
- Year
- 2022
The question
What happens when a literature is born under occupation, cut off from the Arab world and unknown beyond the border?
A reading dossier on Ghassan Kanafani's 1966 study “Resistance literature in occupied Palestine, 1948–1966”, which documents the poets and writers living under Israeli rule.
When literature becomes resistance
Kanafani gave the field its name — resistance literature — and a diagnosis: the cultural “siege” imposed on those who stayed.
?
Which word did Kanafani use for the cultural isolation of Palestinians under occupation?
The siege (al-hiṣār): a cultural blockade that cut Arab Palestinians off from the rest of the Arab world, which is why this literature was so little known.
A life, in five dates
- 1936
Born in Acre, in northern Palestine.
- 1948
His family is forced into exile: Lebanon, Syria, then Kuwait and Beirut.
- 1961
Editor in Beirut, he writes essays, stories and novels such as “Men in the Sun”.
- 1967
Founds the weekly Al-Hadaf.
- 1972
Assassinated in Beirut on 8 July. His works have since been translated into 17 languages.
Three details
Want the whole study?
The full dossier follows the three chapters of Kanafani's book and my analysis of the poems.
Request the full study