We would like to invite you to a guest lecture by Sanabel Abdelrahman entitled “Palestinian Magical Realism as Resistance Literature” on Monday, 17 June 2024, 6:15 pm.
The talk will give an overview of magical realism within Palestinian literature. Specifically, magical realism will be approached as a literary mode used to resist colonial plunders, such as that of Palestinians’ physical spaces, memory, culture, and collective identity. This approach shows that magical realism, with its strands of surrealism, political Gothicism, science (and speculative) fiction, fantasy, and absurdism, resist the ongoing ramifications of the Nakba manifested in the distortion of physical structures (including Palestinian bodies) as well as metaphysical ones, such as identity, memory, empirical senses, temporality, and hope.
In her presentation, Sanabel Abdelrahman will reference some recurring figures and tropes from Palestinian folktales and contemporary literary works, such as ghosts, mythical creatures, dreams, and nightmares, as well as processes, such as concretization (tamaddī), metamorphosis, resurrection, animism, and the manipulation of time to expound the magical-realistic impetus. Drawing on Palestinian literary texts such as Emile Habiby’s Sarāya Bint al-Ghūl ("Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter", 1991), Elias Khoury’s Bāb al-Shams ("Gate of the Sun", 1998), and Sheikha Hlewa’s Ṭalabiyya C345 (2018) as well as the folktales in Qūl yā Ṭayr (2001), she will show, for example, that Palestinian ghosts emerging from the bodies of martyrs or water bodies are actors instilled with agency, actively reminding Palestinians collectively of the Nakba while disseminating ideas of future liberation.
Sanabel Abdelrahman holds a PhD in Arabic Studies, focusing on magical realism in Palestinian literature, from Philipps-Universität Marburg. She completed her BA and MA at the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She is a bilingual writer and publishes essays critiquing art and literature on platforms including Fus7a, al-Akhbar, 7iber, Jadaliyya, and NO NIIN. In the academic year 2023/24, she is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
Venue:
Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies
Room RS 225, 2nd floor
Schlaunstraße 2, 48143 Münster
For a participation via Zoom, please contact AOR Dr. Barbara Winckler, barbara.winckler@uni-muenster.de.