Abstract
Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2006, was arguably the most important poet of the 20th century writing in Arabic. Known widely as ‘the national poet of Palestine’ and ‘the poet of national resistance’ he was, however, increasingly unhappy about such labels, as he was about the assumption that his poetry would respond immediately to political demands. Despite that, in 2002 Darwish found himself under siege in Ramallah in the Israeli campaign ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, and felt compelled to respond in poetry. His response consisted of the last of his ‘Trojan’ epics, his ongoing attempt to give voice to history’s marginalised and silenced groups. Whereas previous topics had ranged from Indigenous peoples of North America to the Muslims in Granada in 1492, he now focussed on his own people under siege, both in the moment in 2002 and as part of a condition of occupation and oppression stretching back more than half a century.
State of Siege is stylistically different from the other epics, consisting as it does of 25 pages of short stanzas and disconnected fragments, indicative of the discontinuous and fragmented nature of life under siege as well as the difficulty of turning that life into a coherent form. Importantly, however, the poem includes a wide range of voices—some 15 or more—speaking out against the situation they find themselves in.
Drawing on recent theorising such as Howard Caygill’s On Resistance and Darweish and Rigby’s Popular Resistance in Palestine, the presentation will examine the various ways in which Darwish voices Palestinian resistance to the Israeli siege, ranging from armed defence to verbal confrontation with Israeli ‘guards’ and ‘killers’, to demonstrations of the moral failure that Israeli oppression represents, to statements of the classic Palestinian stance of ‘sumud’—the resolute refusal to give up, surrender, or disappear as the Israelis would ideally like.
Bio
Patrick Williams (he/his) is Emeritus Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University, where he taught courses on postcolonial theory and culture, film, diaspora, and race and nation. His publications include Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, Columbia University Press, 1993; Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, Routledge, 1996, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Manchester University Press, 1999; Edward Said, Sage, 2000; Postcolonial African Cinema, Manchester University Press, 2007. He is on the editorial boards of Theory, Culture and Society, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
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