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Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing

Bugeja, Norbert (2012) Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures . Routledge, Abingdon, 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-50913-8. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40693)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

This book reconsiders the notion of liminality in postcolonial critical discourse today. By visiting Mashriqi writers of memoir, Bugeja offers a unique intervention in the understanding of 'in-between' and ‘threshold’ states in present-day postcolonialist thought. His analysis situates liminal space as a fraught form of consciousness that mediates between conditions of historical contingency and the memorializing present. Within the present Mashriqi memoir form, liminal spaces may be read as articulations of 'representational spaces' — narrative spaces that, based as they are within the histories of local communities, are nonetheless redolent with memorial and imaginary elements. Liminal consciousness today, Bugeja argues, is a direct consequence of the impact of volatile present-day memories on the re-conception of the open wounds of history.

Incisive readings of life-writings by Mourid Barghouti, Amin Maalouf, Orhan Pamuk, Amos Oz, and Wadad Makdisi Cortas demonstrate the double-edged representational chasm that opens up when present acts of memorializing are brought to bear upon the elusive histories of the early-twentieth-century Mashriq. Sifting through the wide-ranging theoretical literature on liminality and challenging received views of the concept, this book proposes a nuanced, materialist, and original rethinking of the liminal as a more vigilant outlook onto the political, literary and historical predicaments of the contemporary Middle East.

Item Type: Book
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English philology and language
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Depositing User: Stewart Brownrigg
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2014 00:05 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40693 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Bugeja, Norbert.

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