MESA Banner
The Night of the Non-Event: Apocalyptic Visions, Speculative Poetics, Irrecoverable Histories
Abstract by Laila Riazi On Session X-26  (Palestine and Literature)

On Saturday, November 4 at 5:30 pm

2023 Annual Meeting

Abstract
This paper situates Etel Adnan's l'Apocalypse arabe as a work of speculative poetics that takes as its point of focus the 1976 siege and massacre at Tal-el-Zataar, a Palestinian refugee camp just outside of Beirut. Adnan's "apocalyptic vision" I read in proximity to literary and aesthetic theories of "speculative" writing -- as opposed to realist or mimetic representations of atrocity-- as well as against the historical and archival erasures enacted by the Lebanese state and by humanitarian discourse in regards to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
None