Exile, Return, and Nationalism in <em>A Goodland</em>

Abstract

nada awaar Jarrar Grew uP in lebanon but leFt durinG the civil war oF 1975-1990, living in exile in Australia, england, United states, and France. she eventually came back to Lebanon in 1995 and has been living ever since. she writes in english and her work belongs to Lebanese women's writing on the subject of war and to the literary corpus of Anglo-Lebanese women's literature in exile. Jarrar's most recent book was published in 2010 and written while she was residing in Beirut during the 2006 israeli attack on Lebanon. A Goodland, a narrative of return, is about a Lebanese woman who was forced to leave Lebanon because of the war when she was adolescent, but because she suffers from restorative nostalgia, she returns to Lebanon. However, while she is the 2006 war breaks out, but this time she decides to stay. throughout the novel she tells us about her journey home; she is puzzled as to why she wants to come back to Lebanon and why she is so attached to her homeland. throughout the novel she keeps seeking answer to this question. Layla, the protagonist, is eventually at peace with herself because she finds love, friendship, and her national identity.this paper studies notions of exile, nostalgia, return, and nationalism in A Goodland, in which the protagonist undergoes a quest for both her personal and national identity. Her individual identity overlaps with her national and Arab identity. My analysis benefits from various theoretical insights. in his concept of minor transnationalism, Ali Behdad declares that discourse of displacement is split into two schools: writers who valorized, if not romanticized, the seductive power of geographical displacement (qtd. in Lionnet and shu-mei 225) and others who focus on the actual experiences of displacement, experiences that often entail a horrendous sense of homelessness, political and economic disenfranchisement, and even physical and psychological abuse (226). i contend that Jarrar combines both representations in her novel: the valorized and the naturalistic. i also draw from postcolonial theorists edward said, Benedict Anderson, and salman Rushdie, and critics who deal with exile and nostalgia, mainly svetlana Boym and Leo spitzer. Finally, i deploy Miriam Cooke's concept of humanist nationalism and Beirut decentrists. Jarrar, like the Beirut decentrists, promotes collective national identity, and nonviolence.exile and nostalGiaGrinberg and Grinberg discuss the impact of exile on the emigrant sense of identity from a psychoanalytic perspective. they argue that migration can be seen as trauma and crisis (Grinberg and Grinberg 11). Moreover, Zahia salhi describes diasporic writing as an expression of the pains of exile as it is loaded with the endless search for identity, loss, and longing (salhi 4). the above two quotes clearly summarize Layla's predicament. When Layla arrives in Adelaide, south Australia, she is not happy about leaving her home and settling in a new country. Unlike Layla, her parents seem to have adjusted smoothly to the new Australian life. she tells us that there were moments also when my own life seemed illusory and undeserved (Jarrar, A Goodland 10). exiles may reject everything the new country has to offer-anything that is different from their own customs, language, work, and (Grinberg and Grinberg 158), and that is what the protagonist goes through. Layla is aware of two cultures, two settings, two homes, and she experiences what edward said calls a contrapuntal consciousness, which is characterized by a plurality of vision giving rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions (said 186). As a result, she acquires Bhabha's third space (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 36). even though she is more attached to Lebanon, she has acquired features from the Australian culture and becomes a hybrid. Hout comments that for Layla Australia provides 'effective' type of legal belonging, whereas Lebanon is the source of 'affective' citizenship, which she hopes to prove by contributing to this latter's post-war reconstruction, both as educator (at the American University of Beirut) and as a loyal citizen (Hout 186). …