Postcolonial Predicaments: Encumbering the Emancipatory Potential in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin

Abstract

ABSTRACT The instance postcolonialism becomes hinged on liberalism, the liberating promise which postcolonialism propels considerably shrinks. This essay explains that in predicating the liberal ideology as a tool for self-determination, a crippling standstill awaits a given cause. The Palestinian question as recently imagined by the American Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa in Mornings in Jenin (2010) stands a glaring example for such a predicament. The predicament is characterized by a predilection toward ontology instead of epistemology, the personal rather than the collective, character over theme, irony and excess instead of explicit and balanced approaches and finally, discussions favoring culture and identity in lieu of class and resistance. Masking that same postcolonial predicament is the narrative obsession with the existential-ontological, turning the struggle into a textual one. All in all, the predicament expands on postcolonial experiences by raising awareness of the dialectics of emancipation discourses.