Ghassan Kanafani Research Articles

PANDANGAN DUNIA GHASSAN KANAFANI DALAM CERPEN “ARDHU AL-BURTUQOL AL-HAZIIN”

This research aims to reveal the author's worldview, namely Ghassan Kanafani as a collective subject in his short story entitled "Ardhu al-Burtuqol al-Haziin" in an anthology of short stories with the same title using the genetic structuralism perspective of Lucian Goldmann. Goldmann's genetic structuralism emphasizes the analysis of the author's worldview as a representative of a particular social group, with his analysis departing from the structure of the literature work itself. Three research variables in genetic structuralism are the structure of literary works, worldview, and social structures. This research is qualitative-descriptive research with a dialectical method of analysis. The result of the discussion is there are many binary oppositions found in this short story “Ardhu al-Burtuqol al-Haziin”. Ghassan’s worldview in this short story is the economic downturn of the Palestinian people due to the 1948 Nakba Day and the loss of their national identity which was symbolized by an orange. This Ghassan Kanafani's worldview is the view of his group, namely the nationalist social group of workers and peasants.

A Stylistic Analysis of Lexical, Cohesion and Context Features of the Literary Styles in the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' by Roald Dahl and 'The Little Lantern' by Ghassan Kanafani: A Contrastive Study

The most popular field in literary studies is stylistics. Its goal is to discover the language use and meaning patterns seen in literary writings and to demonstrate the formal elements' functional value in such texts. This study is an attempt to discuss the linguistic and stylistic features of two famous English and Arabic children's short stories in the 20th century by famous writers. The English story being Roald Dahl's Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and the Arabic story: the Little Lantern by Ghassan Kanafani. Due to their differences in grammar and syntax, Arabic and English belong to separate language families. This paper's major goal is to compare and contrast the lexical, contextual, and coherence aspects used in English and Arabic children's stories. This study is based on a stylistic examination of two works, one in Arabic and the other in English. The writer of both texts employs lexical, context, and cohesion aspects to depict the social and cultural contexts of their respective texts. The study of stylistic variety in languages and how its users take advantage of it is known as 'stylistics'. This definition is unquestionably broad enough to include everyone who uses the word 'stylistics' and would wish to be included. To examine the two texts in this study, the Short and Leech (2007) approach will be used. The researcher explains the linguistic devices utilized in each text and demonstrates the reasons for doing so.

A Stylistic Analysis of Lexical, Cohesion and Context Features of the Literary Styles in the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' by Roald Dahl and 'The Little Lantern' By Ghassan Kanafani: A Contrastive Study

A Stylistic Analysis of Lexical, Cohesion and Context Features of the Literary Styles in the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' by Roald Dahl and 'The Little Lantern' By Ghassan Kanafani: A Contrastive Study

Nonlinguistic Presupposition in Literary Translation: A Trend towards Dehistoricising, Deideologising and Depoliticising the Original

This paper explores nonlinguistic (cultural) presupposition in Kilpatrick’s English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s Arabic novel Men in the Sun. The goal is to see if the English translation (under the impact of global English) shifts the sociocultural knowledge presupposed in the original and thus alters its political and ideological messages. The analysis reveals a trend to lose nonlinguistic presupposition via translation, which is associated with the translator’s tendency to re-contextualize, thus domesticating or neutralise the original message to the Western audience. However, this has come at the expense of dehistoricising, deideologising and depoliticising the original, leading to a more culturally/contextually universal translation that seems to be drifted into the more dominant and valued Anglo-American and European cultures. These changes could be related to Kilpatrick’s lack of information, or interest, in the decades-long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, so a neutral stance may have sounded a safer option to her. It could also be related to her belief that Kanafani’s novel should not be politicised, instead focusing our attention more on its plot structure and characters. Personally, I am of the opinion that Kilpatrick has created a more contextually homogenised text only to maintain relevance to a widely diverse audience.

Migration and Oil-Centric Life: A Study on Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun

The oil narratives bring in a gamut of perspectives that would redefine the outlook of life. Modern life is embedded in the discovery of oil and the usage of hydrocarbon fuels. Petrofiction offers a scope for understanding the representation of oil aesthetics in literature. The research paper aims to critically expound the transformation after the sudden boom of wealth in Kuwait due to the discovery of oil, and the migration of Palestine refugees from Iraqi camps to Kuwait in search of jobs to upgrade their living conditions with reference to Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani. The study authenticates the oil-centric life in Men in the Sun by understanding that oil is the base structure that governs the “push”, “pressure” and “stay” factors of a refugee in flight with theoretical support of kinetic model of exile, displacement and resettlement as proposed by Egon F. Kunz.

Women in the Works of Ghassan Kanafani: A Comparative Reading of Two Novels

This article surveys Ghassan Kanafani’s fictions, arguing that his literature of resistance features militant men or ordinary men coping with the consequences of dislocation. Hence, the presence of women is mainly subordinate. Then the article investigates the ambivalent presence of women in two novellas diverging from Kanafani’s mainstream texts which marginalize women, offering instead prevailing female figures: All That’s Left to You (1966) and Umm Saad (1969). In the former, Maryam loses her honor, getting pregnant out of wedlock just as her people lose Jaffa; the fallen woman allegorically becomes the lost nation, and thus assumes negative attributes of the mother archetype. In the latter, this ancillary presence changes as the titular heroine enacts resistance and attachment to the land. Umm Saad assumes the positive attributes of the mother archetype, figuratively becoming the fertile land to be regained. Using a relevant framework on resistance literature and archetypal criticism on the feminine, this article shows the close association between women and the Palestinian land (the positive ideals of liberty and fertility as well as the negative meanings of loss/disgrace). Such ambivalence can be understood in a range of positive and negative aspects of the mother archetype. Appealing to recurring patterns and primordial aspects of the human psyche, Kanafani asserts the universalism of his committed fiction, the right to regain the land as a basic human need, and the richness of the mother archetype to the collective unconscious of a nation. Hence, this article problematizes traditional gender roles in Kanafani’s fiction.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Experienced by Said and Safeya in Ghassan Kanafani’s Aid Ila Haifa Based on The Perspective of Gerald C. Davison

This study aims to determine the form, reveal the causes, and understand the impact of PTSD on Said and Safeya on individuals, families, and society in the novel Aid Ila Haifa. Data was collected using reading and note-taking techniques and analyzed descriptively qualitativelythat focusing on the problem of PTSD with a literary psychology approach. The primary data source used is Ghassan Kanafani’s Aid Ila Haifa. This study was using the theory of abnormal psychology by Gerald C. Davison. This study reveals that the form of PTSD included in re-experiencing symptoms are crying, overlapping memories, and a faster heart rate. Included in the avoidance symptoms are denying the traumatic event and keeping their mouth shut over the whereabouts of their child. Meanwhile, hyperarousal symptoms include sudden outbursts of anger, excessive anxiety, and feeling panicked. The cause is a conflict environment and the loss of a son. The impact of PTSD experienced by Said and Safeya on individuals is prolonged sadness, trapped in fear, and loss of zest for life. The impact on the family is a cold attitude. Meanwhile, the impact on society is Said's attitude which forbids his son from joining the front for the defense of the state.

Israel/Palestine: Border Representations in Literature and Film

Israel/Palestine: Border Representations in Literature and Film

Death on the Page, Rebirth on the Screen: Literature Between Translation and Adaptation, Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun as a Case Study

This research provides a comparative study between Hilary Kilpatrick's English translation and Tawfiq Saleh's film adaptation ʾ Al-Makhduʿun ( The Duped) of Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun. Drawing on Narrative and Appraisal theories, this research investigates the ideological disparity between Kilpatrick and Saleh's approaches to Kanafani's text by examining their respective attitudinal stance and patterns of narrative (re)framing in relation to three dimensions: politics, religion, and culture. The research, thus, accentuates the ways in which the translator's identity, with its nexus of associated values, can reshape and reconfigure both narratives and reality by producing hegemonic or resistant translations. In doing so, the study, from a postcolonial perspective, aims to redirect the attention toward the ‘vertical’ power dynamics in and of translation, in addition to exposing the varying, often subtle, levels of negotiation, manipulation and intervention such politically loaded narratives, especially contested narratives, experience in translation. In fact, combining literary translation with adaptation reveals how narratives of the same objet d'art are creatively interpreted and re-negotiated differently when the translation medium involves visuals.

Paradigm, Identity Formation, and Reality. ImplicationsHomi K. Bhabha's Third Space on Palestinian Issue through Novel "Returning to Haifa" By Ghassan Kanafani

Paradigm, Identity Formation, and Reality. ImplicationsHomi K. Bhabha's Third Space on Palestinian Issue through Novel "Returning to Haifa" By Ghassan Kanafani

A Discursive Study of the Unscheduled Dialogue in G. Kanafani’s Returnee to Haifa

In Ghassan Kanafani’s tale, Returnee to Haifa, “What’s in a name?” is a restless question in search of an answer. Although it does not openly speak to any specific situation, this question turns into a clue to understanding the cross-sectional narrative discourse of the tale. All four of the main characters are enmeshed in an untimely dialogue over identity and belonging, and find themselves facing a multifaceted dilemma that intensifies the urge for reframing the concept of identity and belonging in regards to homeland and blood kinship. Accordingly, this paper reviews attribution theory and refers to it as a research tool to look at the significance of the messages embedded in the conflicting discourses that shape the unorchestrated dialogue through which all the characters involved tend to tell and defend different versions of the one story, the Palestinian Nakba. Keywords: Kanafani, Haifa, discourse, homeland, dialogue, memory, identity

The "Motherland": An Archetypal and Postcolonial Reading of Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad

Working at the intersection of postcolonial and archetypal criticism, this article investigates the role of women in resistance literature by looking at a piece of postcolonial Arabic fiction, Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad (1969). Rooted in Arab politics concerning land rights and anti-Zionist struggle, the text offers a related archetypal approach to the depiction of women in politicized literature. Umm Saad allegorizes the struggles of Palestinians to reclaim their land. A poor peasant woman, the titular heroine embodies the intimate connection between Palestinians and their land, acting as a helper to combative men and a primal symbol for attachment to the enduring land. Umm Saad is a personal mother and a trope for a feminized colonized territory, metaphorically representing the Palestinian nation and assuming mythological features enabling her to identify with the Earth Mother to send a message against dispossession. Since she embodies positive mother archetype symbolism (the personal mother and the Earth Mother), she acts as a source of fertility and protection. Expressing a political statement via the mother archetype, Kanafani appeals to a basic human need, i.e. the need to settle down in one’s land, which makes woman an indispensible part of the collective unconscious of any nation. Keywords: Archetypal Criticism; Kanafani; Mother(land); Postcolonial Arabic Fiction; Umm Saad.

When Man is a Cause: The Undecidability of Belonging in Kanafani's Returning to Haifa

The focus of my article is on the undecidability of Dov's/ Khaldun's identity throughout his conversations with Said X., his 'biological father', along with some significant selective semiotic referents in Ghassan Kanafani's novella Returning to Haifa. These aspects are highlighted to elicit/ trace Kanafani's implied symbolism of Palestine, the land, and the undecidability/ conflict of its belonging to critique (healthy self-criticism) the submission of the Palestinians as being guilty of ceding with their land then keep crying to restore it. The novella has been previously tackled from a variety of perspectives: parody, intertextuality, characterization, among others. However, the key parts of the novella that show the conflict between father/ son, self/other, right/loss are the conversations between Dov/Khaldun and Said X. To achieve the article's goal, Derrida's conception of undecidability is employed to indicate the inability to take a decision due to factors beyond the focal character's, Dov/Khaldun, means. This state of freeplay makes it impossible to settle to any side/identity. In Dov's/ Khaldun's case, it is the indeterminate area between the biological Palestinian identity and the acquired Jewish identity. Given that, this view of undecidability is supplemented by other related philosophical aspects such as identity of the 'I', the conception of belonging, and the symbolic reflection between the Dov/ Khaldun: the Jew/ the Palestinian: the Colonizer/ the Colonized (both Man and the land). The analyses of the novella reveal that a state of bewilderment and vortex of undecidable identity opens once Dov Iphrat Koshin, the Israeli soldier, knows he was born Khaldun Said, the Palestinian citizen. Dov's/ Khaldun's words to Said X. show a defensive attitude whereas his semiotic behavior reflects the pain of the truth, and that since that moment, he will not be able to settle; his identity is undecidable between Israel/ Palestine, Zionists/ Palestinians, Colonizer/ Colonized, Judaism/ Islam... Kanafani provides a criticism of the Self, here. As the Palestinians of 1948 escaped from their homes forsaking their land to the foreign occupation and then they (with the Arabs and Muslims) did nothing to restore it but waiting and weeping. Kanafani's self criticism is healthy as being the first step towards profoundly diagnosing the problem, the loss of Palestine, so as to find practical final solutions for the problem.

The Spatial Symbolismin Ghassan Kanafani's Novel " Three Letters from Palestine: An Analytical Study

The researcher in this research paper explores and explains the symbolism of the place where the events took place in Ghassan Kanafani’s novel titled The Three Letters from Palestine. The researcher adopted the qualitative approach in an attempt to examine the symbolism of the spatial element in Three Letters from Palestine and its significance and the deep meaning behind the literal meaning of these symbols. The research reveals the symbolism of place employed in Kanafani's short story, through which he explains his connection to the homeland and concepts related to the Palestinian cause such as belonging to the place, identity, and the Palestinian heritage. This narrative method is one of the methods adopted by Kanafani in his writing, which was intended to link the reader with the events of the short story and its spatial elements.

Ghassan Kanafani’s “Men in the Sun”

None

The Dialectics of ‘Home’ in Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun

Since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, the definition of home in diasporic Palestinian literature has become a central issue among literary scholars. However, this concept of home has been addressed mainly from a mono-dimensional perspective, that is, either the concrete attachment or the abstract affiliation of home. Based on the significance of the interplay of both dimensions and the lack of focus on the duality of home in previous studies of Palestinian literature, this paper explores the abstract and concrete dimensions of ‘home’ as depicted in the novel Men in the Sun written by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian diasporic writer. This study investigates the paradoxes of home for Palestinians in the aftermath of the Palestinian Nakba , with a special focus on Kanafani’s perception of home. The study adopts Georg Hegel’s dialectics of thesis, antithesis and synthesis in the discussion of the abstract and concrete perceptions of home. Our findings disclose that Kanafani projects the many spaces that the refugees seek shelter in, such as the refugee camp, as the antithesis of home and that they are attached to poverty, humiliation, and death. Not only does Kanafani deny any mediating solutions for home, but he also assures us that such mediating solutions, other than the original home, will lead to additional aggravation to the original problem of displacement. Therefore, the synthesis of home, in both its concrete and abstract dimensions, remains as Palestine. It is hoped that this paper will pave the way to a better understanding of the concept of a Palestinian home.

Beyond the land of Palestine: deserts, shores, seas

ABSTRACT How the land of Palestine is imagined goes to the heart of Palestinian identity, making the process a significant and fraught endeavor. However, while the centrality of land to the imagined geography of Palestine has long been acknowledged, less attention has been paid to Palestine’s sea. This paper therefore explores how the canonical Palestinian authors, Ghassan Kanafani and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra represent – or omit – the sea in their works. I argue that, as members of the Nakba generation, for these two authors the sea signifies a one-way passage into exile, thus casting Palestine’s shores and sea as abject spaces, severed from the imagined geography of homeland, producing what I term “terracentric” discourses of Palestinian homeland. The paper’s conclusion turns its attention to contemporary Palestinian cultural production to address the ways subsequent generations of Palestinians have begun to reconceptualize the relationship between the land and sea of Palestine.

The suffering of refugees in Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Child Goes to the Camp”: a critical appraisal

Purpose This paper aims to present a critical appraisal of Ghassan Kanafani’s short story “The Child Goes to the Camp” using the Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and Rose (2007) in an attempt to investigate the predicament of the Palestinians who were forced to flee their country and live in refugee camps as well as the various effects refugee life had on them. Design/methodology/approach Using the Appraisal Theory, and with a special focus on the categories of Attitude and Graduation, the paper aims to shed light on the plight of refugees through revealing the narrator’s suffering in a refugee camp where the most important virtue becomes remaining alive. Findings Analysing the story using the Appraisal Theory reveals the impact refugee life has left on the narrator and his family. This story serves as a warning for the world of the suffering refugees have to endure when they are forced to flee their war-torn countries. Originality/value Although Kanafani’ resistance literature has been studied extensively, his short stories have not received much scholarly attention. In addition, his works have not been subject to linguistic analysis. This study presents an appraisal analysis of Kanafani’s “The Child Goes to the Camp” in an attempt to investigate how the author’s linguistic choices are key to highlighting the suffering of the Palestinians, especially children, in refugee camps.

Palestine in Geography and Fiction: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Using critical cartography studies as theoretical basis and argumentative entry, this paper examines the role played by mapmaking in essentializing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, expanding the gap between the two peoples and maintaining the current dilemma in the Middle East. The paper also draws on political/historical data and fictional narratives written by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani particularly his seminal novel Returning to Haifa to demonstrate that mapping and cartography are manipulated to achieve dubious political and military purposes. The argument in the paper emphasizes that imperial cartography leads to the mapping production of Palestine as a territorial space of ownership and control by non-Palestinian invaders. In his response to the colonial mapping of Palestine, which aimed to eliminate the country’s Arabi identity, Kanafani provides in his fiction alternative cartographies of Palestine to subvert the colonial mapping of his homeland. In other words, Kanafani attempted to reclaim his indigenous territory or part of it through literary maps drawn in his novel discussed in the paper1.

Resistance Literature and Occupied Palestine in Cold War Beirut

For the last decade of his life, the Palestinian intellectual, author, and editor Ghassan Kanafani (d. 1972) was deeply immersed in theorizing, lecturing, and publishing on Palestinian resistance literature from Beirut. A refugee of the 1948 war, Kanafani presented his theory of resistance literature and the notion of “cultural siege” at the March 1967 Beirut conference of the Soviet-funded Afro-Asian Writers Association (AAWA). Articulated in resistance to Zionist propaganda literature and in solidarity with Marxist-Leninist revolutionary struggles in the Third World, Kanafani was inspired by Maxim Gorky, William Faulkner, and Mao Zedong alike. In books, essays, and lectures, Kanafani argued that Zionist propaganda literature served as a “weapon” in the war against Palestine, returning repeatedly to Arthur Koestler’s 1946 Thieves in the Night. Better known for his critique of Stalinism in Darkness at Noon (1940), Koestler was also actively involved in waging cultural Cold War, writing the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Congress for Cultural Freedom 1950 manifesto and helping the organization infiltrate Afro-Asian writing in the wake of Bandung. Kanafani’s 1960s theory of resistance literature thus responded at once to the psychological dislocation of Zionist propaganda fiction and the cultural infiltration of Arabic literature in the Cold War.