The Ethics of Representation in Literature, Art, and Journalism: Transnational Responses to the Siege of Beirut

245 Pages·2013·3.857 MB·English

by  Caroline Rooney (editor), Rita Sakr (editor)

The Ethics of Representation in
Literature, Art, and Journalism
This transnational collection of essays, interviews, and creative pieces on the
1982 Siege of Beirut explores literary representations of the siege by a diverse
set of writers alongside journalism and other media including fi lm and art.
The book investigates and promotes an awareness of an ethics of represen-
tation on questions of extreme emotional investment, comparing representa-
tions of the siege to representations of other traumatic events, visiting responses
from those of different cultural backgrounds to the same event and considering
implications with respect to comparative approaches. Chapters explore how
literature, journalism and art contribute to overcoming the dangers of forgetting
and denial, memorial excess and fundamentalism, the radicalization of vio-
lence, and the complete breakdown of trust on international levels, asking how
they challenge geopolitical, intellectual, and psychological states of siege and
instead promote awareness, acknowledgement, mourning, and justice across
divided communities. The book extends the use of postcolonial methodolo-
gies affi liated with history, international relations, and psychoanalysis (memory,
trauma) to Middle-Eastern studies, and visits the siege’s effect on different forms
of memory and memorialization: selective memory, trauma, gaps and fi ssures in
historical accounts, recording of eyewitness reports, and artistic re-imaginings
and realizations of alternative archives.
Caroline Rooney is Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Kent, UK.
Rita Sakr is Research Associate at the University of Kent, UK.
ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, University of
Kent at Canterbury, this series presents a wide range of research into postcolonial literatures
by specialists in the fi eld. Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in previ-
ously (or presently) colonized areas, and will include material from non-anglophone as well as
anglophone colonies and literatures. Series editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney.
1. Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing with a Third Eye by Brenda Cooper
2. The Postcolonial Jane Austen edited by You-Me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
3. Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making Style by Denisede Caires Narain
4. African Literature, Animism and Politics by Caroline Rooney
5. Caribbean–English Passages: Intertextuality in a Postcolonial Tradition by Tobias Döring
6. Islands in History and Representation edited by Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith
7. Civility and Empire: Literature and Culture in British India, 1822–1922 by Anindyo Roy
8. Women Writing the West Indies, 1804–1939: ‘A Hot Place, Belonging To Us’ by Evelyn O’Callaghan
9. Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representations of the body by Michelle Keown
10. Writing Woman, Writing Place: Contemporary Australian and South African Fiction by Sue Kossew
11. Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence by Priyamvada
Gopal
12. Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire by Terry Collits
13. American Pacificism: Oceania in the U.S. Imagination by Paul Lyons
14. Decolonizing Culture in the Pacific: Reading History and Trauma in Contemporary Fiction by Susan
Y. Najita
15. Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place by Minoli Salgado
16. Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary by Vijay Mishra
17. Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel: National and Cosmopolitan Narratives in English by
Neelam Srivastava
18. English Writing and India, 1600–1920: Colonizing Aesthetics by Pramod K. Nayar
19. Decolonising Gender: Literature, Enlightenment and the Feminine Real by Caroline Rooney
20. Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography by David Huddart
21. Contemporary Arab Women Writers by Anastasia Valassopoulos
22. Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Burton: Power Play of Empire by Ben Grant
24 Land and Nationalism in Fictions from Southern Africa by James Graham
25. Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden by Sharae Deckard
26. The Idea of the Antipodes: Place, People, and Voices by Matthew Boyd Goldie
27. F eminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation edited by Sorcha Gunne and
Zoë Brigley Thompson
28. Locating Transnational Ideals edited by Walter Goebel and Saskia Schabio
29. Transnational Negotiations in Caribbean Diasporic Literature: Remitting the Text by Kezia Page
30. Representing Mixed Race in Jamaica and England from the Abolition Era to the Present by
Sara Salih
31. Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation and Memory by Dennis Walder
32. Publishing the Postcolonial: Anglophone West African and Caribbean Writing in the UK 1948–
1968 by Gail Low
33. Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, and Environment by Anthony Carrigan
34. The Postcolonial City and its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay by Rashmi Varma
35. T errorism and Insurgency in Indian-English Literature: Writing Violence and Empire by
Alex Tickell
36. The Postcolonial Gramsci edited by Neelam Srivastava and Baidik Bhattacharya
37. Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception edited by Bethan Benwell, James
Procter and Gemma Robinson
38. Culture, Diaspora, and Modernity in Muslim Writing, edited by Rehana Ahmed, Peter Morey,
and Amina Yaqin
39. Edward Said’s Translocations: Essays in Secular Criticism, edited by Tobias Döring and Mark
Stein
40. Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing by Norbert
Bugeja
41. Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature edited by Joy Mahabir and Mariam
Pirbhai
42. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective by Anna Ball
43. Locating Postcolonial Narrative Genres edited by Walter Goebel and Saskia Schabio
44. Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music, edited by
Karima Laachir and Saeed Talajooy
45. The Postsecular Imagination: Postcolonialism, Religion, and Literature by Manav Ratti
46. Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook, edited by Walid El
Hamamsy and Mounira Soliman
47. T he Ethics of Representation in Literature, Art, and Journalism: Transnational Responses to the
Siege of Beirut edited by Caroline Rooney and Rita Sakr
Related Titles:
Postcolonial Life-Writing: Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation by Bart Moore-Gilbert
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The Ethics of
Representation
in Literature, Art,
and Journalism
Transnational Responses to the Siege of Beirut
Edited by
Caroline Rooney and Rita Sakr
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published 2013
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
The right of Caroline Rooney and Rita Sakr to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The ethics of representation in literature, art and journalism : transnational responses to the
Siege of Beirut / edited by Caroline Rooney and Rita Sakr.
pages cm. — (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures ; 47)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Lebanon—History—Israeli intervention, 1982–1985—Literature and the
intervention. 2. Beirut (Lebanon)--In literature. 3. Beirut (Lebanon)—In art.
4. Objectivity. I. Rooney, Caroline, editor of compilation. II. Sakr, Rita,
editor of compilation.
DS87.53.E86 2014
956.92'5044—dc23
2013019789
ISBN13: 978-0-415-65599-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-07821-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Baskerville
by IBT Global.
SFI-01234
SFI label applies to the text stock
Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Preface xv
GILBERT ACHCAR
Introduction 1
CAROLINE ROONEY AND RITA SAKR
PART I
Representing the Siege
1 ‘War Is Surrealism without Art’: ‘Representing the
Unrepresentable’ in Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for
Forgetfulness, Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game, and Robert
Fisk’s Pity the Nation 23
RITA SAKR
2 Writing Beirut c.1982:
James Buchan, Robert Fisk, and Charles Glass 37
DONNA LANDRY AND GERALD MACLEAN
3 ‘Besiege Your Siege!’:
Mahmoud Darwish, Representation, and the Siege of Beirut 56
PATRICK WILLIAMS
4 ‘Looking the Beast in the Eye’:
Screening Trauma in Waltz with Bashir and Lebanon 71
ANNA BALL
viii Contents
5 Sonallah Ibrahim on the Event(s) of Beirut 86
ZIAD ELMARSAFY
6 A Question of Faith in Humanity: Jean Said Makdisi’s
Beirut Fragments and Other Beirut Fragments 98
CAROLINE ROONEY
7 Violence, Trauma, and Subjectivity: Compromise Formations
of Survival in the Novels of Rawi Hage and Mischa Hiller 119
JULIA BOROSSA
8 Contrapuntal Beauty and the Betrayal of Representation:
Jean Genet after Shatila 135
FILIPPO MENOZZI
9 Jawdat R. Haydar and William Wordsworth:
London under Siege, 1982 149
MAY MAALOUF
PART II
Remembering and Reporting the Siege
10 Reporting Sabra and Shatila 163
TIM LLEWELLYN
11 Recording Memory: The Palestinian Experience 176
GHADA KARMI
12 Excerpt from Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir 182
JEAN SAID MAKDISI
13 Interview with Robert Fisk 184
CAROLINE ROONEY AND RITA SAKR
14 Interview with Mischa Hiller 191
CAROLINE ROONEY AND RITA SAKR
Contents ix
15 Interview with Mai Masri 198
CAROLINE ROONEY AND RITA SAKR
16 Sabra-Shatila Commemorative Mural Project 205
SUSAN R. GREENE
Contributors 219
Index 223