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Wr i t i n g D i s p l a c e m e n t HOME AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY POST-COLONIAL ENGLISH FICTION AKRAM AL DEEK Writing Displacement Writing Displacement Home and Identity in Contemporary Post-colonial English Fiction Akram Al Deek WRITINGDISPLACEMENT Copyright©AkramAlDeek2016 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission.Noportionofthis publicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmittedsavewithwritten permission.InaccordancewiththeprovisionsoftheCopyright,Designs andPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicencepermittinglimited copyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency,SaffronHouse, 6-10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Firstpublished2016by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN Theauthorhasassertedhisrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills, Basingstoke,Hampshire,RG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofNatureAmerica,Inc.,One NewYorkPlaza,Suite4500,NewYork,NY10004-1562. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. HardbackISBN:978–1–137–58091–7 E-PUBISBN:978–1–137–59249–1 E-PDFISBN:978–1–137–59248–4 DOI:10.1057/9781137592484 DistributionintheUK,EuropeandtherestoftheworldisbyPalgrave Macmillan®,adivisionofMacmillanPublishersLimited,registeredin England,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:AlDeek,Akram,1984– Title:Writingdisplacement:homeandidentityincontemporary post-colonialEnglishfiction/AkramAlDeek. Description:NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan,2016. | Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex. Identifiers:LCCN2015030570 | ISBN9781137580917(hardback) Subjects:LCSH:Englishfiction—20thcentury—Historyandcriticism. | Identity(Psychology)inliterature. | Displacement(Psychology)in literature. | Postcolonialisminliterature. | Immigrants’writings, English—Historyandcriticism. | Exiles’writings—Historyand criticism. |Collectivememoryinliterature. | BISAC:LITERARY CRITICISM/Caribbean&LatinAmerican. | LITERARYCRITICISM/ European/English,Irish,Scottish,Welsh. | LITERARYCRITICISM/ MiddleEastern. Classification:LCCPR888.I3A42016|DDC823/.91409353—dc23LC recordavailableathttp://lccn.loc.gov/2015030570 AcataloguerecordforthebookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. Tomynewlybornnephew,inthehopethiswillspeaktoyourgeneration. Welcomehome,welcometoexileyoulittledisplacee! Contents Acknowledgments ix PlacingDisplacement:AnIntroduction 1 1 WritingDisplacement 17 Section1:DebunkingtheNomadicRhizome 17 Section2:WhatIsDisplacement?AnsweringbytheExample ofNuzooh 23 Section3:NostalgiaandMemorybetweenMelancholyand Celebration 38 Section4:ContrastingPalestinianExilicDisplacementsand JewishDiaspora 46 2 DisplacingCulturalIdentity 57 Section1:CulturalIdentitybetweenGhettoizationand Displacements 58 Section2:RacismandImmigration 67 3 TheWindrushGeneration:RemappingEnglandand ItsLiterature 79 4 MasalaFish:CulturalSynthesisandLiterary Adventuring 117 PromotingCulturalDiversity/Multiculturalism Post-9/11:AConclusion 165 Notes 183 Bibliography 189 Index 197 Acknowledgments I thank the following, whose asset has been immense and whose contributionhasbeenofgreathelpinfinishingthiswork: My family for love and patience, friends and students for believing in me, and those who died for a home, for both their aspiration and inspiration. This also goes to the resting soul of my uncle, may he rest in peace, who taught me how to ride a donkey, plant onions, and be careful in dealingwiththecolonizer;totherestingsoulofmycat,whosepurring keptmeawakeandsaneduringsleeplessnightsofresearch;toAlJalil FootballClub(IrbidRefugeeCamp,Jordan)andNewcastlePanthers FC (Newcastle, UK) for reminding me what it means to be part of a group,tobelong;tomyfatherwhotaughtmepoetry,discipline,dif- ferenttypesoffigs,andpunctuality;aGermanpassportwhichallowed mecrossingfrontiers;totherestingsoulofarchitectandfriendYousif Khatib, for sharing my daily existential madness and daydreaming; to the resting soul of photographer and friend Muhammad Al Zyoud, whotaughtmelaughterduringunbearableschooldays;mymotherfor teachingmepicklingolives,thealphabets,ironing,andcompassion. I would also like to thank Dr Kathleen Kerr-Koch for her impe- tus,guidance,andthoughtfulness,forbeinganinvigoratingtutorand a caring friend; Dr Barry Lewis for several interesting conversations andchannelingopinions;andDrGeoffreyNashformotivationalsup- port. I also thank the Culture and Regional Studies BEACON for its financial support and thriving academic enterprise, Dr Anastasia Valassopoulos, Dr Peter Dempsey, and Professor Peter Rushton for theirinstructiveopinions,annotations,andcriticism.Manythanksare also due to Professor Patrick Williams to have taken time despite and through illness to review my work; to my production editor, project manager, and editorial assistants and publisher at Palgrave Macmillan fortheiradviceandcooperation. Placing Displacement: An Introduction I Using cultural and literary theory and contemporary metropolitan post-SecondWorldWarpostcolonialfictions,theconceptofdisplace- ment is revisited here allowing for an affirmation of the specificity andbeginningsofdisplacedwriters’identitiesandforareassertionof the significance of their starting points meanwhile resisting, preclud- ing, and falling into the dangers of cultural and mental ghettoization anddefensiveand/orvulgarnationalism.Burdenedwithcolonialhis- toryandbeing“outofplace,”writingsbydisplacedwriterswiththeir hyphenatedidentitieshavealteredtheliteratureofEnglandinitslan- guage and cultural identity. This has promoted the rediscovery, as in the Freudian psychoanalytic context, of materials that have been repressed or “pushed aside” in cultural translation, but which surely continuetocausetroubleandrestlessnessintheperpetualjourneyof displacement. Displacement also troubles the ideas of citizenship and national belonging and offers to the noncitizen the freedom to be “out of place,” out of the familiar and status quo, which opens doors for cultural translation and filtration. Displacement falls therefore some- where between nationalism (Oedipal, rigid, imposed, created, and closed) and nomadology (anti-Oedipal, open, flexible, creative, and free),allowingcriticalandaestheticdistanceandbalancingthecentral authoritybetweenpastandpresent,traditionandmodernity,bytrans- lating (between) them. Revisiting displacement is a study that pro- ducesthereforeanoscillationbetweenthetwoatwill.Displacementas it is understood here celebrates multiplicity and hybridity/syncretism withoutfallingintotheanti-memoryandhistory-free,spatiallyatten- uated, free-floating, aloof, and ontologically rootless concept of nomadism, or the nomadic rhizome. In revisiting the concept of dis- placement,thisstudyisskepticalofnomadology’stotalandcomplete transcendence of national and Oedipalized territorial frameworks. 2 Writing Displacement DisplacementisnotthereforeghettoizedinFreud’sOedipalterritory, nor is it free-floating and attenuated in nomadic deterritorialization. Revisiting displacement recognizes the importance of starting points andbeginnings1 withoutslidingintonomadology’saloofness. This study spans across a time frame that starts with Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners in 1956, to 2003 which is marked by Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, which manifests, to a certain qualified extent, a new ethnicity: black British. The two generations discussed here, the Windrush Generation (1956–1976) and the so-called Masala Fish Generation (1976–2003), with its army of displaced migrant writers, markashiftingboundarythatproblematizesthefrontierofthemod- ern nation-state and engenders a synthesis of cultures and a peaceful celebration of living in the potential radiance of Babylon. This cele- bration,however,isoftenprecludedbyracismandvulgarnationalism amongotherobstacles. The structure of this generational division suggested here traces different shifts in the uninterrupted emphasis on beginnings, the different representations of home, and the politics of identity and their changing interrelationship with place and memory; it also reveals the changing nature of the representations and politics of home and identity through a contemporary study of metropolitan english2 fiction. This study eventually concludes that in both gen- erations the specificity of identity and beginnings is always present and recognized not as a moment of departure only but also as an inventive resource from which perpetual displacements feed an inco- herent identity in flux. Although location or locale in this book is kept from being reduced to a mere geographical place on the geopolitical map of the world, locality is always present in the fictions analyzed here. Whether imaginatively constructed or nos- talgically romanticized through memories, beginnings are always referenced, referred to, and frequently deferred from. Multiple iden- tities therefore may seem to be directionless; nevertheless, they are not without a concept of home, nor are they forgetful or without history. This project also concludes that an access to historic memory is always significantly important because it provides the context for politicallyfruitfulinvention.Thus,itattempts tosemanticallyexpand the concept of displacement by contextualizing it through personal understanding of its nature as it has emerged and emanated from my Palestinianexperienceofexilicdispersions.TheColonizedTerritories of Palestine are hence foregrounded here as an example, particularly as represented in the works of Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish, Placing Displacement: An Introduction 3 because,first,ofthecurrentandongoingstrifeforself-determination under Israeli colonialism; second, because of the Palestinians’ endur- ingstruggleinpreservingmemoryandthusthenation;andlastlyfor Palestine’shistoricalandregionalassociationwiththesemanticaswell asthealienatinganddislocatingnatureoftheconceptofdisplacement, or Nuzooh (evacuation in Arabic), subsequent to the Catastrophe of 1948. And although the Palestinians’ historic circumstance and color of skin is different compared to the Indians or Pakistanis, the Indians of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora and the West Indians, they all share a history of oppression as postcolonial subjects whose so- called homes become artificial and imaginary constructs and whose identities are still burdened with a British colonial history, ongoing racist discriminations, and a persistent, troubling national identifica- tion. The Palestinian example is also invoked here because it mirrors other struggling national groups; it is invoked here because it repre- sentsamomentousexampleofpostcolonialnationalismandemerging national consciousness,3 the importance of preserving memory and thus the nation, melancholic nostalgia, and a changing conception of identity over sixty or so years of life under siege and in exilic displacements. II Readingaboutdisplacementincontemporarypost-SecondWorldWar literarytheoryandcriticism,afewstudieshavefeaturedorthoroughly emphasized the concept of displacement in their debates and discus- sions. The concept of displacement has not been circulated widely enough within literary and cultural studies either. It has not, for example, been semantically expanded or defined. Some studies have discussed the concept of displacement in relation to gender and/or sexuality, cinema and/or music, within the context of one or two writers,orinrelationtoonespecificgeographicallocationoverapar- ticular historic time. This project, however, revisits and resuscitates the concept of displacement as it, expands it semantically, and pro- duces an extensive analysis that adds to the already existent body of criticalwork. In recent years, studies that have tackled the concept of displace- ment within the context of literary theory and contemporary British fiction, or post-Second World War literary writings in English seem to have started by using the concept in the Routledge edition of The Empire Writes Back in 1989. In “Place and Displacement,” the edi- tors highlight the fact that both place and displacement are “major

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