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ABSTRACT
Palestinian poets Nathalie Handal and Naomi Shihab Nye deploy nonhuman perspectives to mourn the lost homeland, reflecting on the Nakba (‘the Catastrophe’, the 1948 Palestinian exodus) as a site of environmental and social rupture. Representations of environmental ruptures as means of reflecting on the Nakba are not new to the Palestinian literary tradition. Understanding these ruptures by way of posthumanist appeals is, however, a radical gesture that we can locate at the centre of troubled attempts to merge, or at a minimum ‘converge’, the ‘respective preoccupations of ecocriticism and postcolonial studies’, to use Robert Spencer’s enunciation. Through close readings of the multispecies ecologies deployed by Nathalie Handal and Naomi Shihab Nye, this paper reconciles postcolonial Palestine with posthumanist Palestine, honouring the poets’ compositions of vistas of nonhuman animals and habitats, and studying their experimentation with interspecies kinship.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Yusuf ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, ‘The Traveler’, in Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye (trans), Salma Khadra Yayyusi (ed), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992, p 83.
2 Robert Spencer, ‘Ecocriticism in the Colonial Present: The Politics of Dwelling’, in Raja Shehadeh, ‘Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape’, Postcolonial Studies, 13(1), March 2010, p 34.
3 Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Humanism and Decolonial Entanglements, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2018, p 4.
4 In The Posthuman, Cambridge: Polity, 2013, Rosi Braidotti challenges the idea of the ‘human’ as a universal or self-evident category – one with obvious ‘rights’ in a biopolitical hierarchy, pointing out the inconsistency in the way the genre has been applied. For Braidotti, the category itself has failed.
5 I invoke Barbara Harlow’s foundational titular work: Resistance Literature, London: Routledge, 1987.
6 Until lately, the disciplinary siloing of ecocriticism and postcolonial studies was enabled by a tacit Anglocentrism of the former. More recently, studies that refract discourses on colonial and neocolonial violence through the lenses of ecosystemic violence and class consciousness, and indigeneity and subalterity – and their relationship to land and privatization – have identified the blind spots of each field respectively, and revealed shared projects and collaborative arenas. See Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B Handley, Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011; Spencer, ‘Ecocriticism in the Colonial Present’; Rob Nixon, ‘Environmentalism and Postcolonialism’, in Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty (eds), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006; Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, ‘Green Postcolonialism’, Interventions, 9(1), 2007; Graham Huggan, ‘Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the Limits of Green Romanticism’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 45, 2009; and Amit R Baishya and Suvadip Sinha, Postcolonial Animalities, UK: Routledge, 2019 (see their recent edited volume for an additional bibliography on the postcolonial posthuman).
7 Kantian metrics for sensibility are mind–object relations, and sensibility is reserved for the human mind alone. See Immanuel Kant et al, Critique of Pure Reason, rev. 2nd ed. / bibliography compiled by Gary Banham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
8 Baishya and Sinha, Postcolonial Animalities, p 13.
9 Nathalie Handal, ‘White Trees’, in Love and Strange Horses, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010, p 67, lines 1–2.
10 See Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013; Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South, London: Routledge, 2013.
11 Fawaz Turki, ‘The Seed Keepers, a Recital’, in Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp 362–363, lines 1–27.
12 Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective, Abington, UK: Routledge, 2012, p 9.
13 Naomi Shihab Nye, ‘Holy Land’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, 1st ed., Greenwillow Books, 2002, p 95, lines 23–25.
14 Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulhucene, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2016, p 56; Emma Marris, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2011.
15 Handal, ‘In the Ruins’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 8, lines 2–12.
16 Handal, ‘The Unnatural Apologies of Shadows’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 10, lines 10–12.
17 Handal, ‘Listen, Tonight’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 11, lines 1–2.
18 Handal, ‘Listen, Tonight’, p 11, lines 5–10.
19 Handal, ‘Of the End’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 13, lines 10–14.
20 Handal, ‘The Song Fox’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 65, lines 5–8.
21 Handal, ‘The Song Fox’, p 65, lines 9–12.
22 Handal, ‘The Song Fox’, p 65, lines 13–16.
23 Dan Nosowitz, ‘What Sound Does a Fox Really Make?’, Popular Science, 5 September 2013, https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/what-sound-does-a-fox-make
24 Handal, ‘Portraits & Truths’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 74, lines 38–40.
25 Handal, ‘Black Butterflies, A Lost Tango’, in Love and Strange Horses, pp 76–77, lines 19–25.
26 Handal, ‘Black Butterflies’, p 77, lines 34–41.
27 Deborah Bird Rose, Matthew Chrulew and Thom van Dooren (eds), Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2017, p 8.
28 Basem L Ra’ad and Olivia C Harrison, ‘Enlarging “Palestine”’, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 129(2), March 2014, pp 274–278, p 276.
29 Shihab Nye, ‘19 Varieties of Gazelle’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 87, lines 9–12.
30 Shihab Nye, ‘19 Varieties of Gazelle’, pp 87–88, lines 13–18.
31 Handal, ‘Black Butterflies’, p 77, lines 40–41.
32 Handal, ‘White Strawberries’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 79, lines 1–2.
33 Handal, ‘White Strawberries’, p 79, lines 8–12.
34 Handal, ‘White Strawberries’, p 79, lines 15–16.
35 Handal, ‘Love and Strange Horses – Terre Música’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 86, lines 1–4.
36 Handal, ‘Love and Strange Horses – Terre Música’, p 86, lines 11–18.
37 Hanan Mikha’il ‘Ashrawi, ‘Women and Things’, in Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp 335–337, line 1.
38 ‘Ashrawi, ‘Women and Things’, lines 42–51.
39 Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p xiv.
40 See W J T Mitchell, ‘Holy Landscape: Israel, Palestine, and the American Wilderness’, Critical Inquiry, 26(2), 2000, pp 193–223, on how poetry naturalizes nature, treats landscape as an idol through a process of displacement, and deploys Palestine as a traveling concept divorced of its political machinations.
41 Elizabeth M DeLoughrey, Allegories of the Anthropocene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, p 25.
42 Shihab Nye, ‘My Father and the Figtree’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 6, lines 1–3.
43 Shihab Nye, ‘My Father and the Figtree’, p 7, lines 34–37.
44 Shihab Nye, ‘My Father and the Figtree’, p 7, lines 38–41.
45 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 20, line 9.
46 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, p 20, lines 10–12.
47 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, p 20, lines 13–24.
48 Hanan Mikha’il ‘Ashrawi, ‘Death by Burial’, in Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992, p 339, lines 1–2.
49 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, p 21, lines 27–34.
50 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, lines 35–38.
51 Shihab Nye, ‘The Garden of Abu Mahmoud’, line 41.
52 Shihab Nye, ‘The Clean Rinse’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 24, lines 23–25.
53 Shihab Nye, ‘The Clean Rinse’, lines 26–29.
54 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 30, lines 2–3.
55 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, line 4.
56 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, lines 6–8.
57 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, p 33, lines 48–50.
58 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, p 32, lines 42–43.
59 Shihab Nye, ‘Passing the Refugee Camp’, lines 51–55.
60 Shihab Nye, ‘Olive Jar’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 80, lines 14–18.
61 Shihab Nye, ‘Even at War’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 50, lines 13–18.
62 Shihab Nye, ‘The Palestinians Have Given Up Parties’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 62, lines 59–60.
63 Shihab Nye, ‘The Small Vases from Hebron’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, pp 63–64, lines 19–22.
64 Shihab Nye, ‘The Small Vases from Hebron’, lines 10–20.
65 Shihab Nye, ‘Rock’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 70, lines 5–15.
66 Shihab Nye, ‘Rock’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 72, lines 42–45.
67 Shihab Nye, ‘Rock’, line 46.
68 Shihab Nye, ‘They Dropped It’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 83, line 14.
69 Shihab Nye, ‘They Dropped It’, line 2.
70 Shihab Nye, ‘They Dropped It’, lines 5–10.
71 Shihab Nye, ‘They Dropped It’, line 12.
72 Shihab Nye, ‘They Dropped It’, lines 17–18.
73 Shihab Nye, ‘19 Varieties of Gazelle’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 89, lines 19–38.
74 Shihab Nye, ‘Footfall’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 115, lines 31–41.
75 Shihab Nye, ‘Footfall’, pp 115–116, lines 42–52.
76 Shihab Nye, ‘Footfall’, p 116, line 49.
77 Handal, ‘Winter Phantoms’, in Love and Strange Horses, p 73, lines 9–17.
78 Shihab Nye, ‘Trenches and Moats and Mounds of Dirt’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 117, lines 7–10.
79 Shihab Nye, ‘What He Said to His Enemies’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 119, line 2.
80 Shihab Nye, ‘What He Said to His Enemies’, lines 20–22.
81 David Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019, p 9.
82 Shihab Nye, ‘Peace’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 121, line 30.
83 Shihab Nye, ‘Stone House’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 127, lines 54–59.
84 Shihab Nye, ‘Mr. Dajani, Calling from Jericho’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 131, lines 37–46.
85 Shihab Nye, ‘All Things Not Considered’, in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, p 135, lines 49–50.
86 Shihab Nye, ‘All Things Not Considered’, lines 51–54.
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Hella Bloom Cohen
Hella Bloom Cohen is an Associate Professor of English, specializing in postcolonial literature and theory and Anglophone global writing, and is affiliated faculty with Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity and Women’s Studies at St Catherine University. Her research focuses on literary production of the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. She is the author of The Literary Imagination in Israel-Palestine: Orientalism, Poetry, and Biopolitics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).