Mourid Barghouti’s “multiple displacements”: exile and the national checkpoint in Palestinian literature

Abstract

The article seeks to demonstrate a post-Saidian theory of Palestinian exile via a close reading of Mourid Barghouti’s memoirs I Saw Ramallah (1997; trans. 2000) and I Was Born There, I Was Born Here (2009; trans. 2011). After outlining Anna Bernard’s objections to Said, it then traces Barghouti’s development of a more fluid, encompassing notion of exile that resists idealization while remaining faithful to the core postcolonial issues of colonial history and the Nakba. By carefully attending to Barghouti’s experiences at Allenby Bridge, it argues that the national checkpoint is a pivotal site where the dynamic of post-Saidian exile is defined. These experiences suggest temporal and generational modes of exile that, supplementing Patrick Williams’s delineation of the various “modes of dispossession experienced by Palestinians”, are central to a wider theorization. I conclude that post-Saidian exile comprises an important new direction for a postcolonial studies attuned to Palestine’s colonial history.

Keywords:

• Palestinian checkpoint
• exile
• Edward Said
• Mourid Barghouti
• Allenby Bridge