A Language of One's Own - by Ismail Nashef

About the Book

Based on rich literary, historical and legal data, Ismail Nashef offers a fresh case study of literary settler colonial contexts, in which language, literature and socio-political regime are re-examined based on new data.

Book Synopsis

Following the establishment of Israel in 1948, literary Arabic became one of the main representatives of Palestinian national identity within Israel, and therefore a contested public site. Various state agencies and Palestinian groups were active in this public site, calling for certain ways of reading and writing in Arabic. These ways influenced the processes of reshaping the Palestinian national identity that were ignited by the war of 1948. Addressing the Palestinian reading public in Israel, both state agencies and Palestinian groups used literary criticism, as well as other genres, to promote and inculcate their preferred ways of reading and writing.
Ismail Nashef argues that since 1948 there have been three distinct modes for addressing the Palestinian reading public through literary Arabic: the public intellectual mode, the academic mode and the professional expert mode. Based on rich literary, historical and legal data, the book offers a fresh case study of literary settler colonial contexts, in which language, literature and socio-political regime are re-examined based on new data. It demonstrates the impossibility of rebuilding Palestinian national identities within the Zionist regime, highlighting the literary embodiment of the ongoing settler colonial condition of Palestinians in Israel.

Review Quotes

This book is the missing chapter in the history of Arabic in the modern Age, providing a unique theoretical and sociolinguistic framework for the development of the language under occupation.--Tarek El-Ariss, Dartmouth College

About the Author

Ismail Nashef is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar. He has held academic positions in different universities in the Arab World and beyond. In addition to his academic career, he is a literary and art critic as well as a curator. He has initiated and participated in different cultural and academic projects in academia and elsewhere. His research focus is on materiality, language and ideology. He explores these topics as they are expressed in literature and visual arts. His current research is on visual arts and literature in the colonial contexts, with special attention to the Arab Islamic societies, generally, and Palestinian society, particulary. His latest publications include: Ruins: Expressing al Nakba (Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2019); Arabic: A story of a colonial mask (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2018); June's Childhood: Dar al Fata al Arabi and the genres of tragedy (Tamer Institute for Community Education, 2016); Images of the Palestinian Death (Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, 2015); On Palestinian Abstraction: Zohdy Qadry and the Geometrical Melody of Late Modernism (Raya, 2014).