Brexit literature's present absentees

Triangulating Brexit, anti-Semitism, and the Palestinian crisis

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2179403
AutoresLindsey Moore (0000-0003-2182-823X)
Ano2020
Volume56
Fascículo5
Páginas621-635
Data de publicação2020-09-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2020.1820666
OpenAlexW3085608832
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas14

This article addresses a blind spot in Brexit literary criticism: Britain’s relationship to the Middle East, particularly its historic responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. Although fiction that directly engages both Brexit and the Israeli–Palestinian crisis has not yet appeared, oblique connections can be illuminated. Shared conceptual fields, albeit ones only partially brought into view in contemporary British fiction, emerge from intersecting historical experiences. The article considers a range of recent literary texts, with an emphasis on A Stranger City (2019) by British Jewish author Linda Grant and Fractured Destinies: A Novel (2018) by British Palestinian author Raba’i al-Madhoun. When viewed in a certain light, Brexit motifs of enclosure, displacement, and propinquity limn the Palestinian crisis as well as the spectre of anti-Semitism, revealing Britain’s role in the shaping of the modern Middle East as part of contemporary British literature’s political unconscious

Brexit · Criticism · European union · Middle East · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · History · Law