• Resistance Literature and Occupied Palestine in Cold War Beirut

    Author(s):
    Elizabeth M. Holt (see profile)
    Date:
    2021
    Group(s):
    2019 MLA Convention
    Subject(s):
    Colonists, Imperialism, Propaganda, Cold War (1945-1989), Middle East, Area studies, Faulkner, William, 1897-1962
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Palestine, Ghassan Kanafani, Arthur Koestler, Afro-Asian Writers, Arabic, Settler colonialism, Cold War, Middle Eastern studies, Faulkner
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/56n0-xd77
    Abstract:
    FREE ACCESS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2020.1855933 For the last decade of his life, the Palestinian intellectual, author, and editor Ghassan Kanafani (d. 1972) was deeply immersed in theorizing, lecturing, and publishing on Palestinian resistance literature from Beirut. A refugee of the 1948 war, Kanafani presented his theory of resistance literature and the notion of “cultural siege” at the March 1967 Beirut conference of the Soviet-funded Afro-Asian Writers Association (AAWA). Articulated in resistance to Zionist propaganda literature and in solidarity with Marxist-Leninist revolutionary struggles in the Third World, Kanafani was inspired by Maxim Gorky, William Faulkner, and Mao Zedong alike. In books, essays, and lectures, Kanafani argued that Zionist propaganda literature served as a “weapon” in the war against Palestine, returning repeatedly to Arthur Koestler’s 1946 Thieves in the Night. Better known for his critique of Stalinism in Darkness at Noon (1940), Koestler was also actively involved in waging cultural Cold War, writing the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Congress for Cultural Freedom 1950 manifesto and helping the organization infiltrate Afro-Asian writing in the wake of Bandung. Kanafani’s 1960s theory of resistance literature thus responded at once to the psychological dislocation of Zionist propaganda fiction and the cultural infiltration of Arabic literature in the Cold War.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    2021
    Journal:
    Journal of Palestine Studies
    Volume:
    50
    Issue:
    197
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    2 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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