Lina Meruane’s Palestine Writing: Becoming-World in World Literature
Cristina Morales | Universitat de Barcelona
Octavi Rofes | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Publication: Volume 5 Issue 2
Abstract | Lina Meruane’s work on Palestine began in 2012 and comprises what throughout the text will be addressed as the author’s Palestine Writing, a mesh of pieces belonging to different genres that, understood through Deleuze and Guattari’s framework, constitute Meruane’s literary machine. Analysing the book’s title, Volverse Palestina, this paper discusses the two different meanings wrapped in it—Returning to Palestine and becoming Palestine. Meruane’s return is impossible because one cannot return from where one has never been, and her transformation is the result of a series of unexpected encounters and collaborations. This paper considers Meruane’s Palestine Writing as a form of becoming-Palestine that takes place not only through an inherited identity but also through a kind of cultural contagion. Following this argument, Palestine Writing can be understood as a part of worldish literature; a becoming-world instance of literature that can relate to other literary works, opening the door to a new understanding of world literature, based on a consolidated definition of what the “universe” of world literature is.
Key words | Meruane, Literary Machine, Becoming-minor, World Literature, Palestine, Volverse Palestina, Deleuze, Guattari, Comparative Literature, Worldish
Cristina Morales (cristina.dinu1@s.unibuc.ro) is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, whose project explores alternative forms of comparative analysis in the field of World Literature. She centers on the meaning of world caught up in “world literature,” aiming to redefine the central term of the Comparative Literature discipline in order to offer a more literary-centered approach. She is an Associate Professor at Eina, Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and her academic works analyze the impact literary worlds have over our ordinary realities.
Octavi Rofes (orofes@eina.cat) is an anthropologist. He is a Professor at Eina, Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He earned a doctorate from Universitat de Barcelona, Spain in 2015. His research is focused on describing the processes of production of locality through artistic practices and the conflicts of representation in the contemporary world. Since then his area of study is Palestine; he conducts an ethnographic research on mobility and the poetics of infrastructures.