LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

yasir suleimanpressures which grew less and less tolerant of cultural expressions that werejudged schismatic. Peter Clark deals with this aspect of Arab nationalism,pointing out that it marginalises cultural voices that in the past had their ownlegitimate niche in society. However, the picture is not all negative accordingto Peter Clark. Post-colonialism and post-modernity have stepped into thebreach, as it were, and created conditions that promoted the emergence of newecologies of cultural diversity in the Arab body-politic. Literature by ‘Arab’writers in languages other than Arabic, particularly literature in the metropolitanlanguages of France and the Anglo-Saxon worlds, has created new zones ofmarginality and diversity. It has also created new categories of cultural productthat defy the imposition of a monochromic taxonomy based on language. It is asthough, by developing in this way, the ecology of diversity started to reassertitself.To capture this new diversity, some critics make a distinction between Arabicliterature as literature composed in Arabic, and Arab literature as literaturecomposed by ‘Arabs’ about Arab themes in a language other than Arabic. Thelatter description may be applied to what Syrine Hout calls the ‘Lebanese exilicnovel’ in this volume. As a category of definition, this novel simultaneouslyexpresses belonging to the nation as a source of ‘stability and centrality’ andalienation from it as a condition of the ‘anxiety and marginality’ of the exile (p.192). As a statement of cultural and national in-betweenness, the exilic novelis, at some deep level, an attempt to reconcile nation and exile psychologicallywithout, however, eliminating the existential difference between them.Memory, particularly nostalgic memory, plays an important part in this reconciliation,as do peculiarities of speech which the exile preserves to express hisattachment to the originary point of departure. Syrine Hout expresses this bysaying that ‘while it may be [physically] easy to extricate oneself from one’shome-country, it is a lot harder to expunge one’s national traits from one’sappearance or psyche’ (p. 197). Exilic nostalgia is not a yearning for a place perse, but for the intense personal relationship that the exile has with that placewhich others call ‘home’ or ‘national homeland’. Thus, the two novels SyrineHout studies, Koolaids by Rabih Alameddine and Unreal City by Tony Hanania,do not portray nation and exile as two antithetical realities, but as ‘realitiescoexisting within the individual, the nation and the host country’ (p. 206).The above discussion, and the chapters that follow, show the rich pickings tobe had from understanding how literature helps construct the nation and howthe nation can shape literature. We offer this volume as an initial step on theroad to developing this understanding in Middle Eastern studies. The volumeexamines poetry and the novel, but does not cover other genres. It delves intohow translation can extend the role of literature in nation building intosecondary settings which may be beyond the intended horizon of the text in its— 14 —www.taq.ir