“We Yearn for the Sun Like a Baby Yearns for Its Mother's Milk”: An Ecocritical Reading of Iraqi Literature of Exiles

Hilla Peled-Shapira

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Gha'ib Tu'ma Farmān’s novel al-Murtajā wa-l-mu'ajjal (The Yearned for and the Postponed, 1986) depicts the lives of Iraqi exiles in Russia. By using a new ecocritical analytical approach – a combination of Georg Lukács’s theory (1974) regarding the connection between longing and form, Mas'ud Hamdan’s description of art as a means of expressing the complexities of human life (2009), and Theodor Adorno’s view of exile as a mutilating experience (2000) – this article aims to explore how Farmān uses ecological landscapes to reflect the exilic experience. The analysis, coupling environmental studies with migration studies and contributing to both, shows that not only is this novel as relevant to the depiction of current-day exile as it was at the time when it was published, but that through it, Farmān informs the existing knowledge of historical events by artistically documenting horrific chapters in Iraqi political history from the victims’ point of view, in a way that transcends the scope of the above-mentioned theories.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)101-125
Number of pages25
JournalJournal for Interdisciplinary Middle Eastern Studies
Volume7
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Ariel University Press. All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

  • Baghdad
  • Ecocriticism
  • Exile
  • Gha'ib Tu'ma Farmān
  • Moscow

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