This dissertation examines prison works written by former political prisoners in Syria from the 1980s to the present. It argues that these works, which act as hidden transcripts, are sources that ...allow for a counter-discourse and alternate narrative about the political history in Syria. By alternate discourse, I mean the ways in which these works viewed, analyzed, and represented Syria’s political history, which is at odds with the state’s version of that history. The state’s discourse claimed that it was saving Syria from “terrorists” and “anarchists” and used that claim to imprison many of its opponents from different political backgrounds. These opponents, in return, expose the state’s oppression, commenting extensively on the consequences of violence on Syrians inside and outside prison. The relationship between these two discourses is the heart of this study. The proliferation of prison narratives aims to document decades of oppression and to reflect on the social, political, and religious factors that played a major role in the creation and evolution of such oppression.The first chapter offers a history of literary publishing in Syria, especially the publication of prison works, focusing on the dynamic between censorship and publication permission. It argues that publishing prison works constitutes a battlefield where the former prisoners and the regime collided in order to control the discourse on Syria’s political history. The second chapter discusses how allegory created a relatively safer trajectory for authors to bypass censorship. Exploring the works of Ghassan Jubbāʻī, Zakaria Tamer, Saʻd Allāh Wannūs, and Mamdūḥ Adwān, it illuminates how Arabic history was employed in allegorical literature to send anti-regime messages. The third chapter examines the importance of prison narratives as testimonies of a history that the state intended to obliterate. They constitute a lived history that aspires to regain agency over the voices of the former prisoners and to sustain their existence as human beings. Chapter four analyzes prison literature in light of its traumatic representations and significance. It contextualizes prison narratives to create a framework to understand Syrian trauma derived from these narratives.
With the still-ongoing Arab Spring that has passed by five Arab countries, the basic slogan has been freedom. With a close scrutiny at the social movements that led to the uprising, we notice that ...the educated youth have been part and parcel in igniting the uprisings. However, this youth has rarely had any temporal or spatial opportunities to manifest or express their callings for freedom, so where does that motivation come from? How can we understand and articulate the youth's role in the uprisings? Were education and literature an eye opener for the youth? Had literature, in all of its forms, been an impact on the early steps of the callings for freedom? How has the Arab youth been implemented or described in the pre-Arab Spring narratives? This paper investigates how the social and political environment was imagined across Egypt and Syria during the Pre-Arab Spring. I will focus on the political dimension that spread over to the literary production in contemporary narratives; taking into account the dichotomy between the theocratic atmosphere and the potential freedom channels- in this case it is literature- that might have been one of the sparks that ignited the Arab Spring.
Beş Arap ülkesinden geçen ve hala devam eden Arap Baharı ile temel slogan özgürlük
olmuştur. Ayaklanmaya yol açan toplumsal hareketlerin detaylı incelenmesinde, eğitimli
gençlerin, isyanların ...ateşlenmesinde önemli bir öğe olduklarını fark ettik. Oysaki
bu gençlik, özgürlük çağrılarını sergilemek ya da ifade etmek için zaman ve mekan
fırsatlarına pek sahip değildi. O halde bu motivasyon nereden kaynaklanmaktadır?
Ayaklanmalar içinde gençlerin rolünü nasıl anlayabilir ve ifade edebiliriz? Eğitim ve
edebiyat gençlerin gözünü açmış mıydı? Edebiyat, bütün biçimleriyle, özgürlük çağrılarının
ilk adımlarında bir etki yarattı mı? Arap gençliği, Arap Baharı öncesi anlatılarda
nasıl işlenmiş veya tanımlanmıştır? Bu çalışma, Arap Baharı öncesi dönemde
Mısır ve Suriye’de sosyal ve politik çevrenin nasıl imgelendiğini araştırmaktadır. Makalede
teokratik atmosfer ile potansiyel özgürlük kanalları arasındaki ikilemi dikkate
alarak, çağdaş anlatılar içinde edebi üretime yayılan siyasi boyuta odaklanacağım. Bu
durumda edebiyat, Arap Baharı’nı ateşleyen kıvılcımlardan biri olabilir.
Concerto Al-Quds Kadalah, Mohammed
World Literature Today,
02/2018, Volume:
92, Issue:
1
Book Review
Peer reviewed
For Adonis, Al-Quds is an ever-extraordinary city where all the contradictions of life meet-life and death, beauty and malice, love and hatred, peace and war.Adonis creates a vivid image of al-Quds ...and how instead of death representing the end of its inhabitants' lives, it uses their bodies and graves for rejuvenation, as if death is the beginning of another life, parallel to that of the afterlife but this time on earth where "graves are the semen of al-Quds" He utilizes creative images that leave the reader fascinated both with the beauty of al-Quds and the language that describes it, leaving a mythic illustration of this ancient city.
