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A fascinating, original, sophisticated yet highly readable study of Israeli and Palestinian literature. -- Dr Yair Wallach There are two main strands to Anna Bernard's book Rhetorics of Belonging (Liverpool University Press). Both have significance towards how Palestine is thought and written about in the West and how Western liberals categorize good and bad Arabs, selecting what they wish to hear and believe about Palestine. First is an exploration of how Palestinian and Israeli literature - notwithstanding current interest in translations of Arabic literature into English - is surprisingly little read in the context of postcolonial and comparative literature. On this we find the academic Ella Shohat's suspicion that the usual African and South Asian texts of postcolonial studies are chosen because of their political distance from American concerns, alongside the fact that they are often written in English. When it is read in universities or for the pages of publications such as The New York Review of Books or literary supplements of London newspapers, Bernard writes, Palestinian and Israeli literature is usually seen as representing a national narrative. This emphasis on narrative rather than justice can, Bernard argues, be dangerous to Palestinians. Increased receptivity to the Palestinian narrative, she asserts, has created a situation where to hear what Palestinians have to say - and then to juxtapose it against the Holocaust and centuries of European pogroms - allows Western liberals to carry on ignoring Palestinian rights while offering a briefly sympathetic ear. Wishing the nation away Postcolonial scholars also, Bernard contends, have an ideological tendency to wish the nation away. The evils of exclusive nationalism are thus confused with calls for liberation from those who are excluded and repressed precisely because of their nation. Western scholars may have the luxury of celebrating their cosmopolitanism. But in doing so they fail to acknowledge the experiences of those who have no option to walk away from fixed identity because it is the means by which others persecute them. The second main strand is the idea that it is possible - indeed, necessary - to look at Palestinian and Israeli literature alongside each other. To do so, Bernard argues persuasively, is not to grant the narratives themselves moral or political equivalence - to see Israeli claims as equal to Palestinian. To acknowledge that these literatures relate to one another, Bernard argues, is to understand the ways in which they often represent reactions to the same circumstances. Cannot be separated Indeed, she cites Edward Said in his assertion that we know these histories cannot be separated and that the Western liberal who tries to do so violates, rather than comprehends, both. This approach leads to an unpicking of the ways in which Palestinian and Israeli writers do (or do not) represent their respective nations in their writings, and the ways in which other scholars and critics have read literature on this theme. Bernard explicitly focuses on writers whose works are widely available in English, namely the Palestinians Edward Said, Mourid Barghouti, Sahar Khalifeh and Anton Shammas, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel; and the Jewish Israelis Amos Oz and Orly Castel-Bloom. Through the autobiographical writings of Said and Barghouti, Bernard explores themes such as how Western readerships construct their ideas of what it means to be Palestinian - sometimes, in Barghouti's case, in contradiction to the writer's explicit rejection of his representativeness. Disingenuous Bernard scrutinizes why Oz's novels are often held up by commentators in Europe and America as proof of a sane or rational Israel. Such commentators have often, Bernard suggests, absorbed Oz's disingenuous projection of himself in this role. In doing so, they ignore both the racist implications of his narratives - which construct an attractive and marketable Jewish Israeli nation-state, and ... naturalize a separatist demographic imaginary - and Oz's own support for acts of Israeli military aggression. The works of Sahar Khalifeh and Orly Castel-Bloom are analyzed from the starting point that they are often viewed in the West as the writing of women before being the writing of a Palestinian or an Israeli. This invokes a discussion of how women writers and activists in both Palestine and Israel have positioned themselves vis-a-vis the international gaze. Both, Bernard argues, have been affected by foreigners' preconceptions and used by them for their own purposes. No neat categorization Finally, Anton Shammas' novel Arabesques is examined as an example of a work which does not fit neatly into categories of either Palestinian or Israeli literature. Shammas wrote Arabesques in Hebrew but focused mainly on Palestinian characters. In doing so, his literary project seems to mesh with the call he famously made in 1985 for the State of Israel to live up to its democratic claims by allowing its Palestinian citizens their full political - and thus social and economic - rights. Shammas' call exposed A.B. Yehoshua, like Oz, a reasonable Israeli and a darling for international liberals, as harboring anti-Arab ideas not significantly different from ... Meir Kahane (a US rabbi who advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians from greater Israel ). But the novel itself is less clear-cut, using complex patterns of fictional identity and storytelling to render all claims to authenticity or authority problematic. This is an academic book (with, sadly, an academic price-tag) which assumes some prior knowledge. But the novels and autobiographies discussed are well-known and accessible. Bernard's writing is clear and readable, exploring a range of ideas which are significant not just for scholars of literature and nationalism, but for those with a more general interest in Palestine. Sarah Irving worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She is the author of a biography of Leila Khaled and of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and co-editor of A Bird is not a Stone, a collection of contemporary Palestinian poetry in translation. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The Electronic Intifada 20140328 Bernard's writing is clear and readable, exploring a range of ideas which are significant not just for scholars of literature and nationalism, but for those with a more general interest in Palestine. The Electronic Intifada 20140328

A fascinating, original, sophisticated yet highly readable study of Israeli and Palestinian literature. -- Dr Yair Wallach There are two main strands to Anna Bernard's book Rhetorics of Belonging (Liverpool University Press). Both have significance towards how Palestine is thought and written about in the West and how Western liberals categorize good and bad Arabs, selecting what they wish to hear and believe about Palestine. First is an exploration of how Palestinian and Israeli literature - notwithstanding current interest in translations of Arabic literature into English - is surprisingly little read in the context of postcolonial and comparative literature. On this we find the academic Ella Shohat's suspicion that the usual African and South Asian texts of postcolonial studies are chosen because of their political distance from American concerns, alongside the fact that they are often written in English. When it is read in universities or for the pages of publications such as The New York Review of Books or literary supplements of London newspapers, Bernard writes, Palestinian and Israeli literature is usually seen as representing a national narrative. This emphasis on narrative rather than justice can, Bernard argues, be dangerous to Palestinians. Increased receptivity to the Palestinian narrative, she asserts, has created a situation where to hear what Palestinians have to say - and then to juxtapose it against the Holocaust and centuries of European pogroms - allows Western liberals to carry on ignoring Palestinian rights while offering a briefly sympathetic ear. Wishing the nation away Postcolonial scholars also, Bernard contends, have an ideological tendency to wish the nation away. The evils of exclusive nationalism are thus confused with calls for liberation from those who are excluded and repressed precisely because of their nation. Western scholars may have the luxury of celebrating their cosmopolitanism. But in doing so they fail to acknowledge the experiences of those who have no option to walk away from fixed identity because it is the means by which others persecute them. The second main strand is the idea that it is possible - indeed, necessary - to look at Palestinian and Israeli literature alongside each other. To do so, Bernard argues persuasively, is not to grant the narratives themselves moral or political equivalence - to see Israeli claims as equal to Palestinian. To acknowledge that these literatures relate to one another, Bernard argues, is to understand the ways in which they often represent reactions to the same circumstances. Cannot be separated Indeed, she cites Edward Said in his assertion that we know these histories cannot be separated and that the Western liberal who tries to do so violates, rather than comprehends, both. This approach leads to an unpicking of the ways in which Palestinian and Israeli writers do (or do not) represent their respective nations in their writings, and the ways in which other scholars and critics have read literature on this theme. Bernard explicitly focuses on writers whose works are widely available in English, namely the Palestinians Edward Said, Mourid Barghouti, Sahar Khalifeh and Anton Shammas, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel; and the Jewish Israelis Amos Oz and Orly Castel-Bloom. Through the autobiographical writings of Said and Barghouti, Bernard explores themes such as how Western readerships construct their ideas of what it means to be Palestinian - sometimes, in Barghouti's case, in contradiction to the writer's explicit rejection of his representativeness. Disingenuous Bernard scrutinizes why Oz's novels are often held up by commentators in Europe and America as proof of a sane or rational Israel. Such commentators have often, Bernard suggests, absorbed Oz's disingenuous projection of himself in this role. In doing so, they ignore both the racist implications of his narratives - which construct an attractive and marketable Jewish Israeli nation-state, and ... naturalize a separatist demographic imaginary - and Oz's own support for acts of Israeli military aggression. The works of Sahar Khalifeh and Orly Castel-Bloom are analyzed from the starting point that they are often viewed in the West as the writing of women before being the writing of a Palestinian or an Israeli. This invokes a discussion of how women writers and activists in both Palestine and Israel have positioned themselves vis-a-vis the international gaze. Both, Bernard argues, have been affected by foreigners' preconceptions and used by them for their own purposes. No neat categorization Finally, Anton Shammas' novel Arabesques is examined as an example of a work which does not fit neatly into categories of either Palestinian or Israeli literature. Shammas wrote Arabesques in Hebrew but focused mainly on Palestinian characters. In doing so, his literary project seems to mesh with the call he famously made in 1985 for the State of Israel to live up to its democratic claims by allowing its Palestinian citizens their full political - and thus social and economic - rights. Shammas' call exposed A.B. Yehoshua, like Oz, a reasonable Israeli and a darling for international liberals, as harboring anti-Arab ideas not significantly different from ... Meir Kahane (a US rabbi who advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians from greater Israel ). But the novel itself is less clear-cut, using complex patterns of fictional identity and storytelling to render all claims to authenticity or authority problematic. This is an academic book (with, sadly, an academic price-tag) which assumes some prior knowledge. But the novels and autobiographies discussed are well-known and accessible. Bernard's writing is clear and readable, exploring a range of ideas which are significant not just for scholars of literature and nationalism, but for those with a more general interest in Palestine. Sarah Irving worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She is the author of a biography of Leila Khaled and of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and co-editor of A Bird is not a Stone, a collection of contemporary Palestinian poetry in translation. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The Electronic Intifada 20140328 Bernard's writing is clear and readable, exploring a range of ideas which are significant not just for scholars of literature and nationalism, but for those with a more general interest in Palestine. The Electronic Intifada 20140328 Anna Bernard's Rhetorics of Belonging joins the small but impressive ranks of the series Postcolonialism Across the Disciplines as a genuinely comparative addition to literary and Middle Eastern studies. It enhances a belated focus on Palestinian literature in postcolonial studies (as evidenced by JPW Special Issue: Palestine and the Postcolonial: Culture, Creativity, Theory vol. 50, no. 2, April 2014). But with its dual focus on Palestinian and Israeli world literature and its reach across Arabic, English and Hebrew, Bernard's book significantly recontextualizes the sub-field of Palestinian creative production, even as it contributes to its visibility. This book persuasively returns us to the category of the nation as an unforgoable site of liberation struggle (Lazarus 2011, 106) particularly but not exclusively in the Israel/Palestine context(s), and to Fredric Jameson's (1986) controversial analysis of national allegory. Bernard aims in part to strengthen the case for materialist analysis of postcolonial literature. But she also stresses that Jameson's is a theory of metropolitan reading and explores his argument that allegory may illustrate the multiple polysemia of the dream rather than the homogenous representation of the symbol (Jameson 1986, 73), thereby constructing hitherto unrealized frameworks for the nation. A key strength of Rhetorics of Belonging is the emphasis on ways in which literary texts by authors who fulfil specific international roles (for example, as a Palestinian feminist or as a left Zionist writer) self-consciously, critically and in properly literary terms stage national allegory. While Bernard observes that Israeli texts are more prone to ironic reflections on the nation, this does not mean that Palestinian texts champion realist or identitarian politics, as Said's Out of Place (1999) - the first text examined - makes abundantly clear. The author defines a subset of writing from Israel/Palestine that already exists in an English critical field and is emphatically worldly in the Saidian sense. The aim, then, is not primarily the introduction of unknown or under-represented material to the postcolonial canon. Rather, the book comprises detailed discussion of, and distinctive arguments about, a small number of texts by relatively high-profile authors: Edward Said, Mourid Barghouti, Amos Oz, Orly Castel-Bloom, Sahar Khalifeh and Anton Shammas. It closely attends to the narrative forms that tend to make it into international circulation - novels and (particularly in the Palestinian context) memoirs - through analysis of specifics such as the recourse to biographical form (40) and dissensual Bildungsroman (130), converging styles such as the arabesque and Euro-American modernism, and diverse specifications of affiliation, evoked in a contrast between Saidian exile and Barghouti's more materialist aesthetic. Bernard's is a bold approach to the world's most visible contemporary colonial conflict (20), in which Palestine is continually obstructed in its claims to land, resources and political representation. Not everyone will condone her emphasis on the demographic imaginary of a greater Israel/Palestine - a single-state solution, at least in symbolic (or utopian) terms - though this reader applauds the integrity, in both senses, of her vision. In related fashion, the book is critical of the treatment of external Palestinians in the Israeli demographic imaginary, highlighting the limits of Oz's self-ascribed humanism and of Castel-Bloom's intersectional critique of patriarchal forms of nationalism. Anton Shammas' Arabesques (1988, first published in Hebrew in 1986), is positioned last due to its radical vision of a nation based on political consent rather than biological descent. Bernard argues that the real-world failure of Shammas's vision, to date, should not invalidate that novel's affirmation of the already existing relationality of Palestinians, Israelis, and Palestinian-Israelis and of more equal ways of living together (159). References Jameson, Fredric. 1986. Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism. Social Text 15: 65-88. Lazarus, Neil. -- Lindsey Moore Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2014 Anna Bernard's Rhetorics of Belonging joins the small but impressive ranks of the series Postcolonialism Across the Disciplines as a genuinely comparative addition to literary and Middle Eastern studies. It enhances a belated focus on Palestinian literature in postcolonial studies ... Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2014

A fascinating, original, sophisticated yet highly readable study of Israeli and Palestinian literature. -- Dr Yair Wallach

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Dr Anna Bernard is Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at King’s College London.

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