The Fictitiousness of Reality: Ḥussein Barghoutī’s Conception of Realism
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Speaker: Haneen Omari
Assuming a revolutionary position, modern Palestinian literature aims at mirroring the reality of land loss, massacres, exile, and the dream to return. The modern Palestinian author Ḥussein Barghoutī (1954-2002) has often been seen as an author who focuses in his writings on issues that are secondary to the needed representation of Palestinian reality . This paper will examine how Barghoutī complicates the meaning of Realism through linking it to notions of space, self-consciousness, language, and memory. Instead of equating Realism with the real /the truth , Barghoutī postulates that reality constitutes an exercise in dialectics. In other words, reality is a fictitious representation that is constructed through what he calls the system of categories (language). Following this line, a solidification of language, themes, and ideas used in literary portrayals (like reducing the literary into becoming a mirror of the political, for example) is in fact an abandonment of the essence of reality. A creative and fruitful literary production, Barghoutī tells us, is that which engages with the dialectical nature of reality; thus always striving to metamorphose the self and, in turn, language.