Hyper-Despotism of the Bullet: Post-Bardo Tunisia and its (Unforgiving) Memorial Communiqué

This paper is occasioned by my personal experience of the Bardo National Museum in Tunis immediately after the 18th March 2015 attacks that claimed twenty-four lives, dealt a blow to the burgeoning political morale of post-revolutionary Tunisia, and etched an unprecedented mark in the memory of Tunisians of all persuasions. The bullet holes and fractured vitrines in and around the famed Salle de Carthage, where this country’s fabled antiquity meets its effort to bring about a cultural and political modernity, invite reflection on what Fredric Jameson has termed the ‘irrevocable’ function of historical trauma – and especially its modes of inheritability and transmission in a socius that is itself at a delicate crossroads of political transition. In such a fraught context, Lyotard’s ‘immemoriality’ must be read in light of what Jean Laplanche characterises as the ‘enigma’ that structures the retrospective quest: the ‘enigmatic’ retains itself as such since it always already embodies the noumenal essence of historical violence as a ceaseless question: “What does the dead person want? What does he want of me? What did he want to say to me?” (Laplanche). Reflecting on the fractured vitrine (and bullet-dented statue) of the infant Bacchus at the Bardo, and drawing on W. Benjamin’s and P. Ricoeur’s thought, this paper recalls the notion that time itself, as the fabric of retrospective or memorial passage, necessarily registers as the tension that obtains between an object and its accidents (G. Harman). This tension is what occasions the moment at which the ethical imperative of cultural rhetoricity – including the literary itself – becomes that of returning the representational principle to the materiality of history. Finally, I read Tunisian poet Moncef Ghachem’s poem "Cent Mille Oiseaux" (“A Hundred Thousand Birds”) in this light – as a poem whose “internal motor schema” (A. Lingis) is intended to subvert the poem’s own overt rhetoricity, hence making possible the installation of the communal memorial trauma as its ontological kernel

Post-imperial culture and its melancholies – from Théophile Gautier’s Constantinople of to-day to Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul – memories of a city

This article is concerned with literary representations of the affective impact of the Ottoman empire’s demise on its principal metropolis, Istanbul. It discusses first the work of nineteenth-century French novelist and diarist Théophile Gautier about the city, Constantinople of To-day, then moves on to analyse its subsequent influence on the work of the early Turkish Republican writers, through to Orhan Pamuk’s recent memoir Istanbul. Memories of a City. In Istanbul, Pamuk forges a system of belief that presents itself as a counternarrative to the ideological discourses that took over the city, as successive Republican governments embarked on radical urban, ethnic and religious reconfigurations of the post-Ottoman metropolis. This is registered in his memoir as an affective structure, a form of melancholy that Pamuk terms hüzün, and that may be perceived as operating through the Saidian model of ‘intertwined constructions’ expressed in his Culture and Imperialism. The article proposes that Pamuk’s fraught gesture significantly complicates Said’s unilateral argument on the French Orientalists in his Orientalism, suggesting instead the urgency of reading Gautier’s influence on Pamuk through the early Turkish Republican writers as a trope of world literary dynamics.peer-reviewe

P. Charlò Camilleri O.Carm

Din il-poeżija bl-isem `13:00 Monemvasia’ ta’ Norbert Bugeja dehret fil-ġurnal Il-Malti : Rivista tal-Akkademja tal-Malti ħarġa letterarja, 93.peer-reviewe

Postcolonial thresholds: gateways and borders

Introduction to a special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing coedited by Janet Wilson and Daria Tunc

Silta mill-"Antigone" ta’ Sofokle

Ġabra ta’ poeżiji u proża li tinkludi: Ħajki ta’ Josette Attard – Din l-għanja tiegħi ta’ Rena Balzan – Fl-irdum fejn jidwi ta’ Charles Bezzina – Naqa’ biss ta’ Ġorġ Borg – Gambrinu, 7.45 a.m. ta’ Norbert Bugeja – Għadam ta’ Joseph Buttigieg – Tħarisx biss fil-wiċċ ta’ John Caruana – Petra ta’ Priscilla Cassar – Mhux iżjed dan il-pajjiż tiegħi ta’ Victor Fenech – Twieqi magħluqa ta’ Maria Grech Ganado – Joseph quddiem ir-ritratt ta’ sieħbu jitfarrak ta’ Adrian Grima – Ta’ l-ilma l-fruntieri tiegħek ta’ Simone Inguanez – Għall-kaċċa tal-grejtwajt ta’ Daniel Massa – Ftit weraq mis-Slovenja ta’ Immanuel Mifsud – Dak li kien ta’ Achille Mizzi – Wassalni ta’ Anna Pullicino – Tamiet fiergħa ta’ Patrick Sammut – Fost l-isbaħ jiem ta’ Lillian Sciberras – Kelma ta’ Marcel Zammit Marmarà – Lill-Imdina żagħżugħa ta’ Joe Zammit Tabona – Sodda ta’ l-ilma ta’ Clare Azzopardi – Kurċifiss ta’ Paul P. Borg – Mera mkissra ta’ Lina Brockdorff – No(ra)vella ta’ Joe Friggieri – L-abbati ta’ Henry Holland – L-eħrex ġurnata tal-gwerra ta’ Maurice Mifsud Bonnici – Marija ta’ Lino Spiteri – Ikla ta’ Trevor Żahra – Il-mara midinba ta’ Albert Camus, traduzzjoni ta’ Toni Aquilina – Silta mill-"Antigone" ta’ Sofokle, traduzzjoni ta’ Victor Xuereb.peer-reviewe

Servitude et grandeur militaires

Ġabra ta’ poeżiji u proża li tinkludi: Notturn op. 9 nru 2 ta’ Beverly Agius – Naf ta’ Carmel Azzopardi – Ħsejjes ħajja ta’ Clifton Azzopardi – Il-ġrajja t’għasfur stramb ta’ Mario Azzopardi – Tektik...u għana ta’ Rena Balzan – Kun af li f’qiegħ għajnejk ta’ Charles Bezzina – Il-qalb imwebbsa ta’ Ġorġ Borg – Bħal ħuta mġewħa ta’ Louis Briffa – Taħt il-Mezquita, Cordòba ta’ Norbert Bugeja – Il-maskarat ta’ Alfred Degabriele – Trid mara ta’ Leanne Ellul – Id-dgħajsa ta’ Victor Fenech – Ilħna ta’ Joe Friggieri – Roulette ta’ Joe Friggieri – Għera ta’ Joe P. Galea – Ħġieġa ta’ Maria Grech Ganado – Ġenna qatt mirbuħa ta’ Karmenu Mallia – Il-fantażma tal-mara mqarba ta’ Albert Marshall – Daħlet Qorrot ta’ Daniel Massa – Granada, parque central ta’ Immanuel Mifsud – Waħda mara ta’ Immanuel Mifsud – Mors ta’ Therese Pace – Għada ta’ Alfred Palma – Emmint xejn ma jintemm ta’ Ġorġ Peresso – Tuffieħa bl-imsiemer tal-qronfol ta’ John Peter Portelli – Lil Karmenu Vassallo ta’ Andrew Sciberras – Irrid il-qamar jiddi ta’ Carmel Scicluna – Din il-biċċa ħuta ta’ Steve Borg – Karta li taret mar-riħ ta’ Lina Brockdorff – Nixtieq, u kemm nixtieq! ta’ J. J. Camilleri – Caterina ta’ Sandro Mangion – L-għajta tal-pappagall ta’ Pierre J. Mejlak – Id-destin ta’ Laurence Mizzi – L-arloġġ tal-bozza ta’ Rita Saliba – Kurżità ta’ Alfred Sant – Il-ġeneral ta’ Vincent Vella – Mirja ta’ Trevor Żahra – L-adulteri ta’ Golan Haji, traduzzjoni ta’ Clare Azzopardi u Albert Gatt – L-istennija ta’ Berislav Blagojević, traduzzjoni ta’ Kit Azzopardi – Il-qattus ta’ Ghassan Kanafani, traduzzjoni ta’ Walid Nabhan – L-iben addottat ta’ Guy de Maupassant, traduzzjoni ta’ Josette Attard – Sunett nru. 18 ta’ William Shakespeare, traduzzjoni ta’ Alfred Palma – Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías ta’ Federico Garcia Lorca, traduzzjoni ta’ Therese Pace – Servitude et grandeur militaires ta’ Alfred de Vigny, traduzzjoni ta’ Paul Zahra.peer-reviewe

Rethinking the liminal : threshold conciousness in four Mashriqi memoirs

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceCommonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United KingdomGreat Britain. Dept. for International DevelopmentGBUnited Kingdo

The literary encyclopaedia

Istanbul — Memories of a City is a memoir written by Istanbul-born novelist and 2006 literature Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952). First published in English in 2005 and translated by Maureen Freely, this autobiographical work follows on from Pamuk’s preceding novels, most of which are set in his native Istanbul, and narrates his childhood and early teenage years as an aspiring painter and architecture student during the early years of the Cold War era, in the 1950s and 1960s. The memoir is at once a passionate lyrical tribute to the late-Ottoman imperial metropole and a lament for Istanbul’s political and cultural degradation following the rise of the Turkish Republic, with its ensuing architectural and demographic ravages on a city that has historically stood as a literal and symbolic “bridge” between East and West, Asia and Europe.peer-reviewe

[Book review] The postsecular imagination : postcolonialism, religion and literature

The legacies, potentials, and pitfalls of the “secular,” and their ongoing implications within global and (trans)national distributions of power and ideological critique occupy an increasingly vital role within the postcolonial humanities today. As we continue to witness around us the long-term ravages of a “West [that] is now everywhere … in structures and in minds” (xi), to use Ashis Nandy’s memorable phrasing, the urgency of this debate can never be overestimated. Its presence bears heavily upon a crucial Derridean demand of twenty first-century critical thought: namely, that exegesis occupies itself with, and respects, a certain ontology of the “ought to” (il faudrait). This exhortation is, in many ways, as subjective as it is onerous. The questions postcolonialist scholarship ought to be addressing today as a matter of imminence, especially at a juncture which Wendy Brown has marked as “an era of profound political disorientation”—one that requires ever more vigilant modes of “how we navigate within the tattered narratives of modernity” (Brown 3)—are repeatedly the topic of debate and conversation.peer-reviewe

Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing

This book reconsiders the notion of liminality in postcolonial critical discourse today. By visiting Mashriqi writers of memoir, Bugeja offers a unique intervention in the understanding of 'in-between' and ‘threshold’ states in present-day postcolonialist thought. His analysis situates liminal space as a fraught form of consciousness that mediates between conditions of historical contingency and the memorializing present. Within the present Mashriqi memoir form, liminal spaces may be read as articulations of 'representational spaces' — narrative spaces that, based as they are within the histories of local communities, are nonetheless redolent with memorial and imaginary elements. Liminal consciousness today, Bugeja argues, is a direct consequence of the impact of volatile present-day memories on the re-conception of the open wounds of history. Incisive readings of life-writings by Mourid Barghouti, Amin Maalouf, Orhan Pamuk, Amos Oz, and Wadad Makdisi Cortas demonstrate the double-edged representational chasm that opens up when present acts of memorializing are brought to bear upon the elusive histories of the early-twentieth-century Mashriq. Sifting through the wide-ranging theoretical literature on liminality and challenging received views of the concept, this book proposes a nuanced, materialist, and original rethinking of the liminal as a more vigilant outlook onto the political, literary and historical predicaments of the contemporary Middle East