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THE LITTERSCAPE AND THE NUDE: HISTORY ESCAPES IN MANSUR BUSHNAF'S AL-ʿILKA (CHEWING GUM).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 December 2018

Charis Olszok
Charis Olszok*
Affiliation:
Charis Olszok is a Lecturer in Modern Arabic Literature and Culture in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; e-mail: co383@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Mansur Bushnaf's al-ʿIlka (Chewing Gum; 2008) is the author's sole novel, born of his twelve-year imprisonment in a Libyan jail, and his reflection on the nation's subjection to international marginalization and dictatorial rule under Gaddafi. The novel is centered on a 19th-century nude which confounds all who encounter it, and which lies neglected in a corner of Tripoli's Red Palace Museum. Through this statue, and the novel's broader poetics of stasis and “chewing,” I explore how turāth in Bushnaf's work, and wider Libyan fiction, is depicted through its abject vulnerability and exposure to historical vicissitudes, reflecting the parallel exclusion of human lives from rights and agency. In al-ʿIlka, I examine how this is formulated into a defamiliarizing perspective on the postmodern, and on historical trauma and erasure, in which the possibility of narrative is a driving concern, rooted in existential reflection, as well as the real precarity of those who tell stories in Libya.

Keywords

fictionheritageLibyapostmodernismprison literature
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

Author's Note: I thank Ghassan Fergiani and Ghazi Gheblawi for their constant assistance and help in the research process, as well as for introducing me to Chewing Gum through their wider efforts in the publication of Libyan fiction in translation. I also thank the three reviewers of IJMES for their insightful suggestions as I developed this article.

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10 For a detailed history of these camps, see Ahmida, Ali, Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar. For a theorization of the camps as “bare life,” see also Atkinson, David, “Encountering Bare Life in Italian Libya and Colonial Amnesia in Agamben,” in Critical Connections: Agamben and Colonialism, ed. Svirsky, Marcelo and Bignall, Simone (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 155–77Google Scholar.

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17 al-Kuni, Ibrahim, ʿUdus al-Sura: al-Juzʾ al-Awwal (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2012), 455Google Scholar.

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19 Charlotte Higgins, “How Gaddafi Toppled a Roman Emperor,” The Guardian, 28 November 2011, accessed 10 September 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2011/nov/28/libya-muammar-gaddafi.

20 Christopher Stephen and Caroline Alexander, “Libya's Naked Lady Offers Image of Defiance to Islamists,” Bloomberg, 13 February 2013, accessed 10 September 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-02-13/libya-s-naked-lady-offers-image-of-defiance-to-islamists.

21 Qanaw, “Caesar's Return,” 175; Qanaw, “ʿAwdat al-Qaysar,” 23.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Santner, Eric, On Creaturely Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), xvCrossRefGoogle Scholar. In another short story by Libyan author ʿUmar al-Kiddi, “The Wonderful Short Life of the Dog Ramadan,” the statues’ emigration may be paralleled to that of the eponymous dog, who is bought passage to Italy on an illegal crossing by his Dutch owner. In both stories, Libyans are largely absent, critiquing their marginalized state within the international community through the absurd juxtaposition of departing dog and statue: al-Kiddi, ʿUmar, “al-Hayat al-Qasira al-ʿAjiba li-l-Kalb Ramadan,” Majallat Nizwa 63 (2010): 219–23Google Scholar; al-Kiddi, “The wonderful Short Life of the Dog Ramadan,” trans. Moger, Robin, Banipal 40 (2011): 49–60Google Scholar.

25 al-Faqih, Ahmad Ibrahim, Nafaq Tudiʾhu Imraʾa Wahida (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1991), 474–75Google Scholar.

26 ʿUmar al-Kiddi, “al-Ghazala wa-l-Hasnaʾ Tahruban min Tarabulus,” hunasotak, 11 May 2014, accessed 14 June 2016, https://hunasotak.com/article/12896.

27 Mattawa, Khalid, “East of Carthage: An Idyll,” in Amorisco (Keene, N.Y.: Ausable Press, 2008), 47–60Google Scholar.

28 The novel was originally published in Cairo as Sarab al-Layl (Night Mirage; Cairo: Libiyya li-l-Nashr, 2008)Google Scholar. In 2014, it was translated by Mona Zaki, as Chewing Gum (London: Darf Publishers, 2014)Google Scholar. Sarab al-Layl itself was banned by the al-Qadhafi regime following its first publication. Almost ten years later, it has still not been republished. Darf Publishers is preparing to do so, and I have used its pdf. For this reason, my page number references may not correspond to those of the eventual publication, which will be published under the title al-ʿIlka. I reference both the English translation and the original Arabic. On some occasions, I provide my own translations, referencing the Arabic manuscript.

29 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka (London: Darf Publishers, forthcoming), 63.

30 Bushnaf's first play, Tadakhul al-Hikayat ʿInda Ghiyab al-Rawi (The Entanglement of Narratorless Stories), was staged in Benghazi.ʿIndama Tahkum al-Jirdhan (When Rats Rule) was scheduled to be staged but banned by the security services shortly before its opening night. See al-Asfar, “Mansur Bushnaf: ʿAshriyya al-ʿIlka al-Libiyya.”

31 Al-Asfar, “Mansur Bushnaf: ʿAshriyya al-ʿIlka al-Libiyya.”

32 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 73.

33 Ibid; al-ʿIlka, 112.

34 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 67.

35 Ibid., 36.

36 al-Qaddus, Ihsan ʿAbd, Biʾr al-Hurman (Beirut: Dar al-Nashr al-Ḥadith, 1962)Google Scholar.

37 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 36.

38 Ibid., 71.

39 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 23.

40 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 12.

41 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 34–35.

42 Ibid., 42.

43 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 8.

44 Ibid., 13.

45 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 5.

46 Ibid., 50.

47 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 50–51.

48 Ibid., 12.

49 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 6.

50 Bushnfa, al-ʿIlka, 39.

51 Ibid., 103.

52 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 7.

53 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 4.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Jameson, Fredric, “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), 1–54Google Scholar.

57 For a founding discussion of this aspect of postmodernism, see Lyotard, François, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Minuit, 1979)Google Scholar.

58 Pflitsch, Andrea, “The End of Illusions: On Arab Postmodernism,” in Arabic Literature: Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Neuwith, Angelika, Pflitsch, Andreas, and Winkler, Barbara (London: Saqi, 2009), 29Google Scholar.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 33.

61 Hisham Matar, “Tripoli Fruits,” review of La compagnie des Tripolitaines, by Kamal Ben Hameda, and Chewing Gum, by Mansur Bushnaf, Times Literary Supplement, 16 January 2015, accessed 20 June 2016, http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/a-tree-that-scarcely-fruits/.

62 Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 257Google Scholar.

63 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 83.

64 Ibid., 25.

65 Ibid., 88.

66 Ibid., 55–56.

67 Foucault, Michel, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” trans. Miskowiec, Jay, Diacritics 16 (1986): 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Vandewalle, Dirk, A History of Modern Libya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Ibid., 15.

70 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 72.

71 Ibid., 73.

72 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 18.

73 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 17.

74 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 79–80.

75 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 63.

76 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 18–19.

77 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 111.

78 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 125.

79 Bushnaf, al-ʿIlka, 116.

80 Bushnaf, Chewing Gum, 121.

81 Al-Asfar, “Mansur Bushnaf: ʿAshriyya al-ʿIlka al-Libiyya.”