The Unsettling Nakba Memory Studies, Palestinian Literature, and the Challenge of Remembering

For Palestinians, 1948 was the year of the catastrophe—the Nakba. Recently, scholars have referred to the moral and political imperative for Palestinians to remember the Nakba. However, this book argues that, in this case, remembering is fraught with distinctive and enduring problems. These challenges arise from two main particularities of the Nakba. First, the author identifies the historical and moral paradox of the Nakba occurring in the post-Holocaust era. Second, he highlights the Nakba’s unusual temporality as an ongoing and unfinished condition, rather than a closed historical event. To explore these tensions, the book focuses on the field of memory studies and on Palestinian literature, two areas where the Nakba is most often remembered and commemorated. The author presents the shortcomings of an uncritical embrace of memory studies for commemorating the Nakba, particularly noting the unparalleled centrality of the Holocaust in this field. Within the literary space, he challenges the unsubstantiated generalizations about the relationship between Palestinian literature and the Nakba. The author argues that it is only by first engaging with the distinctive challenges of remembering the Nakba that a more truthful account of the Palestinian narrative can be found.