Trauma and Catastrophe: Cinematic Representation of the “Ongoing Nakba”
Natasza Korczarowska
natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.plUniversity of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Abstract
The author analyses feature film representations of the 1948 Catastrophe in the context of trauma theory. As the Palestinian traumatic event par excellence, the Nakba structures Palestinian cinema. The article disputes the claim propagated by the Israeli historian Daniel Bar-Tal, according to whom the narratives supporting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are the main obstacle to its peaceful solution. In a broader political, aesthetic, and historical context, Palestinian cinema – as Edward Said puts it – problematizes the dialectic of visibility and invisibility, because the entire history of Palestinian struggles is related to the desire to be visible. The author of the article argues that this cinema gives form to Palestinian nationalism, tells Palestinian history, and places the everyday life of Palestinians within this history. The focalizers that she singles out are Palestinian women. Lena Jayyusi describes the type of narrative specific to Palestinians as the collective first-person voice. Using such a narrative strategy, the sense of loss is transferred from the level of individual suffering to the level of collective trauma.
Keywords:
Nakba, Palestine, traumatic realism, visibilityReferences
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Authors
Natasza Korczarowskanatasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz. She specializes in the history of Polish film, contemporary European cinema, and the problems of historiophoty. She published the books Ojczyzny prywatne [Private Homelands] (2007) and Inne spojrzenie [Another Way] (2013) – the latter devoted to the images of history in the Polish feature film after 1965. Since 2008 she has cooperated with the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute on the educational project Academy of Polish Film.
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