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    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Postcolonial Writing on 23/09/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449855.2020.1820666

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Brexit literature’s present absentees: Triangulating Brexit, anti-Semitism, and the Palestinian crisis

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>30/09/2020
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Issue number5
Volume56
Number of pages15
Pages (from-to)621-635
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date23/09/20
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article addresses a blind spot in Brexit literary criticism: Britain’s relationship to the Middle East, particularly its historic responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. Although fiction that directly engages both Brexit and the Israeli–Palestinian crisis has not yet appeared, oblique connections can be illuminated. Shared conceptual fields, albeit ones only partially brought into view in contemporary British fiction, emerge from intersecting historical experiences. The article considers a range of recent literary texts, with an emphasis on A Stranger City (2019) by British Jewish author Linda Grant and Fractured Destinies: A Novel (2018) by British Palestinian author Raba’i al-Madhoun. When viewed in a certain light, Brexit motifs of enclosure, displacement, and propinquity limn the Palestinian crisis as well as the spectre of anti-Semitism, revealing Britain’s role in the shaping of the modern Middle East as part of contemporary British literature’s political unconscious. 

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Postcolonial Writing on 23/09/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449855.2020.1820666