مفهوم الهيروتوبيا في شعر الأقلّيّة العربيّة الفلسطينيّة في إسرائيل

Abstract

This study aims to examine the concept of ‘heterotopia’ in the poetry of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. Heterotopia is one of these liminal places that literature focuses on. By definition, heterotopias refer to places outside those which possess the qualities of an ideal place, despite the possibility that they might indicate a real place. Following this, the current study reveals a significant rise in representations of heterotopias as corresponding to real places among Palestinian Arab minority poets in Israel between 1993 and 2018. These heterotopias, however, lack some of the key elements of heterotopia found in world literature, including negotiation with others, attempts at inclusion, and living in peace. Heterotopias in Palestinian Arab minority poetry thus does not refer to a classic geographic place; they rather possess multiple thematic, emotional, ideational, cultural, political, human, and existential markers. What appears throughout these poems is also a deep connection between the perceptions of place and the various components of identity, the experiences of the individual, and the collective human spirit in terms of both the real world and that of dreams. Hence, the perception of place becomes a temporal dialectic tool that contributes to explaining the past, present, and future of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel.