"أصابع" لمنى ظاهر: أنشودة عشق متواصل لرجل حِبريّ

Abstract

This study examines the characteristics of postmodernism in the literary work ‘Fingers’ (Aṣābeʽ) by the Palestinian writer Monā Dhāher. Metafiction and Intertextuality, as main features of postmodernism, are shown and correlated with their parallels in the novel Chaos of the Senses (Fawḍā al-ḥawāss) by the Algerian writer Aḥlām Mustaghānamī. Both works share especially three aspects: love for an imagined ("inky") man, a passionate desire for homeland, and the use of poetic and figurative language while writing a prose text.

The narrator of ‘Fingers’ transgresses the usual limits of an Arab woman living in a conservative society by describing herself as the initiator of a love/sexual relationship with a man according to her own rules. She identifies herself intentionally with "La lupa" while making love. However, "La lupa", as a symbol in the context of this literary work, has a political significance. It is related to Jews and Palestinians as Semites quarreling over the same land.

The human experience of love is similar to the Ṣūfī mystical experience, because both refer to love as melting away in the beloved "other", whether human or God. Hence, there is a fusion between the particular and the universal, the realistic and nonrealistic, so that all contraries are united. Synesthesia, as a literary device, is used to talk about love but also, and most importantly, to allude to the possibility of a meeting between Arabs who live in Israel and those in Arab countries. Literary writing is presented as a vehicle for the realization of this cultural meeting.

The use of metafiction, intertextuality and metaphors makes the reception of both literary works, 'Chaos of the Senses' and 'Fingers' not a straightforward simple mission for common readers, but rather demands active engagement in aesthetic interpretation and judgment. Yet focusing on the theme of love written in a poetic language may entice the readers and affect them positively.