Layla AlAmmar | ليلى العمار
@Layla_AlAmmar
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The Pact We Made; Silence is a Sense ( @Boroughpress / @Algonquinbooks ) | Rep @MelissaLaurenE | PhD Arab Literature & Trauma Theory | I like long walks and tahina
Kuwait
Joined July 2009
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Apologies. Maybe the next genocide can accommodate your schedule a bit better.
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Recognising Palestine is not enough. The world needs to de-recognise Israel.
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happy birthday, big man.
... if you saw this, you'd weep
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I gave an interview last week and spoke about how back in October people called this a second nakba & we responded that it was part of the ongoing nakba. But now, I said, now this is something else. It requires its own word. This is a new, collective trauma that will live in.. 1/
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This is not Nakba II or another Nakba. This is the ongoing Nakba. Everything from 1948 (which Darwish called "that Palestinian year without end") to today is that very same catastrophe. 🇵🇸
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It's been 20 years since Said passed. I had occasion to ponder his work last week, and it is a treasure trove that gives unceasingly.
'A novel, in particular, if it is not to be read reductively as an item of sociopolitical evidence, involves the reader with itself...
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I like to let people make up their own minds about books, but as someone who has spent their entire adult life reading about trauma, I feel compelled to tell you that this book is trash. Do not buy it.
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She is done and she is ferocious.
3 years, 283 pages, 77486 words. Submitted.
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Palestine demands a new vocabulary... We need a new word for this trauma. We need new words for anguish, for despair, for courage, for loyalty, for قهر, for melancholy, for strength, for faith.
Language cannot capture this.
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Gaza is being starved. There's a difference.
I really wish journalists would do their fucking job.
New Interview: I talked to Arif Husain, the chief economist of the World Food Programme, about the food crisis in Gaza, why it may get worse, and what it means for Gaza’s children.
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She's right. Peace is not possible between the occupier and the occupied.
When they say peace, they mean surrender.
Israeli peace activist held hostage in Gaza tells BBC she no longer believes peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible
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Trauma & Recovery ~ Judith Herman
Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self ~ Susan Brison
The Generation of Postmemory ~ Marianne Hirsch
(Lila Abu-Lughod and Craig Larkin have extended this theory to Palestine & Lebanon, respectively)
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It's undeniable that the World Cup has exposed a strong sense of Arab unity. From Palestinian flags & chants to transnational solidarity and shared triumph, having the WC in the Arab world has illustrated that an Arabness connects us (despite the poo-pooing of naysayers)... but
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Arabs flirting:
Girl: Khaled?
Khaled: the eyes of Khaled, command me.
Girl: May your enemies never command you.
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alumni should retain library privileges for life
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Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds ~ Stef Craps
Laura S Brown and Maria Root have written about "insidious trauma" in various places..
Hamish Dalley has written about victim-perpetrator trauma.
I heard this is good but haven't read it:
What My Bones Know~Stephanie Foo
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I passed my viva today with no corrections 🎉🎉
Thank you to Prof. Lynne Pearce & Prof. Marilyn Booth for such an incisive, critical, and thorough examination of my thesis 🧡
She is done and she is ferocious.
3 years, 283 pages, 77486 words. Submitted.
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There's no consideration given to the trauma of the Vietnamese people or how political systems drive war machines or any sense that the soldier ought to take accountability for his actions & that your trauma doesn't absolve you of the trauma you inflict on others...
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For
@TheMarkazReview
I wrote about the lasting influence Edward Said has had on me as well as the life of the public intellectual that he modeled for us all 🧡
Thank you
@warghetti
for thinking of me for this 🙏🏽
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My first novel has been used without my consent to train AI systems.
5yrs writing/editing, my heart, my soul, fears & overwhelming anxieties, only for it to be used by systems which are sucking the humanity out of life itself.
Furious doesn't even begin to cover how I feel.
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our psyches. For many of the younger generation, this is the first large-scale trauma they've witnessed. Trauma can be formative, foundational. The genocide in Gaza is mind-numbing in scale. We, the people of the Arab world, are more alone than we have ever been. 2/
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... not only because of its writer's skill but also because of other novels. All novels belong to a family, and any reader of novels is a reader of this complex family to which they all belong.'
From the essay "Arabic Prose Fiction after 1948"
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On deck this week in my Contemporary World Literature course 🇵🇸 🧡 on Sunday we talked about the ongoing Nakba and let me tell you, these kids had thoughts ✊🏼
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It's not just innocent women and children who are being killed. Innocent men are being killed too.
The implicit demonisation of Arab men in media reports is disgusting.
🇵🇸
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Congratulations to Kuwait on the success of its time travel initiative
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I signed this letter because LitProm's decision to shut Adania Shibli out of the Frankfurt Book Fair betrays the very ethos of literature.
Writers are here to open conversations, to ask difficult questions, to point to the pain that gets covered up.
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In some ways, it feels like hope is simply a memory. Those of us with a full understanding of history can see what's coming.
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If this is too grim for the start of the year, I apologise, but that's where we are.
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He also has a disturbing tendency to give an opinion on his female patients' looks, calling them "attractive", "absolutely gorgeous" before addressing the trauma (usually sexual) they're coming to him for.
His gaze on his patients is frequently voyeuristic and fetishized..
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How to write a novel:
1. Large coffee
2. Open laptop
3. Reread what you already wrote
4. Add a word or two
5. Fiddle with your playlist
6. Add another word
7. Read the Queens of the Stone Age Wikipedia page ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
8. Go have breakfast with a friend
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It's only fitting that he would join her on Valentine's Day 🧡🧡🧡 #مريد_البرغوثي
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Someone said having a handle w/ your name in English & Arabic is "pretentious". I've heard lots of ridiculous things in my time but this may take the cake.
We do it to show correct pronunciation. Is that 'a' an أ or an ع?Is that 'h' a ه or ح?
ffs we have sounds y'all don't have
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Must-listen episode 👇🏼
"An illegal act of the resistance doesn't delegitimise the resistance itself. While an occupation, which is illegal by its very nature, taints with illegality anything it does -- including the claims for the right of self-defense."
🎧 NEW EPISODE 🎧
"I just look for the day there will be justice" w/ Francesca Albanese
The Makdisi brothers welcome Francesca Albanese (
@FranceskAlbs
), the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, to the podcast.
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Who gives a shit what Zadie Smith thinks about anything, let alone Gaza
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I mean if one of the so-called leading experts in the field has nothing new to say after 25 years...
Not only does his book completely ignore how trauma theory has evolved in the intervening years, it reinforces and perpetuates the foundational problems of the field..
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TW:
These problems fall into 2 broad categories, under which many issues can be filed:
1. A Eurocentric focus where to be traumatized you had to be a member of the dominant group. Hence, one of Kolk's opening cases in the book is about a US veteran who talks about how...
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This is obviously bullshit & the 2000s saw rapid "de-colonisation" of the field w/ exploration into non-western traumas, colonial trauma, racial trauma, insidious trauma etc, none of which follow the rules set down by the field's "founders"
All of this is ignored in Kolk's book.
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If anyone has other recs, drop them below. I'm getting over a cold, didn't sleep well, and the brain is not running on all cylinders...
Oh and obviously anyone interested in racial/colonial trauma must read Fanon's Black Skin White Masks
wa salamatkum
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Art installation at the 43rd Kuwait International Book Fair protesting the 4500+ books banned by the ministry in the last five years. Titles include
@Elif_Safak
's 40 Rules of Love,
@saud_alsanousi
's Mama Hessa's Mice, & Musk of the Gazelle by Hanan Alshaykh #ممنوع_في_الكويت
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Spotted in Manchester 🧡 first time I've seen it in store 😍
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Ok I can see that I need to say more about this... The Body Keeps the Score advances essentially the same theories that incepted the field of cultural & literary trauma theory in the early 1990s.
Van der Kolk's book came out in 2014.
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a. We don't need a western term to define what is a particularly Arab psychosexual dysfunction.
b. Arabic-language media & activists networks have been talking about this for years. Just because it's not being discussed in English doesn't mean it's not being discussed.
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he was so affected by the death of his platoon that he went on a murderous rampage, indiscriminately killing men, women, & children, and then rapes a Vietnamese woman. Kolk brushes all this aside, saying that men have been dealing with their trauma thru violence since Homer...
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Edward Said did not bust his ass for 30 years for y'all to keep pulling this shit,
@TheEconomist
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No, instead we get a discussion lifted right of WWI discourse.
One of the glaring issues of cultural trauma theory's inception was its absolute focus on "western" traumas, viewed from "western" perspectives, and its utter negation of any other type.
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2. Theories at the start advanced an individualized, exceptional, de-political (at times apolitical) view of trauma. Trauma was seen as an exceptional event that happened to individuals and was largely disconnected from social & political systems...
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Arabic: Inshala
It means:
yes
maybe
I heard you
don't hold your breath
I'll take care of it
I hope so
I'm definitely not coming
We'll see
It's not gonna happen
Non-native English Speakers, what’s a word from your language that you think is perfect that doesn’t have an English equivalent?
Take us to church.
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I think he even relays being called out on it at one point in the book.
TL:DR This book is trash & its author is stuck in the 90s.
Better books👇
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Twitter is surreal. This shared space where bulldozers rolling into Silwan, the head of a hospital describing the hell Lebanon has become, and cracks about Love Island are all presented as though they're equal... it fucks with my head sometimes.
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Imagine interviewing Edward Said and addressing him as Edward
چنه أصغر عيالك 😳
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This is the content I come to this hellsite for
The earliest known photo of döner kebab or Shawarma (Photo taken by James Robertson in 1855, Ottoman Empire).
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I have finished another chapter of my thesis. Please clap.
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Writing a chapter on Beirut Nightmares & getting annoyed that ALL the passages I wanna quote didn't make it into the translation.. the Arabic contains so much about corrupt & exploitative upper classes, neopatriarchal hegemonies, how Arabs should unite against the "real" enemy..
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Me, within earshot of my dad: "That was a good mango."
The next morning...
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'Language reflects social reality, but it also has the power to shape it. If Safouan’s theory comes to fruition, if we lose our common Arabic, then the Western-driven project of nation-building in the region will have succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.'
My piece in
@The_NewArab
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went to the Future of Traditions exhibit at SOAS yesterday and my goodness 😍
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For
@GQMiddleEast
's April issue, I wrote about Arabic to English translation of Arab women's literature and the manipulations that too often occur along the way.
Pick up the issue (on stands now) to read the full piece 🧡
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Happy Publication Day to me! Silence is a Sense is out in paperback today 🎉 so, teachers, feel free to add it to your reading lists 😅
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"When I say grief, I mean rage."
For Nakba day 🇵🇸
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عشان لما الناس تقولكم ان ما عاد في عالم عربي و لا في عروبة تمتد من الأطلس إلى الخليج، من المشرق إلى المغرب، تعرفون شلون تردون عليهم 😎
p.s. عاصمتنا القدس ✌🏽
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This is fast becoming my favourite podcast 🧡
🎧 NEW EPISODE 🎧
"The beginning of the end of the Zionist project?" w/ Ilan Pappé
The brothers interview the historian Ilan Pappé, best known for his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), to gain some historical perspective on the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
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I was wandering around an old bookshop on my last trip to London and found this little curiosity from 1956. Lots of pictures of old Kuwait, and I can't wait to read what fresh hell chapter 8 has to offer 😅
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I've been doing a close reading of Hanan alShaykh's The Story of Zahra against the original and I am APPALLED by some of these translation choices... the number of times the term "make love" is erroneously used is shocking. 1/6
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Who wants to start a Kanafa Klub with me? We'll sit around binging and talk about Said, Fanon, Adorno, Benjamin et al....
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... or judge ourselves (& each other) by its yardstick. We can celebrate our shared Arabness without feeling constrained by the weight of the past. We can expand and stretch the dimensions of Arabness to include those who were erased, suppressed, or excluded.
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We don't need to look at the world as though we're collectively frozen in the past. Arabness is dynamic, malleable, and porous. And we should all have learned by now that the people and the state are two very different things.
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Congratulations to
@Elias_Jahshan
, the contributors, & the
@SaqiBooks
team on this important anthology, which displays the magnificent depth & breadth of Arab identity. As I note in my extended blurb, we mustn't think of collections like this as directed solely to the west...
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📣📣I'm so excited to announce my next book! 📣📣 It is a departure for me, but I'm eager to play in a different form. It's a graphic novel exploring issues of belonging, identity, and reclaiming heritage. Aimed at millennials, the working title is Don't Touch My Hummus.
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This is bullshit. It's actually not ok to just disappear. The idea of self-care has been taken to unhealthy, unnatural extremes. When you disappear, you're ultimately doing harm to yourself and your relationships with friends, family, and loved ones.
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Me reflecting on the last 12 months as the year comes to an end....
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I would also like to remind people that just because we celebrate fellow Arabs doesn't mean we're "forcing" Arabness on you, even if you also come from a quote-unquote Arab country. You can self-identify as a tomato if you want, I promise no one cares.
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Can we just declare Palestine the winners of the World Cup? ✌🏽
I heard those chants loud & clear on the TV broadcast! goosebumps.
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These are not unrelated.
Islamophobia. Anti-Arab sentiment. The hypocrisy is astounding and so utterly blatant.
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Next read 🧡 I heard Nadia speak about it on a episode of
@jouissancevamps
& I cannot wait to dig in.
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Huge news for Kuwaiti writers. Yesterday, the parliament passed a law abolishing the censorship committee. If books are banned now, it will be by court order and not the shadowy machinations of some committee. There is more work to be done, but this is worth celebrating. 1/
مبروك إزالة لجنة الرقابة على الكتب. مشوار سنين انتهينا منه اليوم، والى المزيد من الحريات بباقي المجالات... يبيلنا شغل.
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To the apathetic Arabs,
the ones who say boycotts don't work,
the ones who shrugged off normalisation,
the ones who still think this has nothing to do with them...
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Are the mulukhiya wars over? Is it safe to come out now?
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I find it concerning that so many references to Pan-Arabism (a term I purposely avoid when talking about this topic) harken back to Gamal Abdelnasser... we know the history, but the history is history for a reason, and we don't need to lock ourselves in its parameters...
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What a loss for Arab literature... Khaled Khalifa was a giant and had so much more left to give. 💔
Our timeline is filled with Khaled Khalifa (1964-2023): .
This image is from Lina Sinjab's beautiful short documentary film of Khaled, "Exiled at Home." You can (re)watch it on YouTube:
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From my talk today on Palestinian literature.
No discussion of Pal lit can commence without understanding the nakba and the z*on*sts myths and British deception that paved the way for it.
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Gaza, a magical land where buildings spontaneously collapse, towers randomly explode, and children mysteriously die.
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My PhD confirmation panel is today... send good vibes and good memes...
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