Academic Scientific JournalsThe exploration of the doubleness of belonging in Naim Kattan’s "Farewell Babylon"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2021.2.06Keywords:
Baghdad, belonging, Iraq, Jewish identity, Naim KattanAbstract
This paper studies the origin of Jewish existence in Iraq by examining Farewell Babylon, written by Naim Kattan, a Jewish Iraqi writer who lives in Canada. In past decades, Jewish communities moved from one location to another as a result of displacement and emigration, thus the Jewish diasporic movements created new territories. This paper explores the sense of doubleness of belonging by investigating a Jewish diaspora . The investigation studies the relationship between home and neighbours in Kattan’s text which focuses on the concepts of belonging, the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other.’ The study of the relationship between Jewish identity and Arab identity in Iraq permits us a wide knowledge of the concept of belonging.
Downloads
References
Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1991). Modernity and Ambivalence. Reprint. Ithaca, N. Y: Cornell University Press.
Bhabha, Homi (2004). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge Classics.
Clifford, James. 1994. “Diasporas”. Cultural Anthropology 9/3: 302– 338.
Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari (1994). What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson, Graham Burchell. Reprint. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gregory, Derek (2004). The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Gruen, Erich S. (2002). Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Hutcheon, Linda (1989). “Circling the Downspout of Empire: Post-colonialism and postmodernism”. Ariel 20/4: 149–177.
Kattan, Naim (1979). La Mémoire et La Promesse. Paris: Denoël.
Kattan, Naim (2005). Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad. Trans. Sheila Fischman. Reprint. Vancouver: Raincoast Books.
Peteet, Julie (1994). “Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A cultural politics of violence”. American Ethnologist 21/1: 31–49.
Safran, William (2003). “Recent French conceptualizations of diaspora”. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 12/3: 437– 441.
Said, Edward (2000). “Reflections on exile”. In: Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 173– 186.
Shohat, Ella (1999). “The invention of the Mizrahim”. Journal of Palestine Studies 29/1: 5–20.
Soja, Edward W. (1996). Third Space: Journey to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
