John Randolph LeBlanc

The Spectral Palestinian (eBook, PDF)

Presence before Politics

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Long before October 7, 2023, Palestinians haunted the West and its political categories. In this work of political theory, John Randolph LeBlanc reads works by Raja Shehadeh, Sari Nusseibeh, and Mahmoud Darwish to track the manifold ways existing political language and norms (e.g., rule of law, human rights, international law, the nation-state) failed to capture and address the experience of a people living permanently under conditions of occupation/domination. The Spectral Palestinian: Presence before Politics finds that their periodic use of the language of ghosts and haunting signals the relationship between Palestinian experience and the 'promise' of Western political language and its institutions. LeBlanc argues that this resulting sense of 'spectrality' constitutes an underexplored form of Palestinian self-awareness and agency. Initially, the specter is the product of the others' fear, that is, nearly disembodied sites of violence carrying the threat of non-being. While reading the accounts of these Palestinians' frustrating confrontations with the apparatuses and language of Western politics, LeBlanc finds the latent possibility of Palestinians taking hold of the specter's power. Turning the spectral on its authors, the Palestinian defies a political language that has abandoned them and rejects the accompanying stigmas by standing fast in their spaces and fully appearing in the demand for human dignity.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Februar 2026
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798216264675
• Artikelnr.: 76129749

Autorenporträt

John Randolph LeBlanc is professor of political science and assistant dean of the Honors College at the University of Texas at Tyler, USA

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Occupied Body, Occupied Mind: Transforming Vulnerability in
Shehadeh's Occupation Diaries
Chapter 2: The Spectral Palestinian: Liminality and Politics in Darwish's
In the Presence of Absence
Chapter 3: Collaboration, Resistance, and Implication in Sari Nusseibeh's
What is a Palestinian State Worth?
Chapter 4: Joseph K. in the West Bank: Shehadeh's Palestinian 'Legal
Narrative' as Kafkaesque Chain Novel
Chapter 5: Breaking the Mirror of Sovereignty in Darwish's In the Presence
of Absence
Chapter 6: Tracing Our Steps: Shehadeh's Walks in a Disappearing Political
Landscape
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Index