How has cultural production from the Middle East responded to two simultaneous and contradictory trends: growing ease of global mobility brought about by advances in transportation and communication technologies, and increasingly odious restrictions on movement imposed by repressive regimes, civil war, and military occupations in the Arab world? This book draws on conceptions of space, borders, and mobility from fields such as cultural studies, geography, and anthropology to analyze instances in which movement is arrested, interrupted, or detoured in literature and film from Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt. Each chapter revolves around a particular type or space of (im)mobility, such as airports, underground tunnels, and cross-border infiltration. In many of these cases, the juxtaposition of the possibility of movement that is available to some but not others, or was once available but now is denied, acts as a catalyst for imagining forms of dissent and resistance to repression, ways to circumvent and subvert imposed immobility, and speculative visions of the future.
By:
Drew Paul (University of Tennessee Knoxville USA)
Imprint: I.B. Tauris
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 236mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 18mm
Weight: 500g
ISBN: 9780755656721
ISBN 10: 0755656725
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 27 November 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Translation and Transliteration Chapter 1 – Introduction: Mobility between the Global and Local Historicizing Mobility and its Control Mobility in Arab Cultural Production Form and Genre Shaped by Mobility Part One – Palestinian Immobilities: Home, Nostalgia, and the Blockaded Present Chapter 2 – “The Arab Room:” Detention, Disorientation, and Displacement in Palestinian Airport Narratives Concealed Spaces Mobility and suspended time Conclusion: The “airportization” of Palestinian life Chapter 3 – Ruins of Mobility: Lost Transport Networks in Palestine Palestinian urban memory From Mobility to Blockage: Recalling Qalandia Airport From Trace to Void: The Missing Trains of Palestine Conclusion: Reimagining the Void Chapter 4 – Migration, Infiltration, and Nationhood in When I Saw You and Gate of the Sun Migration and Cinema in Palestine Wa?an and Migration Preserving the nation: When I Saw You Consuming the nation: Gate of the Sun Conclusion: Remembering the wa?an through image and video Part Two – Arab Immobilities: Stagnation, and the Apocalyptic Turn Chapter 5 – Transitory Texts: Inaccessible Ruins and the Dead Ends of Circulation Aesthetics of Fragmentation in postwar Lebanese and Iraqi fiction Beyond Standing: The Inaccessible Ruin in Night Post The figure of the ?u?luk The refugee writer as ?u?luk in God 99 Conclusion: Beyond Ruins Chapter 6 – Gridlock and Dissent: Transmission and Transit in Cairo and Baghdad Khaled al-Khamissi’s Taxi: Movement in a New World Movement as Knowledge Roving Monsters: Frankenstein in Baghdad Wandering Narratives The Book of Collateral Damage and Iraq’s endangered literary heritage Conclusion: From bodily circulation to textual circulation Chapter 7 – Tunnels of Resistance: Dystopia, Dissent, and the Underground in Cairo Cairo’s Expanding Underground Networks Between the Physical and Metaphorical Underground Subterranean Subversions: The Underground in Arab fiction from Lebanon to Egypt Pre-2011: The Underground as a Societal Mirror After the Uprising: Return of the Underground Refuge Conclusion: Failed Utopia of the Underground Chapter 8 – Conclusion: Future (Im)Mobilities
Drew Paul is Associate Professor of Arabic at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013 and he is the author of Israel/Palestine: Border Representations in Literature and Film (2020).
