This paper will trace a relation between the concept of mapping and the symbolism of the wound in Palestinian resistance literature written after the June war of 1967. It will give a brief overview of the Zionist map's overwriting of the Palestinian landscape before focusing on the re-inscription of Palestine as a state of injury in terms of the ethical and political problem of trauma. It will comment on Palestinian poetry's political investment in itself following the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 and give a close reading of the work of three poets in particular: Fadwa Tuqan, Mahmud Darwish and Rashid Hussein. Through its analysis of the image of the wound this paper will aim to:
examine the painful ambiguity of Palestinian self-consciousness owing to the traumatic split in the material existence of the population;
consider the extent to which the re-mapping of the Palestinian condition figures as both a challenge to and a production of a certain way of writing political identity;
and explore the dilemmas of response and responsibility involved in cognitively mapping a creative political identity out of a history of suffering.
Last modified: 7 May 2001