Rhetoric Silence and Endemic Violence in Postmillennial Palestinian Fiction: A Critique of Adania Shibli’s Touch and Minor Detail

Abstract

Fictional writings on Palestine in the postmillennial cultural context are arguably characterised by a major shift towards multivocality. These writings, emerging  from different parts of the globe, of writers residing inside and outside the geographical borders of the Pre 1948 Palestine include Palestinian writings and solidarity literature by non-Palestinians. Most of these works are linear narratives, offering a panoramic view of Palestinian life and culture, reflecting and refracting the major political events in Palestinian history. Marking a departure from the prevailing styles of literature with highly contextualized narratives, some writings present Palestinian experience in a detached and covert way. In this context, this paper attempts to critically analyse how Adania Shibli’s Touch and Minor Detail  become  representative  of the post millennial Palestinian fictional writings which depart from the norms of the conventional writings by implicitly presenting the gruesome social realities  of occupation, offering an insiders’ view of the mundane Palestinian life dotted with inexplicable instances of endemic violence, and  thereby posing resistance to the geographical and historical erasure initiated by the Settler colonialism.