Postcolonial Arab Science-Fiction Resistance through (Dis)-Appearance: Reclaiming Space and Memory in The Book of Disappearance by Ibtissam Azem

This research paper presents a thorough textual analysis of the postcolonial concepts of resistance, identity, memory, absence, and space in the novel The Book of Disappearance written by Azem Ibtissam. The purpose of this research is to scrutinize and analyze the binaries appearance and disappearance set in a dystopian geopolitical space where dynamics of power relations distort etymologies and falsify the politics of mention. It will also focus on the pertinent use of science fiction and magical realism through the absence of chronology and the presence of flashbacks as narratological vehicles that facilitate the movement beyond the limits of the concepts of time, reality, and truth, as well as third and first-person narration in an omnipresent fashion. This textual analysis will shed further light on depersonalization and detachment associated with the lived experiences of the colonized, what makes their subjective realities different from those of the colonizer, and impacts their identities providing them with an inchoate fluidity and ambivalence. The ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel and the occurring clash of civilization that has been present and persistent since the Nakba provides fertile grounds for postcolonial perusal and interpretation. The results of this analysis pertain to the fact that the concepts of space, memory, truth, belonging, identity, shape and redefine mainstream history. This latter has always been written by a biased hegemony and subjectively alter the collective unconscious of differing peoples.