Observing the Secular
Arab Poets Transforming Their Conceptions of Public
Keywords:
Arab poets, Poetic forms, Palestinian poetsAbstract
This essay examines ethnographically how Arab, mainly Palestinian, poets have been transforming their relation to the public while modernizing poetic forms. Drawing on narratives by poets who work with various literary forms, this study argues that the secular has been vital for this transformation. More specifically, I demonstrate how in poets’ narratives about means and ends of literary agency there lies the articulation of secular subjectivities that poets want either to constitute, contest or explore.
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