In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in 1983, Palestinian poet Mamud Darwish called Palestine “the Andalus of the possible.” Taking inspiration from Darwish’s words, this talk asks: what has the memory of al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) made possible for Palestinian writers and thinkers? Since the early twentieth century, several prominent Palestinian writers have turned to the memory of al-Andalus to reflect on the political plight of their homeland, to decry occupation and cultural erasure, and to imagine a future for Palestine. Drawing on examples from this long tradition of Palestinian writing about al-Andalus, this talk maps the intersection of two diasporic imaginaries that have crisscrossed the Mediterranean: the Andalusi imaginary and the Palestinian one.
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