Chronicles of the eternal present : literary montage in Dhat and Kana Ghadan

Abstract EN

This article offers a formalist reading of two novels, Sonallah Ibrahim’s Dhāt (1992) and Hilal Chouman’s Kāna ghadan (2017), focusing on their usage of literary montage.

This literary form produces a novel that speaks to, and of, subjectivities stuck in an eternal present without a semblance of futurity.

The article demonstrates how the montage of news media amplifies the eternal presentness and uneventfulness of contemporary life in the Arab world.

The montage of news media and narrative plots thus emerges as a formal representation of this stillborn future