Staying tuned to Umm Kulthum : on the voyage with the Sinbad and Ulysses in Jabra’s the ship

Abstract EN

By drawing on recent approaches to music listening, spatial and postcolonial theories, this paper examines the significance of various instances of intertextuality in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s The Ship.

It argues that intertextuality in the novel enables the characters to sustain a sense of community and national solidarity immune to closure and disintegration in exile.

This paper shows that the intertexts in the novel are resources of power, strength and agency necessary to fend off alienation and loss, and the intertextual fabric functions as a transformational space from denial into presence, from helplessness into determination.

The paper concludes that (inter) textuality in the novel reflects a creative mode of resistance in Palestinian culture.