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Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing pp 71–116Cite as

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Centrifugal/Centripetal Movements: Placelessness and the Subversive Tactics of Mobility in Ernest Hemingway and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

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Abstract

This chapter argues that the proclivity of Hemingway’s characters for centrifugal motion is a strategy to increase their sense of freedom that space (expatriation), rather than home/place, secures. In parallel, this chapter shows that the movement of Jabra’s characters is centripetal. It echoes the recurrent futile attempts of his Palestinian characters to return to Palestine, and it expresses their resistance to the lures of exile. This chapter asserts that the involuntarily exiled character is a figure obsessed with and aches for a place, roots and ‘a dwelling’ from which he or she was uprooted. In parallel, this chapter explains that the expatriate character views place as confining, restrictive and disagreeable, while mobility as a figure of freedom, resistance, wealth, self-fashioning and understanding/inhabiting the world.

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  1. An-Najah National University, Nablus, State of Palestine

    Ahmad Rasmi Qabaha

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Qabaha, A.R. (2018). Centrifugal/Centripetal Movements: Placelessness and the Subversive Tactics of Mobility in Ernest Hemingway and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. In: Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91415-2_3

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