Historicity of Oppressive Power and Identity: Echoes of Victimhood in Literary Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1606.30Keywords:
Palestine, Israel, identity, victimhood, oppressionAbstract
This comparative study between Orwell’s Animal Farm (AF) (1945) and Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (MIJ) (2010) aims to underscore the dynamics of victimhood and oppression, emphasizing how the oppressed can switch roles and become the oppressor due to complex political, ontological and psychological mechanisms. Fanon’s analysis of the collective consciousness of the victim and the oppressor helps to clarify the underlying structures that drive the victim to replicate the role of the oppressor. MIJ, a novel centered on the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, represents the predicament of the oppressed becoming the oppressor. AF, by contrast, is a satirical account of how revolutionaries who grasp power in the name of ethical ideals often transmute those same ideals to administer a new form of oppression. Orwell’s employment of allegory in AF provides a compelling framework through which oppression can be explored in both universal and specific contexts. As in MIJ, the oppressed-oppressor predicament deepens when centers of power align to sustain unethical conditions of oppression that serve their own interests.
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