Writing against the grain: minor details and the search for buried memory

Abstract

This essay analyzes the novel “Minor Detail” by the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli. The analysis pays attention to the fierce criticism of the Israeli colonial enterprise over the Palestinian territory, understanding that the Palestinian novel fits within a larger movement of part of contemporary literature, the novels that seek to review history from the point of view of the oppressed. Mobilizing the idea of “writing history against the grain”, by Walter Benjamin, we seek to think of literature as a possible way of writing history against the grain, that is, a literary writing interested in reviewing historical continuities and discontinuities from a perspective other than that of official speeches.