Late Style as Resistance in the Works of Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, and Mourid Barghouti

This chapter critically engages with Edward W. Said’s conceptualization of ‘Late Style’ in light of continued catastrophic occurrences in Palestine. It argues that a ‘lateness of beginnings’ represents the Palestinian intellectual’s deepest resistance against catastrophe, impending death, dispossession, and colonization. In the face of continued catastrophe, resistance in post-millennial Palestine is currently being reinvigorated by the creativity of new Palestinian generations, who have attained a metaphorical lateness by the very means of the repetition of the catastrophic. The chapter explores the reconfiguration of Late Style resistance in the works of Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, and Mourid Barghouti, arguing that these intellectuals’ works are important in foregrounding an oppositional criticism in the face of divisionist agendas at this most critical moment in the continuation of the Palestinian struggle.