Lina Meruane’s Palestine Writing: Becoming-World in World Literature

Lina Meruane’s work on Palestine began in 2012 and comprises what throughout the text will be addressed as the author’s Palestine Writing, a mesh of pieces belonging to different genres that, understood through Deleuze and Guattari’s framework, constitute Meruane’s literary machine. Analysing the book’s title, Volverse Palestina, this paper discusses the two different meanings wrapped in it—Returning to Palestine and becoming Palestine. Meruane’s return is impossible because one cannot return from where one has never been, and her transformation is the result of a series of unexpected encounters and collaborations. This paper considers Meruane’s Palestine Writing as a form of becoming-Palestine that takes place not only through an inherited identity but also through a kind of cultural contagion. Following this argument, Palestine Writing can be understood as a part of worldish literature; a becoming-world instance of literature that can relate to other literary works, opening the door to a new understanding of world literature, based on a consolidated definition of what the “universe” of world literature is.