Rethinking Palestinian Exile: Inherent loss and the object of desire in Mourid Barghouti's I / Saw Ramallah

This article examines the alternative vision of Palestinian exile that Mourid Barghouti elaborates in I Saw Ramallah, his poignant account of return to Ramallah in 1996 after thirty years in exile. Barghouti's vision cannot be framed within either traditional (essentialist) concepts of diasporic Palestinian exile or postmodern (hybrid) diasporic aesthetics. In this paper, therefore, I argue that Barghouti's narrative provides an alternative vision of Palestinian exile that grounds the Palestinian experience within notions of ungroundedness of being, what Hugo of St. Victor calls elsewhere “perfect” belonging that empties the logic of identification out of its identitarian substance and reveals the loss at the core of every identity. Barghouti's narrative shows the need for examining the life of Palestinian exiles, refugees and non-refugees from the perspective of those who are reduced to the status of the surplus, of those who do not count, in the global system.