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Publications | Daniel Behar

Publications

2022

This essay presents a synoptic view and a critical synthesis of the activity of the Literary Forum at the University of Aleppo (1980–1986) with the aim of putting Aleppo on the map of modern Arabic literature. Serving as an intensive laboratory for literary and meta-literary production under political duress, the Forum is situated at a con- fluence of global cultural currents as well as at a turning point in the history of the Arabic prose poem. The Forum members devised literary strategies for coping with the deterioration of their city’s cultures while working within both an Arabic tradition of modernity and a global space of intellectual engagement. Well into the twenty-first century, the Forum’s legacies continue to shape the moral stances of poets facing disas- ter at home and the precariousness of statelessness abroad, and extend into forms of civilian solidarity and collective organizing.

This article argues that when poetic practice in Syria turned to a register of modernity, many of its idioms darkened to a poetics of trauma and catastrophe. By highlighting a Syrian manifesto for the poetics of catastrophe and taking two poets who stylistically stand at polar opposites, I aim to show the diversity of forms in which Syrian witness poetry came into being and set it in a larger framework of efforts to anthologise and globalise twentieth century poetry from sites of violent political conflict. In doing so, I also trace the literary historical trajectories that informed its making in Syria and continued to steer its course well after 2011. Aside from original poetry, the ecosystem of the culture of catastrophe includes critical discourse, novels, cinema, media products, and literary translation. I will address some, not all, of the elements in this repertoire as they relate to poetic production.

This essay demarcates two phases of Arabic socialist realism in the Syrian literary field, analyzes the relationship between theory and practice in both phases, and describes the challenge to establish Syrian socialist realism in terms of tension between global internationalism and world literature. It discusses short stories produced by the Syrian Writers' Association and two novels dealing with the construction of the Euphrates Dam.
Daniel Behar and Firat, Alexa . 2022. Syrian Literary Culture In Retrospect. Contemporary Levant, 7, 1, Pp. 1-4. . Publisher's Version
2021
This article highlights the poetics of Syrian poet Muḥammad al-Māghūṭ (1934-2006) as laying the foundation for a poetic identity enacted as a series of performative contradictions between the empirical and the poetic selves in what amounts to a discourse of “rhetorical sincerity.” This poetic discourse employs a variety of devices to communicate that the irreducibility of Arab life in the present can be contained neither in the polished spheres of art nor in the high tones of political speech-making. Al-Māghūṭ’s forms of engagement, I claim, offers a poetic corollary with Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the “organic intellectual.” By situating his personas close to perceived commonalities of human struggles without entirely subtracting their critical distance, al-Māghūṭ negotiates a modernistic consciousness with values of ṣidq (sincerity) and aṣāla (authenticity) lodged in the Syrian sphere. Part one of the article develops the concept of poetic sincerity and draws the lines of al-Māghūṭ’s cultural battles. Part two examines al-Māghūṭ’s rhythmic irregularities in “al-Qatl” (The Killing) as a key component in accomplishing the non-literary task of his ṣidq. This interpretation will hopefully cement al-Māghūṭ’s contribution in the canon of the Arabic prose poem and elucidate the rationale behind his import for later poetic generations.
2020
2020. &Ldquo;Standing Before You, World&Rdquo;. Journal Of World Literature, 5, 3, Pp. 325–353. doi:10.1163/24056480-00503002. Publisher's Version