Ecofeminist Resistance and the Post-colonial Realities in Against the Loveless World (2020)

Fatima Ibrahim Bajwa; Dr. Rizwan  Akhtar

Fatima Ibrahim Bajwa University of the Punjab
Dr. Rizwan Akhtar Institute of English Studies, University of the Punjab

Keywords: ecocriticism, feminism, postcolonial literature, israels colonial project, susan abulhawa, women and nature palestinian literature

Abstract

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More recent literature on the conflict in Palestine has focused on historical and political injustice. The structural violence, the people of Palestine have encountered from Israel’s regime, arguably a Zionist ideology has been condemned by a sizeable section of the international community. However, the literature mostly by exiled Palestinian writers carries on the flame of resistance. Historically, women are the worst victims of warfare, however, postmodernity envisages the non-human agency of nature as an equal victim of war. Therefore, ecofeminism sees women and nature as joint victims of war and violence. Susan Abulhawa is an American-Palestinian author and activist whose fictional accounts of the torture and daily violence Palestinian women face bring a fresh insight not only into Israel’s brutalization of human rights but into the impunity they enjoy having political franchises in the Western political corridors. Abulhawa’s novels Mornings in Jenin (2006), The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), and Against the Loveless World (2020), document the horrors of Israel’s colonial project and its aftermaths for women and Nature. I argue that both women and Nature are uprooted. Therefore, the theory of ecofeminism aligns with my line of argument. Notably, ecofeminism is a sub-branch of feminism, originally coined by a French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne who contends that patriarchal society maltreats both women and nature. The aggressor is masculine may it be a war machine or an ideology. By implication, in the fictional narratives, the victim is female deriving her resistance from nature’s resilience against hegemonic masculinity and the resultant man-made destruction of vegetative life. Therefore, Abulhawa’s novels encompass feminist resistance as a version of ecological resistance- a literary trope. In the present thesis, this survivalist behavior of mythical Mother Earth and the woman as a natural and biological nurturer in Palestine-occupied territory under Israel’s colonial gaze is investigated through the lens of Ecofeminism, a combination of Ecocriticism and Feminism.

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