Agonistic Pluralism as Counterhegemony: A Reading of Raba’i al-Madhoun’s The Lady from Tel Aviv | ||||
| مجلة کلية الآداب | ||||
| Article 15, Volume 75, Issue 75, April 2025, Page 3-26 PDF (1.09 MB) | ||||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/bfa.2025.365598.1476 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
Dr. Haris A. Noureiddin 
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| قسم اللغة الانجليزية كلية الالسن جامعة اسوان | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| This research adopts a poststructuralist political framework, specifically Chantal Mouffe’s subversive political concepts regarding agonistic pluralism, to analyze Raba’i al-Madhoun’s (2013) novel The Lady from Tel Aviv (al-sayyidah min tal abīb). Given Mouffe’s concepts articulated in a number of her books, it is posited that the novel advocates for the inclusion of suppressed voices to be articulated within the hegemonic hostile sphere of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Following Mouffe's theory, the novel acknowledges conflict but also explores, through personal relationships and intimate dialogue, the potential for post-conventional identities and authentic understanding to transform enemies into adversaries and antagonism into moral agonism. Though inherently humanitarian, moral agonism–a byproduct of agonistic pluralism–fails in taming hostility and the associated hegemonic structural determinism within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the study demonstrates. The particularities of the conventional relational identity constructs of the concerned individuals and communities are revealed to be obstructing any claims to pluralist democracy and the rational selves. These conventional relational identity particularities are foregrounded as tied to a long historical legacy of bloodshed, assassination, destruction and genocide, which are never abandoned. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Agonistic Pluralism; Raba’I al-Madhoun; The Lady from Tel Aviv; antagonism; post-conventional identities | ||||
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