MER Article Harlow, Resistance Literature Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen Press, 1987) Resistance Literature is a wide-ranging and impressive critical study of the literatures of contemporary “Third World” liberation movements as they confront and alter the literary and political categories of the “West.” It is not Mary Layoun • 3 min read
MER Article Art Review: "It's Possible" It’s Possible, A Joint Exhibition of Palestinian and Israeli Art “It’s Possible” is the theme of an exhibition by Palestinian and Israeli artists currently touring the United States. Twenty-four artists -- 12 Palestinians and 12 Israelis -- are displaying their works together in the first such effo Zeina Azzam Seikaly • 2 min read
MER Article Two Films Shadows Over the Future, A film by Wolfgang Bergmann. 1985. 92 mins, 16mm. Last Exit: Berlin, A film by Marilyn Gaunt. 1988. 28 mins. video. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea • 3 min read
MER Article Mitchell, Colonising Egypt Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Barbara Harlow • 11 min read
MER Article Human Rights Watch Perhaps the saddest commentary on the situation in Iran is Amnesty International’s recent statement that “some former prisoners of conscience held during the 1970s when the late Shah was in power, for whose unconditional release [Amnesty] then worked, now figure among those with responsibility for t Ömer Karasapan • 3 min read
MER Article Column These days the mainstream media in the US generally thinks twice before publishing crude slurs against entire ethnic or racial groups. But there remain those whom it is still apparently respectable to denigrate, foremost among them Arabs and Iranians. Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article The Uprooted Cinema My friend Jacques got as far as a screenplay when he died. He was Palestinian (Armenian) from Jerusalem, a photographer by trade, and after his family moved from occupation to Australia, Jacques made his way to the States on a tourist visa. Settling in New York, he found work in a series of custom p Miriam Rosen • 13 min read
MER Article Revolutionary Posters and Cultural Signs All revolutions require aesthetic means for representing changes in consciousness. The French Revolution saw itself as something new and universal, and generated a rich elaboration of aesthetic categories of the sublime (storms of nature, volcanoes, earthquakes), the beautiful (island of calm, meado Mehdi Abedi, Michael M.J. Fischer • 6 min read
MER Article Palestinian Expression Inside a Cultural Ghetto During the summer of 1986,1 spent a month in the West Bank, keen to learn for myself about the effects of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian forms of expression, particularly in the visual arts and local crafts. A quick look at different cultural products indicated that traditional aesthetic values Kamal Boullata • 16 min read
MER Article Poems Hey Jeep, Hey Jeep Sami Shalom Chetrit 1. Eight kids in an army jeep Eight soldiers, one major: eight kids and one minor 2. Hey Jeep, Hey Jeep [1] 3. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old at the cutting of his uncircumcised flesh. 4. And eight of his sons in the army jeep and his son cri Erez Bitton, Shelley Elkayam, Sami Shalom Chetrit • 3 min read
MER Article "Wounded Kinship's Last Resort" Ironically, the latest junkets featuring liberal Israelis and recently domesticated Palestinians threaten to finally collapse the intricate history of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East into two streamlined, easily recognizable blocs: enlightened, idealistic and well-intentioned Zionists (“wounded sp Ammiel Alcalay • 10 min read
