Writing5 essays

Essays & criticism

Essays in criticism and culture, some drawn from the weekly column in Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

0110 January 2026
On Criticism

Criticism as an Act of Knowledge, Not a Technical Skill

When criticism becomes a set of procedures applied to texts, it loses its first function: the production of knowledge. A case for recovering criticism as thinking rather than technique.

1 min read
0218 November 2025
Trauma

The Poetics of Trauma: How the Wound Writes Itself

When ordinary speech fails to carry catastrophe, literature invents a poetics of its own — one that arises from damage rather than from wholeness.

1 min read
035 September 2025
Diaspora

Diaspora and the Making of the Counter-Narrative

Against an official story that seeks to erase the witness, the literature of diaspora builds a counter-narrative that restores the exile's voice.

1 min read
0422 June 2025
Theory

Postcolonial Theory and Arabic Criticism: A Deferred Encounter

Between an imported theory and a cultural field carrying its own wounds, the encounter remains possible — but conditioned on critical awareness rather than ready-made borrowing.

1 min read
0514 March 2025
On Reading

The Reader as a Partner in Meaning

Meaning is not handed ready-made from the text to the reader; it is made in the encounter between them, where the reader becomes a partner rather than a recipient.

1 min read