Description
The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan is a celebrated epic poem that forces the reader to become a witness to the destructive forces of politics, something that is, often, only described. Written as a response to the Lebanese Civil War, Adnan engages in a critique of (masculinised) politics through textual language and visual images, a feminist queer method that both alienates and captivates the reader. The result is a postmodern reflexive engagement with disaster that limits clarity. As the text of the poem becomes obfuscated by images, the reader is forced to make peace with their alienation and, at the same time, engage with the foreign by providing meaning to images that can only be described. By using Adnan’s Arab Apocalypse to engage in a feminist queer reading of politics this article highlights the overlooked and marginalised non-masculine and non-heteronormative affects. Specifically, and in relation to the work of Adnan, it uses the Lebanese Civil War to engage with regional and global politics by temporarily displacing masculine understandings, descriptions, and causality. In turn, it highlights the need to engage with feminist queer positionalities and experiences that emphasize alienation and non-hegemonic knowledge production.
