القارئ للدراسات الأدبية و النقدية و اللغوية
Volume 9, Numéro 2, Pages 229-242
2026-07-01
Placelessness And Existential Outsideness In The Palestinian Context: Ghassan Kanafani’s Men In The Sun
Authors : Dida Nassireddine .
Abstract
As Edward Relph (1976) defines it, “existential outsideness” is “a rejection of an individual by a place which he is condemned always to observe as though from outside. There is an awareness of meaning withheld and of inability to participate in those meanings.” This concept exposes the profound tension between place and human existence: the rootedness of being “inside” and the uprootedness of placelessness—of being an outsider. Place does not merely serve as a backdrop for life; it actively shapes identity, memory, culture, and emotion. For Palestinians, the condition of placelessness resonates with Relph’s idea that places “cannot be significant centres of existence but are at best backgrounds to activities that are without sense, mere chimaeras, and at worst voids” (1976). Dispossessed of home and belonging, they inhabit a condition of placelessness in which all locations lose meaning and life itself is stripped of purpose, no longer sustained even by the idea of an imagined homeland. Through a textual analysis of Men in the Sun (1962) by Ghassan Kanafani, this article argues that existential outsideness is inscribed in the Palestinian experience, both in exile and within the homeland, revealing it as a condition marked by the erosion of identity, meaning, and purpose, and culminating in silence and death.
Keywords
existential outsideness, exile, Ghassan Kanafani, placelessness, Palestine.
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