Outcry Vs. Silence: A Deconstructive Reading Of Resistance In Ghassan Kanafani's Men In The Sun

This research paper offers a deconstructive reading of resistance in Ghassan Kanafani's Men In The Sun, focusing particularly on the tension between "outcry" and "silence". The narrative highlights the Palestinian land, the Palestinian space, and time around which the resistance theme evolves. It depicts Palestinian's resistance and the attempt to escape from refugee camps to Kuwait and this endeavor ends up in tragic failure. The novella features several outcries, but these attempts are shut in silence. This clash complicates the ultimate meaning of resistance in the novella. To trace such dichotomy, the paper applies Jacques Derrida's theory of deconstruction, making use of the concepts of: binary opposition, différance, and signification to figure out the unspoken. The finding suggests that the characters' apparent silence, particularly their death within the water tank, could be viewed not as a failure, but as a profound and enduring form of outcry in the discourse of resistance. The paper concludes that the binary opposites between outcry and silence compete with each other in an endless effort which consequently promotes an understanding that leads to an infinite hand in hand progression. Thus, from a deconstructive point of view, resistance is rendered elusive, as it is constantly displaced and deferred by the array of meanings, making it an unreachable horizon.