Exilic Consciousness and Diasporic ‘Third Space’ in Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World

This research proposes a decolonial interpretation of Palestinian diaspora and exile in Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World (2020). Through its interdisciplinary exploration, this paper raises the question of how diasporic being and exilic consciousness furnish a bodily ‘Third Space’ that encompasses both a scattering (shitat) and focal grassroot resistance. This paper proposes an intersectional analysis and a praxis of decolonizing the body in exile and diaspora by approaching it from a deconstructive reading of a ‘Third Space.’ Through multidimensional ways, Nahr’s body becomes a site for colonial resistance that refutes and disrupts hegemonic discrimination. The antihero challenges institutionalized sociopolitical milieus, and supremacist ideologies that aim to circumnavigate her resistance against what are the ‘symptoms’ of diaspora. This reclamation of agency over her body and her eventual falling into radical love are argued to constitute the exilic consciousness with which Nahr decolonizes her own body within a ‘Third Space’ and in turn, her fluid, diasporic being. Thereby, the findings of this research conclude that the novel will incessantly cement a perennial timelessness; for ever since its publication, the novel is considered as the most relevant Palestinian novel, specifically to the Shaikh Jarrah uprising and the 2021 war on Gaza, followed by the century’s 2023-2024 International Court of Justice ruling on order of Israel’s committing genocide in the strip.