Safiyya’s Return

Abstract

Abstract The article examines the political agency of Safiyya, a character in Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa. Drawing on feminist critiques of hysteria and the Palestinian practice of ṣumūd, it argues that Safiyya’s prominent features—silence, crying, and turning away—are active expressions of refusal. In the novella, her refusal acts as a resistance to both patriarchal and colonial orders: She rejects becoming an object of their knowledge production and refuses to participate in the violent economy they construct. In this sense, Safiyya’s political agency also challenges common binaries of resistance, including the feminist/anticolonial binary.