Disintegrating monads in the autobiographical writing of Sasson Somekh

Abstract

In his autobiographical works Baghdad, Yesterday (2007) and Life After Baghdad (2008) Sasson Somekh writes his memories of Baghdad and Israel. Somekh acknowledges the complexity of Arab–Israeli realities but repeatedly diverts his gaze from them, constructing instead a monadic literary system insulated from politics. Within this literary framework he performs two contradictory yet complementary practices: on the one hand, he creates time capsules, sealed monads that enshrine and preserve the memory; on the other, he deploys mechanisms of repetition, reflection, bare dialogue, regressions and narrative inconsistency in order to blur the familiar story of identity politics. Thus, in Life After Baghdad , the monadic system no longer remains sealed but becomes capsules of time and space that influence and reshape the social and political field. The monads Somekh forges in his life and writing are revolutionary gestures, modes through which it becomes possible to write a reconciled history between Jews and Arabs, and between Israel and the Arab world.