It Must Be Heaven
In conversations addressing the plight of what was once known as the “Third World,” one of the central debates still involves the inevitable tension between nationalism—as well as the quest for national identity—and the rather amorphous concept known as “cosmopolitanism.” In the Palestinian intellectual milieu, the work of the late Edward Said exemplified an effort to balance serious engagement with the Palestinian cause and a cosmopolitanism generated by intellectual rigour and a certain intellectual distance. Defying stereotypes associated with Palestinian militants, Said embraced “worldliness” and secularism. He also emphasized the salutary virtues of exile and celebrated the exilic life as “a model for the intellectual who is tempted, and even beset and overwhelmed, by the rewards of accommodation, yea-saying, settling in.”
On a superficial level, Elia Suleiman, whose new film was awarded the
