DISCURSIVE STRATEGIZING OF PARADOXICALLY PLACED PAIN AND PLEASURE: A BENTHAMIAN ANALYSIS OF RAMZY BAROUD’S THE LAST EARTH

Abstract

Palestinians were othered out, oppressed, tortured, and displaced from their houses by Zionist Israelis and denied their basic human right to own their native place. These oppressions highlighted not only in fiction but also in Palestinian memoirs, providing ample room for discursive analyses of the issue. Since, Jeremy Bentham has devised the principles of morality and legislation to gauge the modus-vivendi for public affairs and conflicts, the painful and pleasure-seeking acts of the main characters in selected memoir, act as compensation of their rightful ownership of their lives to prove the capacity of Being or Dasein. The current study deals with the textual analysis of Ramzy Baroud’s memoir The Last Earth - A Palestinian Story. The level of morality depicted in the memoir, highlights the discursive strategy of the author to protest against the unjust treatment of Zionists. It brings to world acknowledgement, how the Israelis have forced Palestinians to migrate and find solace in the fake and transitory happiness to approve their humanness. This pain of the Muslim Palestinian refugee community, creates the sense of pleasure in Zionist Israelis and their liaising nations, on the basis of physical, political, moral, and religious grounds. The study also highlights the real life characters’ struggle to find transitory happiness amidst all chaos and oppression as a ray of hope and positivity.