Malak Abdelkhalek (KCL) - 2023-24 Students
k20106830@kcl.ac.uk

Avant-garde as Resistance: Third-Worldist Trilingual Magazine Lotus and Experimental Magazine Gallery 68

Gallery 68, an experimental, avant-garde, and nominally apolitical literary magazine saw avant-garde experimentation and literary engagement as incompatible. This same view has also been expressed by wider literary scholarship in Arabic. On the other hand, Lotus, a multilingual journal produced in English, Arabic and French, had an explicit focus on iltizam (commitment or littérature engagée) and Third-World solidarity, and was often seen as non-experimental due to said iltizam. I propose that the committed magazine Lotus may itself be considered a vehicle for the avant-garde, while much of the material in Gallery 68 may arguably be understood as expressing political engagement.

Primary supervisor: Dr Sara Marzagora

Secondary supervisor: Dr Hannah Scott Deuchar