The Translation of SF Tropes in Dog War II

Abstract

This chapter examines how SF tropes of the doppelgänger and of climate distortions are adapted in Arabic to estrange and criticize a cultural and political context marked by corruption and authoritarianism. In Dog War II, Ibrahim Nasrallah strays from his historical imagining of Palestine and its people to draw a dystopian futuristic universe where, in addition to the distortions of climate change, he warns against the distortions of technology, as well as identity usurpation as the existential threat that leads to disaster. This chapter argues that the text’s two novums—the diminution of the daylight’s hours and technology that transforms one person into another’s double—estrange political and social conditions in Nasrallah’s world. The shrinking of daylight uses SF tropes to draw our attention to the gradual replacement of freedom by authoritarianism. The cosmetic technology estranges the means by which the population has been conditioned to prize surface appearance over addressing root issues; this dovetails with the gradual diminution of light, such that people are compelled to decorate surfaces in remembrance of what they’ve lost. Nasrallah has also used the cosmetic technology to reflect upon conflicts that are caused not by difference, but rather sameness.