Poetry as a Queer Epistemological Method: Disrupting Knowledge of the Lebanese Civil War With Etel Adnan’s the Arab Apocalypse

The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan is a celebrated epic poem that engages in an affective discussion of experiencing violence and trauma. Written as a response to the Lebanese Civil War, Adnan engages in a critique of (hetero-masculinized) politics through textual language and visual images, a feminist queer method that both alienates and captivates the reader, reflecting the dynamics of conflict. This chapter explores how literature and the arts, especially poetry, can be used as primary source material in conflict research, providing a queer method and queer knowledge production. In the case of The Arab Apocalypse the result is a reflexive engagement regarding linearity and the political importance of trauma in conflict dynamics. In turn, it highlights the need to engage with queer feminist positionalities and experiences that emphasize alienation and non-hegemonic knowledge production to understand the experiential realities of peace and conflict.