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Representations of Gender in Post-Colonial Arab Literature in English

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Representations of Gender in Post-Colonial Arab Literature in English Beyond Borders: Representations of Gender in Post-Colonial Arab Literature in English Dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) Presented by Luisa Kristina Nassauer at the Faculty of Humanities Department of Literature Date of the oral examination: 25 May 2018 First referee: Professor Dr. Silvia Mergenthal Second referee: Dr. Anastasia Valassopoulos Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-1uxjpbkm27k6l0 We have fought our pain, we have taken our strength, we have strived for becoming these new women. To my mother Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... III Note on Transliteration and Citation ........................................................................... V 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 2. “The Self versus the Other” – Representations of the Post/Colonial World and Its Gender Relations ....................................................................................... 15 2.1. The Self Defines the Other ............................................................................. 15 2.1.1. Ethnic Otherness in Western Discourse ............................................ 15 2.1.2. Otherness and Gender in Western Feminist Discourse ..................... 19 2.1.3. The Western Discourse on Non-Western Gender Roles and Relations ............................................................................................ 27 2.2. Voices of the Suppressed ................................................................................ 38 2.2.1. Post/Colonial Resistance to the West’s Ethnic Otherness Discourse ........................................................................................... 38 2.2.2. Gender Roles and Relations in Post-Colonial Feminist Discourse ... 43 3. “Writing Back to the Centre and to Itself” – Arab Feminisms and (Anglophone) Arab Literature .............................................................................. 51 3.1. The History of Arab Feminisms – Nawal El Saadawi and Her Contemporaries ............................................................................................... 51 3.2. The History of Arab Literary Resistance to Patriarchy and Oppression ........ 68 3.2.1. Arab Literature .................................................................................. 68 3.2.2. Anglophone Arab Literature ............................................................. 78 I 4. Representations of Gender in Post-Colonial Arab Literature in English – A Focus on Egypt and the Anglophone Egyptian and Sudanese Diasporas ..... 86 4.1. Literature by Female and Male Authors in the Muslim Arab World – Ihsan Kamal, Nawal El Saadawi, Yusuf Idris and Salwa Bakr ...................... 86 4.2. Literature by Muslim Arab Migrants in Great Britain and the USA – Ahdaf Soueif, Samia Serageldin, Leila Aboulela and Tayeb Salih .............. 130 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 191 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. VI A. Primary Sources .............................................................................................. VI B. Secondary Sources .......................................................................................... VI German Summary ................................................................................................. XXXV II Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank all of the Arab writers – of the past and the present – who have continued to write, speak out, publish and influence the global literary discourse. It is because of them that the West is able to appreciate the essence of Arab literature and culture free of prejudice, and the Arab world can artistically represent itself while gaining the world’s attention. Without dispute, literature has developed in the course of centuries into an important global medium of self-representation with the author functioning as the own culture and society’s spokesperson. I am grateful to have had the chance to access a variety of Egyptian and Sudanese literary works, including short stories and novels rarely or never being available, read and discussed in the western world, and to produce a critical piece that shows appreciation for the authors’ artistry, dedication, social engagement and encouragement. I would very much like to thank Donna Landry and Abdulrazak Gurnah of the School of English, University of Kent, for introducing me to the works of Arab writers in the course of the MA Postcolonial Studies programme and encouraging me to look further into the field of socio- and gender-critical post-colonial Arab literature in English by both female and male authors after receiving my MA degree at Kent. Moreover, I owe great thanks to my long-time friend and intellectual companion met during my studies at Kent – Eugene Nulman. Thank you for introducing me to Nawal El Saadawi’s inspiring novel Woman at Point Zero (1975) that laid – aside from Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966) – the foundation for this doctoral research. I would also like to thank the Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg- Essen for giving me the opportunity to teach a seminar on “Post-Colonial Arab Women Writers” in the summer term 2014. I am deeply appreciative of my supervisors Silvia Mergenthal, University of Konstanz, and Christoph Heyl, University of Duisburg- Essen, for their endless support, advice and patience throughout my doctoral studies. Without their encouragement, I would not have been able to eventually weave spirit into words. I am grateful to the University of Manchester, in particular Anastasia Valassopoulos, for spending a research semester in autumn/winter 2016 at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. During my stay in Manchester, I was not only able to work intensively on my dissertation’s chapter 4. but also received invaluable feedback and advice. To my supervisor at Manchester, Anastasia Valassopoulos, for her endless III Acknowledgements support and encouragement, thank you. I owe many thanks to my dear friend Natasha De Souza for her time and patience of reading an earlier version of this work. To my very precious friend Dominique Jean Midedji, for the many years of friendship, humour, enthusiasm and patience, thank you. Finally, much gratitude goes to my family – my parents Ingeborg Lenz-Nassauer and Konrad Nassauer, my brother Jan-Frederik Nassauer and my aunt Melanie Nassauer – who has always been supportive of my life choices and to whom I could rely on at all times. Especially to my mother, to whom this work is dedicated, I am very grateful for her advice, faith and love. IV Note on Transliteration and Citation Note on Transliteration and Citation Names and places are spelled out as they are found in standard western publications. Nevertheless, existing spellings are preserved in quoted materials. I have consistently followed the MLA based citation guide from March 2011 of the Department of Literature, British Studies and American Studies, University of Konstanz. For any citation requirements not addressed by the citation guide from March 2011, I have consulted the Purdue OWL’s MLA formatting and style guide from September 2016. V 1. Introduction 1. Introduction Women’s oppression is not unique to the Arab/Muslim world – it is a universal phenomenon and it is a consequence of the patriarchal capitalist system.1 Nawal El Saadawi, secular Egyptian feminist writer2, activist and physician3, challenges with her 2006 statement about the universal oppression of women the centuries-long western (male) mythical perceptions4 of oriental women as solely affected by patriarchal suppression5, and female defencelessness caused, inter alia, by the harem space6. Especially, the Arab Spring’s socio-political uprisings in the Muslim Arab world, the growing Arab migration to Europe and the re-examination of Islamic cultures therewith have not only revived but also fuelled in recent years the gender-political discourses on oriental patriarchy and female Arab oppression within western societies and the fields of international gender studies and politics. What El Saadawi critically voices with regard to the 21st-century universal subjugation of women in an interview with Sophie Smith in January 2006 has indeed been debated by both ‘Third World’7/post-colonial8 and western feminists since the beginning of the 20th century9. 1 Sophie Smith, “Interview with Nawal El Saadawi (Cairo, 29th January 2006),” Feminist Review 85 (2007): 59-69, here 68. 2 Hoda El Sadda, “Women’s Writing in Egypt: Reflections on Salwa Bakr,” In Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.) Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives, London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1996: 127-144, here 131; See Smith 2007: 59. 3 See Smith 2007: 59f.; Dalya Cohen-Mor, “About the Authors,” In Dalya Cohen-Mor (ed. and trans.) Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2005: 297-305, here 302. 4 Leila Ahmed, “Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem,” Feminist Studies 8.3 (Autumn 1982): 521-534, here 527. 5 See Ahmed 1982: 524; Billie Melman, “Desexualizing the Orient: The Harem in English Travel Writing
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