Gender and Cultural Difference in the Work of Ahdaf Soueif, Farhana Sheikh and Monica Ali
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East Meets West: Gender and Cultural Difference in the Work of Ahdaf Soueif, Farhana Sheikh and Monica Ali Elsayed Abdullah Muhammad Ahmed A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Critical and Cultural Theory) at Cardiff University September 2010 UMI Number: U514065 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U514065 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank Professor Chris Weedon for her invaluable guidance and constant support throughout the process of writing this dissertation. She is my rock, who believed in me, and constantly provided me with gentle nudging and encouragements. Her expert advice helped me to develop my ideas, sharpen my argument, and sharpen my writing. It is very great privilege to know her. Thanks are also due to, my second supervisor, Dr Radhika Mohanram for suggestions and help. As an Egyptian, I was privileged to be provided with the inspiration and encouragement from my mother and father. My utmost support in my life and work has been my wife, Nahla Hamouda. I have three beautiful children Maryam, Mohamed and Somiah who are the light and inspiration of the future of my work. Thank you! Thank you also to the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory for fruitful seminars, unwavering love, support and encouragement. Lastly, I would like to thank the Egyptian government for funding this project; without the scholarship I have been granted this dissertation would not have been written. DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed . ...............(Candidate) Date STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of ..........................................(Insert MCh, MD, MPhil, PhD etc, as appropriate) Signed Ak.wr^Ji (Candidate) Date ........ STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed .... cv .......................... (Candidate) Date \ ........ STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed (Candidate) Date . Z ......... STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Graduate Development Committee. Signed .....% I ^ (Candidate) Date .Q^.X.^oVv SUMMARY The main focus of this thesis is an analysis of encounters between East and West in the history of Egyptian feminism in the colonial and post-colonial periods and in the novels of Ahdaf Soueif, which directly address both questions of gender and Egyptian history since British colonialism. This is the substance of the first four chapters. In chapter five, the thesis turns to how similar issues and themes can be seen in two examples of British South Asian Muslim novels, Farhana Sheikh’s The Red Box (1991) and in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2002), novels set in British Pakistani and Bangladeshi diasporic communities in East London. Chapters one to four cover Egyptian feminism, the socio-historical contexts of Egypt and British Colonisation and the themes of gender and East/West encounters in two major novels by Ahdaf Soueif, In the Eye o f the Sun (1992) and The Map o f Love (1999). The main focus of chapter five is Brick Lane, since I wish to argue that Ali, like Soueif has crossed the cultural dividing line to claim a voice of her own; a voice that enables her to represent Muslim women’s relationship to the host community in ways that transcend binary oppositions between East and West. This is contrasted with my reading of Farhana Sheikh’s The Red Box , which, I argue, remains trapped within theses binary oppositions. I argue that the novels are products of what the late Edward Said aptly called intertwined histories, overlapping territories. While the main focus of the thesis is Egypt and Soueif, the selection of my two South Asian diasporic texts is based on thematic similarities and the ethos that the novels manifest despite their different contexts. In this study, I aim to offer an analysis of the specificities of the novels in question and of their commonalities. While Sheikh’s novel is largely unknown, Soueif and Ali have been widely published and read, and they have received recognition and accolades from the media and the academy alike. Soueif and Ali can be categorized as diasporic Muslim authors who investigate the misconceptions that exist in the spaces between East and West. My way of seeing and narrating is hybrid insofar as it draws on Egyptian and British cultures. My goal is to strengthen a view of Britain and Egypt as contemporary multicultural societies. I wish to argue that Britain, Egypt and South Asia share culturally rich histories, which if better understood, could be seen to complement and sustain each other. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................................................................................i DECLARATION................................................................................................................................ ii SUMMARY........................................................................................................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS..................................................................................................................iv Introduction........................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One: East/West Encounters and the Question of Gender............................................22 Chapter Two: Crossing Borderlands in Ahdaf Soueif s The Map o f Love (1999)................. 93 Chapter Three: The Politics of Gender: Breaking Patriarchal Bonds in Ahdaf Soueif s In the Eye o f the Sun (1992)......................................................................................................................112 Chapter Four: Multifaith and Multicultural Egypt: A Sense of Nostalgia for the Pharaonic Heritage: Ahdaf Soueif s The Map o f Love (1999)...................................................................139 Chapter Five: Cross-Cultural Comparisons...............................................................................153 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................... 208 Appendix 1.....................................................................................................................................218 Appendix 2: Interview with Ahdaf Soueif.............................................................................225 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 234 INTRODUCTION This dissertation is concerned with encounters between East and West and related questions of multiculturalism1 and hybridity2 in the novels of Ahdaf Soueif, Farhana Sheikh and Monica Ali. The objective of the research is to explore the ways in which the authors in question work against the binary legacies of Orientalism and colonialism to create a meeting ground marked by plurality and openness to cultural differences, where various cultures overlap and flow into each other (see Dayal 1996:129). Both colonial encounters and postcolonial writing are concerned with hybridity and what postcolonial critic Edouard Glissant calls the “unceasing process of cultural interweaving” and cross- linking with others (Glissant 1989:142). Indeed Soueif, Sheikh and Ali are cross-cultural products themselves. Themes of travel and dislocation have posed questions of the depiction of self and Other that have been addressed and reconsidered via critiques of Orientalism. Indeed, Said’s Orientalism (1979) has provoked an enormous interest in both colonial travel writing and literature from the “Third World”, though for a long time 1 Multiculturalism has been the topic of sustained and often polarised debate in Britain since the mid-1960s. In 2000 the Commission on the Future of Multi-ethnic Britain, sponsored by the Runneymede Trust published its report The Future o f Multi-Ethnic Britain (see Parekh, 2000a). This argued for Britain to be seen as a community of communities, Since then, in the wake of 9/11 and the London bombings of July 2005, there has been increasing debate about the tendency in much thinking on multiculturalism to stress difference rather than what is shared in common. The issue of separate communities has come to the fore