A Carnivalesque Mirage: the Orient in Isabelle Eberhardt's Writings
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Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title A Carnivalesque Mirage: the Orient in Isabelle Eberhardt's Writings Author(s) Chouiten, Lynda Publication Date 2012-12-10 Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/3600 Downloaded 2021-09-28T09:06:02Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. A Carnivalesque Mirage: The Orient in Isabelle Eberhardt’s Writings Lynda Chouiten Submitted for the Degree of PhD To the National University of Ireland, Galway College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Discipline of French Head of School: Dr Lillis Ó Laoire Research supervisor: Dr Philip Dine September 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Abstract ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Possessing the Land, Dividing the People 21 1.1. “Exile and the Kingdom” 24 1.1.1. Exile 24 1.1.1.1. In quest of a name 24 31 1.1.1.2. The call of death 1.1.2. The kingdom 33 1.1.2.1: Appropriation 33 1.1.2.2. Oriental colours 36 1.2. Deconstructed carnivals 40 1.2.1. Carnivalesque venues? 40 1.2.1.1. The Légion Etrangère 40 1.2.1.2. The market-place 43 1.2.1.3. Festivals 47 1.2.2. Eberhardt’s racial hierarchy 49 1.2.2.1. Arabian knights 49 1.2.2.2. Assimilable Berbers 53 1.2.2.3. “Beni Israel” 56 1.3. Colonisers and colonised 59 1.3.1. “The Wretched of the Earth” 61 1.3.1.1. Denunciations 61 1.3.1.2. Rebellions 65 1.3.2. Involvement 70 1.3.2.1. Assimilation or association? 70 1.3.2.2. A “hero” named Lyautey 74 Conclusion 79 Chapter 2: Islam: the Not-So-Straight Way to Power 82 2.1. Islam as power 84 2.1.1. Aspiring to grandeur 84 2.1.2. Mektoub: rewriting the “written” 87 2.1.2.1. A bi-faced concept 87 2.1.2.2. Two literary examples 91 2.2. Eberhardt, Islam, and Orientalist discourse 93 2.2.1. Islam in the Western imagination 94 2.2.2. Eberhardt’s Islam 99 2.2.2.1. Masculinising Islam 99 2.2.2.2. Feminising Muslims 102 2.2.2.3. Enlightening Islam, unenlightened Muslims 106 2.3. (De)carnivalised Islam 113 2.3.1. The Sufi choice 113 2.3.2. Insane saints and virtuous sinners 120 2.4. The impossible conversion 124 2.4.1. Roberto Fraugi/Mohammed Kasdallah 124 2.4.2. Jacques/Mebrouk 127 Conclusion 130 Chapter 3: Desiring Power: 132 The Transvestite Westerner and the Eroticised Native 3.1. Anatomy of transvestism 137 3.1.1. Becoming Si Mahmoud 137 3.1.1.1. Empowering masculinity 137 3.1.1.2. A homoerotic gaze? 141 3.1.2. So a woman, after all 145 3.1.2.1. Vox Paterna 146 3.1.2.2. Actresses 148 3.1.2.3. Veils 151 3.2. Women, race, and morality 155 3.2.1. The good, the bad, and the ugly 155 3.2.1.1.“Innocent” victims 155 3.2.1.2. Women like men 158 3.2.1.3. The ugly 161 3.2.2. The importance of being moral 164 3.2.2.1. Female virtues 164 3.2.2.2. Educating the native woman 168 3.3. Love in the time of colonisation 170 3.3.1. A war called love 171 3.3.2. (Un)loving the native 173 3.3.2.1. Western wives, native husbands 174 3.3.2.2. “An ideal husband” 177 3.3.2.3. Forbidden motherhood 179 Conclusion 183 Chapter 4: Journeys: Travel, Writing, and the Changing Self 187 4.1. Reflections on nomadism 192 4.1.1. Was Eberhardt a nomad? 192 4.1.2. An undecidable concept 195 4.1.2.1. Nomadism and power 195 4.1.2.2. Nomadism and freedom 198 4.1.3. The temptation of the State 201 4.1.3.1. Ships and harbours 201 4.1.3.2. Eberhardt and the Colonial State 203 4.2. Eberhardt’s adventure novel 207 4.2.1. Decarnivalised roads 207 4.2.2. Travelling to know 211 4.2.2.1. Knowing the Other 211 4.2.2.2. Knowing the Self 214 4.3. The politics of exoticism 218 4.3.1. Exoticism and conservatism 218 4.3.2. Exoticism and colonialism 225 4.3.2.1. Subtle complicities 225 4.3.2.2. A certain vision of identity 229 4.4. The writing journey 232 4.4.1.Writing and movement 232 4.4.2. On Eberhardtian écriture 235 4.4.2.1. Nomadic writing? 235 4.4.2.2. Eberhardt and the Other’s discourse 239 Conclusion 242 General Conclusion 245 Glossary 252 Bibliography 255 i Acknowledgements This dissertation would have never been completed without the tremendous help of my supervisor, Dr Philip Dine, who read and corrected my drafts, made valuable comments and suggestions, gave me constant encouragement, and was always there to answer my queries and proofread my articles and oral presentations. I cannot thank him enough. I would also like to thank Professors Jane Conroy and Daniel Carey for the useful comments and questions they addressed to me in the course of our Graduate Research Committee meetings. I am also indebted to them and to Dr Philip Dine for believing in my academic abilities and giving me the exceptional chance of doing research at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Thanks also to the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions for funding the project and for the Budget and Outreach Programme for financing my academic stay at La Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and Les Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence. My thanks also go to the staff of these two institutions as well as to the librarians of the James Hardiman Library, particularly to those of the Inter-Library Loans services. Thank you for your professionalism and solicitude. Thanks also for the considerable budget you must have spent towards satisfying my book loan requests! Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my parents, who have always been there for me, who acknowledge my virtues and show indulgence for my (numerous!) faults. This thesis is dedicated to you. Lynda. ii ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, Isabelle Eberhardt roamed North Africa in male disguise, befriending the natives, marrying one of their sons, and converting to their faith. At once male and female, at once Western and Oriental, she seems to have been the very incarnation of the carnivalesque, with its impulse to blur racial and gender categories and amalgamate what is usually kept separate by artificial boundaries. This thesis, however, argues that this seeming carnivalesque thrust is in fact an illusion – a mirage, to employ an image more suitable for the context of the desert where she spent most of her adult life. This is the case for two reasons: the writer’s marked will-to-power, and her inscription within the nineteenth-century patriarchal and Orientalist traditions. Will-to-power is what brought Eberhardt to the desert in the first place. An ambitious writer, she was quick to see the richness of the literary material the desert could provide; and it is with the hope of returning to Europe with original productions that would secure her literary recognition that she first headed to the Sahara and mingled with its people. Whether she fulfilled this ambition is, however, doubtful. Instead of originality, her portrayal of North Africa deploys the most typically Orientalist strategies: while North African landscapes are symbolically appropriated through the use of words evoking conquest and possession, her native characters are infantilised, feminised, eroticised, endowed with passion and deprived of intellect. While participating in the Orientalist subjection of the Maghreb, Eberhardt also takes part in the patriarchal subjection of women. Although her transvestism and her unconventional lifestyle have been read as marks of a feminist stance, Eberhardt not only never showed interest in the feminist movement, but indeed saw powerlessness as the natural predicament for woman, as illustrated in her writings, where her heroines who seek empowerment are inevitably doomed to failure. It is precisely in the light of this association between womanhood and weakness that her transvestism can be read: because femininity meant disempowerment, the success of her own quest for power made it necessary to borrow a male identity. Taking her masculine role to heart, Eberhardt not only took part in the sexual objectification of woman, providing eroticised descriptions of female natives, but also legitimised, in a sense, their oppression by depicting them as morally and intellectually inferior. iii Eberhardt’s cultural in-betweenness dismantled neither power mechanisms nor racial and gender categories. If her disguise as a man perpetuated the postulate of male superiority, her masquerading as an Easterner did not prevent her from displaying attachment to her European identity, by rehearsing the West’s traditional construction of the Orient as a site of power and desire. It is in this binary and hierarchised approach to race and gender that Eberhardt fails to incarnate a carnivalesque vision. Introduction Introduction Isabelle Eberhardt’s life (1877-1904) was made up of contrasts. Although a European woman, she spent most of her adult life disguised as an Oriental man as she roamed North Africa; although she preferred the company of the natives and denounced colonial malpractice, she was, towards the end of her life, to take an active part in the imperial project; and although an ambitious writer, she was to die an obscure literary figure.