Egypt As Marketplace in Twentieth- Century Anglo-Egyptian Literature
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Marketplaces Of The Modern: Egypt As Marketplace In Twentieth- Century Anglo-Egyptian Literature Nesrine Chahine University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Chahine, Nesrine, "Marketplaces Of The Modern: Egypt As Marketplace In Twentieth-Century Anglo- Egyptian Literature" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2207. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2207 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2207 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Marketplaces Of The Modern: Egypt As Marketplace In Twentieth-Century Anglo- Egyptian Literature Abstract Marketplaces of the Modern examines representations of Egypt as a marketplace in Egyptian and Anglophone literature, arguing that unresolved narrative tensions over the commodification of laboring bodies, cultural artifacts, and raw goods reflect the troubled history of capitalist imperialism in the twentieth century. Attending to aestheticizations of Egypt’s productive powers, the project tracks a shift from an earlier discourse that saw Egypt as a marketplace for commodities to a concern with the commodification of culture later in the century. It engages debates on transnationalism and globalization emphasizing the necessity of recuperating the material dimensions of culture while contributing to studies of Arabic and “Postcolonial” literatures by examining under-represented archives of South-South solidarity. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Comparative Literature and Literary Theory First Advisor Jed Esty Subject Categories English Language and Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2207 MARKETPLACES OF THE MODERN: EGYPT AS MARKETPLACE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANGLO-EGYPTIAN LITERATURE Nesrine Chahine A DISSERTATION in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________________ Jed Esty, Vartan Gregorian Professor of English Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________________ Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English and Comparative Literature Huda Fakhreddine, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to the kindness and mentorship of Jed Esty, who helped me to see this project through. His insight, encouragement, and invaluable advice always brought things into focus at just the right time. I would also like to express my gratitude to my readers, Huda Fakhreddine and Jean-Michel Rabaté, for their helpful comments and for their support. All errors and shortcomings remain my own. I have been fortunate to benefit from the wisdom and lively intellect of many members of the Penn community, some of whom generously read and commented on parts or aspects of this project. My heartfelt thanks to Amy Kaplan, Ania Loomba, David Eng, Rita Barnard, Kevin Platt, Nancy Bentley, and Roger Allen. Beyond Penn, I would like to thank Khaled Al-Masri, Tariq Mehmood Ali, Saree Makdisi, Djelal Kadir, Thomas Beebee, Allan Stoekl, Jonathan Eburne, Jennifer Boittin, Alexa Firat, and Gordon Witty. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Comparative Literature program at Penn and to my fellow travelers over the years. For the conversations and the company during my years of study, I thank Emily Weissbourd, Monika Bhagat-Kennedy, Ilinca Iurascu, Ben Huberman, Julie Kruidenier Tolliver, Marla Pagan Mattos, Edward Lybeer, Daniel DeWispelare, Kahori Tateishi, Sara Armengot, Murad Idris, Ameed Saabneh, Ola Shtewee, and Nava EtShalom. Many thanks also to JoAnne Dubil for her logistical genius and for watching over the Comparative Literature program. ii Finally, to my friends and family: it’s impossible to repay the love and support you’ve given me over the years. I am especially grateful to Asma Al-Naser and Andrew Long for their sympathy and irreverent wit. Last, but not least, to Adam Miyashiro, whose love, understanding, and steadfastness have sustained me throughout: I do not have the words to say how thankful I am. iii ABSTRACT MARKETPLACES OF THE MODERN: EGYPT AS MARKETPLACE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANGLO-EGYPTIAN LITERATURE Nesrine Chahine Jed Esty Marketplaces of the Modern examines representations of Egypt as a marketplace in Egyptian and Anglophone literature, arguing that unresolved narrative tensions over the commodification of laboring bodies, cultural artifacts, and raw goods reflect the troubled history of capitalist imperialism in the twentieth century. Attending to aestheticizations of Egypt’s productive powers, the project tracks a shift from an earlier discourse that saw Egypt as a marketplace for commodities to a concern with the commodification of culture later in the century. It engages debates on transnationalism and globalization emphasizing the necessity of recuperating the material dimensions of culture while contributing to studies of Arabic and “Postcolonial” literatures by examining under-represented archives of South-South solidarity. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 At the Marketplace: The Transnational Turn in the Age of Globalization CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................... 22 Romancing the Peasant: Egypt as Marketplace in Forster's Egyptian Writings and Haykal’s Zaynab CHAPTER 2 .................................................................................................................... 79 The Countryside on Trial: Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor and the Debates on Poverty CHAPTER 3 .................................................................................................................. 115 Aesthetics of Transnational Solidarity: Lotus and the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association CHAPTER 4 .................................................................................................................. 177 Commodity and Consumption: Alexandria as Marketplace in Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar and Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. CHAPTER 5 .................................................................................................................. 212 Trafficking in the Modern Novel: Social Realism, Modernism, and the novels of Idwar al-Kharrat CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 266 Reading Through and Against the Market SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................... 270 v INTRODUCTION At the Marketplace: The Transnational Turn in the Age of Globalization Overview Marketplaces of the Modern examines representations of Egypt’s productive powers in twentieth-century Egyptian, English, and Afro-Asian texts. In these texts, I argue, unresolved narrative tensions over the commodification of the laborer’s body, cultural artifacts, and raw materials such as cotton reflect the aporias of capitalist imperialism in the twentieth century. The project examines canonical texts by Tawfiq al-Hakim, E.M. Forster, and others, in addition to under-examined archives of transnational solidarity such as the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Movement and Egyptian Surrealism. Marketplaces of the Modern offers innovative readings of canonical texts on Egypt by focusing on their representations of the productive powers of the nation, which allow for a consideration of imperialist attempts at ordering the world through the global market. This approach enables a discussion of how Egypt is marketed for touristic consumption at the same time as it serves as a marketplace under occupation and tutelage by the same forces of imperialism and neoliberal globalization that have come to the fore in the period leading up to the 2011 uprisings. The project reflects on approaches to modern times in a transnational context. Starting with engagements with world-systems theory in the 1970s and 80s in works by thinkers such as Samir Amin, Anouar Abdel-Malek, and Janet Abu-Lughod, it evaluates the gains and limits of an approach to global dynamics rooted in the sciences. I put these texts in 1 dialogue with humanities and aesthetics-based approaches to issues of globalization, surveying key texts by Edward Said, Timothy Mitchell, Elliott Colla, Hala Halim, and Benita Parry. I end with an assessment of the significance to the “transnational turn” in literary scholarship during the 2000s by Richard Begam, Michael Valdez Moses, and others. Building on Timothy Mitchell’s conceptualizations of the link between the aesthetics of representation and the forces of modernization in Rule of Experts, Colonising Egypt, as well as in Questions of Modernity, the project asks: what insight do we gain by