Chronicles of Disappearance: the Novel of Investigation in the Arab World, 1975-1985

Chronicles of Disappearance: The Novel of Investigation in the Arab World, 1975-1985 By Emily Lucille Drumsta A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Margaret Larkin, Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Karl Britto Professor Stefania Pandolfo Summer 2016 © 2016 Emily Lucille Drumsta All Rights Reserved Abstract Chronicles of Disappearance: The Novel of Investigation in the Arab World, 1975-1985 by Emily Lucille Drumsta Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Margaret Larkin, Chair This dissertation identifies investigation as an ironic narrative practice through which Arab authors from a range of national contexts interrogate certain forms of political language, contest the premises of historiography, and reconsider the figure of the author during periods of historical upheaval. Most critical accounts of twentieth-century Arabic narrative identify the late 1960s as a crucial turning point for modernist experimentation, pointing particularly to how the defeat of the Arab Forces in the 1967 June War generated a self-questioning “new sensibility” in Arabic fiction. Yet few have articulated how these intellectual, spiritual, and political transformations manifested themselves on the more concrete level of literary form. I argue that the investigative plot allows the authors I consider to distance themselves from the political and literary languages they depict as rife with “pulverized,” “meaningless,” “worn out,” or “featureless” words. Faced with the task of distilling meaning from losses both physical and metaphysical, occasioned by the traumas of war, exile, colonialism, and state violence, these authors use investigation to piece together new narrative forms from the debris of poetry, the tradition’s privileged mode of historical reckoning. In the first two chapters, I bring together two novels with remarkable formal and structural similarities, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s al-Baḥth ʿan Walīd Masʿūd (In Search of Walid Masoud; 1978) and Elias Khoury’s al-Wujūh al-bayḍāʾ (White Masks; 1981). From these two works, I shape a general typology: the novel of investigation begins with the mysterious disappearance or death of its protagonist and proceeds as a search for causes and answers conducted by a metafictional frame narrator. In the second two chapters, I observe how the investigative model manifests both in Egypt, with Yūsuf al-Qaʿīd’s Yaḥduth fī Miṣr al-ān (It’s happening now in Egypt; 1977) and in Morocco, with Driss Chraïbi’s Francophone detective novel Une enquête au pays (1981), at approximately the same historical moment. In all of these novels, I argue, the absent protagonist represents a figure for political resistance that seemed to have disappeared in the disillusionment occasioned by the 1967 defeat—the peasant, the freedom fighter, the exilic intellectual, the Berber, etc.—while the self-questioning frame narrator stands in for the author himself, attempting to wrest meaning from the scattered, chaotic events of recent history. 1 Table of Contents Table of Contents i Acknowledgements ii Note on transliteration iv Introduction: 1 From Resistance to Disappearance in the Novel of Investigation Chapter One: 18 All the Words Have Been Pulverized: Anxieties of Authorship in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud Chapter Two: 47 This is not a Story: From Authorship to Witnessing in Elias Khoury’s White Masks Chapter Three: 78 The Words Have Lost their Features: Yūsuf al-Qaʿīd’s It’s Happening Now in Egypt and the Aesthetics of Confrontation Chapter Four: 114 Piles of Palaver, Scraps of Words: Driss Chraïbi and the Berber Critique of Enlightenment Conclusion: 144 The Writer Between the Archive and the Story Bibliography 148 i Acknowledgments This dissertation has been partially funded by a grant from the Sultan Program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, a Block Grant from the Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature, a Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. It was forged between the labyrinth of Dwinelle and the Babel of Barrows, between the chilly fog of Berkeley and the sunny smog of Los Angeles. In between, I have been inspired and supported by mentors, teachers, colleagues, friends, and loved ones both near and far. Expressing all the thanks I owe would likely take longer than the dissertation itself. In the meantime, my apologies to anyone I have overlooked here. Thanks first and foremost to my dissertation committee, especially to my chair, Margaret Larkin, who inspired me to embark on this path in the first place, and who patiently read and commented on every chapter. Chana Kronfeld went to the heart of each chapter to excavate and develop what was best in them; I thank her for rescuing me from the knottiest theoretical vortexes, and for being a constant source of warmth and encouragement. Karl Britto’s attentive readings distilled my meandering prose into the concise questions that have guided this project and that I sincerely hope will guide its future incarnations. Stefania Pandolfo gave me perspective at my most myopic moments; I thank her for always reminding me of the stakes involved in this work. This dissertation has also been shaped by comments and conversations from an expansive network of friends and colleagues to whom I owe much gratitude. In Los Angeles and Berkeley, Mandy Cohen was a collaborator and friend; her generous conversation always made writing less solitary. At UCLA, Michael Cooperson and Nouri Gana offered invaluable counsel on many fronts, while Shir Alon, Nasia Anam, Fatima Burney, Jenny Forsythe, Suleiman Hodali, Rebecca Lippman, and Omar Zahzah welcomed me into the UCLA Comparative Literature community. I thank them all for making Los Angeles feel like home. In Berkeley, Paco Brito, Ashley Brock, Cullen Goldblatt, Katie Kadue, Ramsey McGlazer, Julia Nelsen, Jane Raisch, and Laura Wagner offered copious feedback, friendship, and camaraderie. Corey Byrnes, Kathryn Crim, Katrina Dodson, Sam England, Andrea Gadberry, and Tristram Wolff are also constant guides; this work is built on the bedrock of their friendship. Many thanks are also due to those who with whom I shared conference space and conversation over the years. Stephen Sheehi, Nadia Yacoub, and Tahia Abdel Nasser were patient listeners and commenters at the the MLA, while Wen-chin Ouyang and Dominique Jullien expanded the horizons of my thinking at the ACLA. I also owe deep gratitude to Michael Allan, Friederike Pannewick, Rachid Ouaissa, and the other organizers of the 2014 EUME Summer Academy in Rabat, as well as to the new colleagues and friends I met there: Nicholas Arese, Koen Bogaert, Nancy Demerdash, Hatim El Hibri, Mohamed Elshahed, Dina El-Sharnouby, Omar al-Ghazzi, Amir Moosavi, and Cristiana Strava. Your work and our many conversations continue to shape my thinking. I owe special thanks to Gretchen Head for her sagacity and comfort in tough times, and elsewhere, to Elliott Colla for the same. And lastly, warmest of thanks to Elizabeth Saylor, who eased the intimidation of graduate school from my very first day at Berkeley—I could not have tackled Ibn Rashīq, balāghah, or any of it without her. ii This project would also not have been possible without the patience and expertise of a cadre of Arabic language teachers who deserve much more recognition—intellectual and material—than I can offer here. I owe particular thanks to the incredible women at the American University in Cairo: to Nadia Harb, for her formative class on Palestinian literature, and to Heba Salem, Layla al-Sawi, Shahira Yacout, and Dina Bashir for introducing me to Egyptian Arabic and helping me find a home in a language not my own. Allī yasʾal mā yatuhsh. Thanks also to Dr. Iman Soliman for all her efforts keeping the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad program alive amidst the joy and turmoil of January 25. Before them, Ustādh Fāḍil at the Bourguiba Institute in Tunis introduced me to Arabic poetry (through audiocassette tape recordings and a 1970s-era language lab), Anna Selma Senna taught me Tunisian, and Amina Ayari welcomed me into her family’s home in Hammam Sousse. Finally, to those I am lucky enough to call family—Peter Drumsta, who made me my own copy editor, Carolyn Drumsta, for the sister language we share, and Vicky Gregorian, who gave material, emotional, and spiritual support at every step of the way—this project is also for you. And to Levi, the first and last reader, who is forever letting down ladders to me in the mire of my own thoughts—I thank you for all of this and everything to come. iii Note on Transliteration For transliterations from Arabic, I have followed the ALA-LC Romanization Table for Arabic, with a few modifications. Where there are commonly known English equivalents for proper names, I omit full diacritics (e.g. I use Naguib Mahfouz for Najīb Maḥfūẓ, Elias Khoury for Ilyās Khūrī, Beirut for Bayrūt, Maghreb for Maghrib). I render the nisbah ending as “-iyy” rather than “-īy.” I render inseparable prepositions and conjunctions preceding the definite article with hyphens to indicate elision, rather than retaining the “a” (e.g. bi-l-tamām wa-l-kamāl). To avoid confusion, I retain full diacritics and italics on some technical terms in Arabic even where there are accepted English spellings (e.g. I write fidāʾī, fidāʾiyyīn rather than fedayee, fedayeen; fallāḥ, fallāḥīn rather than fellah, fellahin). In citations where it is of typographical relevance, I retain the original Arabic script. All translations from Arabic are mine unless otherwise noted. iv So now it’s back to the same old vortex! —Dr. Jawād1 1 Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, In Search of Walid Masoud, trans.

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