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Copyright by Jennifer Lynne Davey 2012 The Thesis Committee for Jennifer Lynne Davey Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Unruly Voices: Narration of Communal Memory and the Construction of Gender and Communal Identity in Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Denise A. Spellberg Faegheh Shirazi Unruly Voices: Narration of Communal Memory and the Construction of Gender and Communal Identity in Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina by Jennifer Lynne Davey, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 Dedication For RMD Acknowledgements I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my Supervisor Denise Spellberg and my Reader Faegheh Shirazi for their guidance and constructive feedback throughout this project. I would also like to thank the professors whose graduate seminars left their mark on me during my M.A. program and in some sense helped guide me to this work. This includes Denise Spellberg and Faegheh Shirazi as well as Sonia Seeman, Abraham Marcus and Hina Azam. I extend my thanks also to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas for awarding me FLAS Fellowships that made my studies at UT and the writing of this thesis possible. All errors, omissions and oversights are my own. v Abstract Unruly Voices: Narration of Communal Memory and the Construction of Gender and Communal Identity in Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina Jennifer Lynne Davey, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Denise A. Spellberg Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina retells the stories of the women who appear on the margins of the earliest sources of Islamic history from a contemporary Muslim feminist’s perspective. Djebar uses formal elements of early Islamic historiography and relies upon classical Sunni sources. These techniques place her novel in conversation with classical Islamic tradition and bring legitimacy to her subversive project which aims to shift the boundaries of that canon. Though crafted in relation to classical sources, Djebar’s critique of gender identity is also addressed to the discourses and institutions of Islamic authority that evolved over the centuries and that continue to delineate narrow roles for women, up to and including contemporary regimes. In chapter one I argue that by grounding her critique of circulating discourses on Muslim women within a project that appropriates canonical Sunni historiography, Djebar refuses the disjunction between feminism and Islam, critiquing normative Islamic discourse on women in contemporary Algeria without framing the conflict in terms of an East/West or a religious/secular vi binary. Chapter two examines Djebar’s treatment of Fatima in particular. I consider Djebar’s selection of classical sources and compare the earliest canonical Sunni renderings of Fatima and those found in the novel. I argue that the vision of empowered women in the first Muslim community posited in Far from Madina destabilizes the ideal of gender identity constructed in early Islamic historiography. Far from Madina focuses on the moment after the death of Muhammad when Muslims were left to interpret their scripture and recall their Prophet’s words and deeds. Djebar constructs the novel around the question of what role Muslim women would play in this process, a move which foregrounds her own choice to write the novel and embrace her role as witness and transmitter of the stories of these early women. Chapter three examines the reflexive character of Far from Madina and considers how Djebar’s narrative strategies and hermeneutical approach facilitate the articulation of identity through difference. I argue that the narrative is Djebar’s performance of contemporary Muslim identity and an example of “lived Islam.” vii Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Scholarly treatments of Djebar’s work ...........................................................6 Theoretical genealogy ...................................................................................16 Chapter I: Situating Djebar’s turn to early Islamic history within the context of a contemporary critique ...................................................................................30 A biography of Assia Djebar ........................................................................32 Far from Madina and modern Algeria ..........................................................34 Positionality and multiple critique ................................................................38 Orality, the storyteller, memory ....................................................................44 Returning to the Islamic past ........................................................................51 Chapter II: Re-imagining ideal Muslim women: the case of Fatima bint Muhammad .......................................................................................................................56 Framing the novel Far from Madina ............................................................58 Classical Sunni sources .................................................................................60 The biography of Fatima bint Muhammad ...................................................68 Textual comparisons .....................................................................................71 Multivalent relationships in the novel and in the Islamic past ......................86 Chapter III: Far from Madina, a narration of female Muslim identity through the principle of difference ...................................................................................91 Muslim communal identity ...........................................................................92 Female Muslim identity in Far from Madina ...............................................98 Authorial reflexivity....................................................................................103 The narrators of Madina ..............................................................................108 Linking Aisha bint Abi Bakr and Assia Djebar ..........................................119 viii Conclusion ...........................................................................................................128 Bibliography ........................................................................................................134 ix Introduction This study examines twentieth-century Algerian writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar’s (b. 1936) engagement with literature as a vehicle for challenging normative forces in the discursive construction and social circumscribing of Muslim women, with emphasis on the Algerian context. Assia Djebar has said that the “true topic” of her writing and filmmaking is an exploration of women’s “relationship to the question of memory.”1 As such, her work confronts the fact that mainstream historical narrative has largely failed to preserve Algerian female voices and perspectives and instead has tended to put forward representations of women that have had a marginalizing effect. Djebar’s project addresses this marginalizing influence in multiple layers of historical narrative pertaining to Muslim women. The canon of classical Islamic writing is marked by a tendency to relegate the voices and experiences of women to the margins of their narratives, a problem that pervades early historical writing as a whole. Colonial histories have tended to exoticize Muslim women and to depict them as disempowered or lacking agency. Algerian national discourse, emerging in the milieu of the legacy of colonialism, has tended to appropriate women as cultural markers in the battle between secular and Islamic ideology. And thus, much of its rhetoric has revolved around the articulation of a narrow view of female agency in keeping with a proscribed model of cultural authenticity. Confronting these dialogues, Djebar’s project is both recuperative and 1 Clarisse Zimra, “When the Past Answers Our Present: Assia Djebar Talks About Loin de Medine,” Callaloo 16:1 (Winter, 1983): 124. 1 critical, endeavoring to restore a view of women’s agency in these layers of historical narrative and interrogating literary constructions of women therein. Djebar’s aim is to advance a broader understanding of women’s agency in historical narrative of the Arab/Islamic world and to open in discursive space a wide horizon of possibility for female Muslim identity. As she articulates narratives that explore connections between women and memory in the Algerian context, Djebar must negotiate the tension between her own commitment to gender equality and the fact that critiques on women’s status in Muslim society are often equated with the forces of Western cultural imperialism. Further, Djebar must confront the “othering” tendencies of language and the fact that normative narrative structures are inadequate for the work of representing the vision of female Muslim subjectivity and identity she seeks to express. Faced with these challenges, Djebar constructs her account out of strands of indigenous history and utilizes narrative techniques that problematize binary oppositions that typically form the foundation of discourses on meaning and identity. Djebar combines feminist recuperative historical research and a reflexive mode of narration in a transparent