Arab Women's Words with New Vision

Abstract

Arab Women's Words With New Vision Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. xii + 206 pp. ISBN 0-691-06856-9 (cl); 0-69101488 -4 (pb); $37.50 (cl); $12.95 (pb). Evelyne Accad Much of the Uterature on Arab women by Arab women these days desperately tries to demonstrate that the "evidence" shows that Arabo-Islamic tradition was not misogynistic, if anything it was outright "liberating." Fedwa Malti-Douglas's Woman's Body, Women's Word is here to show us that this is not the case, and she does so in a brilUant, scholarly manner. Whüe I understand and sympathize with the other women writers' and inteUectuaIs' concerns and their sfrategy for bringing about change by reclaiming a past they so much want on their side, knowing it may be the only way to move people in Arab society to necessary reforms, I prefer the more truthful and thorough approach of Malti-Douglas. MaltiDouglas is no less concerned with the needed revolution resulting from Arab women's plight, but her approach is to look for subversive elements in the texts and Uves of Arab women. She forcefuUy demonsfrates that their roles have not undergone a major change since the Middle Ages. And she does this through an unusual method she designed, which I wül analyze further. I find this approach much more convincing. Malti-Douglas's work is revolutionary, both in form and content. She breaks out of the chronologicaUy critical divisions in Arabic letters that address the classical or medieval Arabic literature, on the one hand, and the modern literature, on the other, by analyzing texts from both periods. She also breaks out of the textual or generic boundaries by mixing and analyzing disparate fields—phüosophy, mysticism, geography, cosmography , biography,—thereby providing a wider multi-disciplinary scope to her analysis. She also goes against the canon by choosing profane texts as weU as less-known ones, thus valorizing aU of them. This methodology leads her to some of her most interesting conclusions. The Unking thread of her analysis is the connection between women's body and woman's word. She successfuUy confronts classical prose discourse by male authors who warn of the tricks of women and modern prose by female authors, who chaUenge them with tricks of their own. One of her conclusions is that "whether a woman must speak through the body (as in the classical) or in reaction to it (as in the modern)... for woman, the word remains anchored in the body" (p. 10). > 1992 Journal of Women's History, Vol 4 No. ι (Spring) 1992 Book Review: Evelyne AccAD 149 The fascinating ideas analyzed in this study are Shahrazad's tricks in The Thousand and One Nights. Although criticized by many writers in the Arab world and in the West as documented by Malti-Douglas, she adds a new dimension to the analysis by demonstrating how the two sisters in these tales actuaUy use sex instead of being used by it. She also shows how verbal games and wit are part oiadab (Uterary) discourse and how they can be used to change situations. She also interprets various stories in the Qur'an, found also in the Bible, and points out their differences: the story of Adam and Eve, who, in the Qur'an, both share the blame for expulsion from Paradise; and of Joseph, who, in Arabo-Islamic tradition, links "woman's verbal meddting and the crime of sexual aggressiveness" (p. 52). With these stories, "the idea of women's trickery, with aU its sexual overtones , enters the Muslim unconscious" (p. 53). The lbn al-Batanuni's Makayid (an adab coUection on the tricks of women, ninth century A.H./fifteenth century A.D.) is a kind of exhortation about women in which their bodies are portrayed as powerful and dangerous. An attempt is made to create a male utopia freed from these uncontroUed bodies. This vision is analyzed in a masterpiece of medieval Arabic prose, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, by the Andalusian phüosopher-physician lbn Tufayl. The discussion provides some of the most interesting, innovative...