Abstract
Louis Montrose's "Professing the Renaissance: the Poetics and Politics of Culture" renewed concern with the historical, social and political conditions of literary productions (1989). He suggested a platform through which autonomous aesthetics and academic issues to be understood as inextricably linked to other discourses. While autobiography is considered as a "writing back," I argue here that it is rather a strategic transitional act that connects the past with the present and remaps the future. Though a very personal opening, autobiography is seen as a documentation of public events from a personal perspective. Academic autobiographies like Arab American history professor Leila Ahmad's A Border Passage from Cairo to America; A Woman’s Journey (2012) and African American theology professor Amina Wadud’s Inside the Gender Jihad (2008) are two examples of the production of interwoven private and public histories. The personal opening in such narratives is an autonomous act that initiates cross-disciplinary dialogues that trigger empowerment and proposes future changes. In that sense, these autobiographies are far from being mere stories of the past. Conversely, they are tools of rereading one's contributions and thus repositioning the poetics and politics of culture as testimonial narratives. Employing post-colonial, Islamic feminism and new historicism, the aim of this study is to critically read the above academic/personal two autobiographies as examples of the private/ public negotiations of culture. It also aims to explore the dialogue between the literary, historical and social elements as they remap the future of women in Muslim societies and the diaspora.Keywords: New Historicism, Women in Islam, personal narratives, Amina Wadud, Leila Ahmed, post-colonialism, autobiography, non-white feminism
Highlights
Louis Montrose’s “Professing the Renaissance: the Poetics and Politics of Culture” renewed concern with the historical, social and political conditions of literary productions (1989)
In conclusion the current study demonstrates the ability of both writers to reposition themselves within the cultural poetics of their communities as they utilized personal and academic narratives to instigate autonomous social promotion
The study explored the uniqueness of the autobiography as a literary text to incorporate historical and linguistic dialogues into the personal narrativesxviii
Summary
Louis Montrose’s “Professing the Renaissance: the Poetics and Politics of Culture” renewed concern with the historical, social and political conditions of literary productions (1989). The originally personal narratives are to be considered as testimonial narratives of a very social and communal nature as explained by Gillian Whitlock 2015 and diverges substantially from the predominantly white male Western cannon of autobiography (2-3) As they write back their life stories, both writers implement academic knowledge and practice to recreate autonomous histories of Muslim women. Using post-colonial, feminist and new historicism tools, the objective of this study is to analytically read the two autobiographies as examples of Muslim women self-realization and repositioning within the cultural poetics and politics of their societies and in the diaspora It aims at exploring the literary, historical and linguistic dialogue initiated in the selected narratives. According to both Ahmed and Wadud writing one’s life is an act of self- assertion to inscribe female narratives to the textual tradition of their peoples (Vinson 2008 90)
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