Abstract
This research re-examines “cultural hybridity” from an Arab female standpoint. The concept is widely researched in post-colonial discourse, and in texts of bi-cultural Arab women, it is re-envisioned in the light of the specificity of their experience. Amidst a maze of proliferating theories, the study utilizes critical discussions in post-colonial discourse pertinent to the central argument namely; what does it mean to be hybrid for Arab women, and how do they perform cultural hybridity in their autobiographical writing? This study sets itself is to formulate a framework that allows us to talk about Arab women’s autobiography in this context. It explores a space that would take into account ethnic and gender linked issues to investigate alternatives for Arab female self-identification in cultural hybrid contexts. For case study, I use Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun (1992) as texts as growing out of, and emerging against the culturally hybrid reality in which the autobiographical persona finds herself; a reality from which these self -representations evolve and authors begin to tell their stories. The study yields inferences regarding the potential of interstitial subjectivities as catalyst for agency, and a site of resistance and subversion. Cultural hybrid reality, for Arab women, is a site of contested and complex identities. It opens up a playing field of performative contestation in which identity thrives in ongoing endeavor to reformulate the debates on assimilation, integration, and identity politics within such a discursive territory.
Highlights
In Arab cultural experience, hybridity, the bequest of European colonization, produced contested and complex identities
The concept is widely researched in post-colonial discourse, and in texts of bi-cultural Arab women, it is re-envisioned in the light of the specificity of their experience
Amidst a maze of proliferating theories, the study utilizes critical discussions in post-colonial discourse pertinent to the central argument namely; what does it mean to be hybrid for Arab women, and how do they perform cultural hybridity in their autobiographical writing? This study sets itself is to formulate a framework that allows us to talk about Arab women’s autobiography in this context
Summary
In Arab cultural experience, hybridity, the bequest of European colonization, produced contested and complex identities. This study examines the performance of hybridity in Arab female textual self-representation. It situates hybrid identities at the center of the Arab female experience. The texts grow out of, and emerge against the culturally hybrid reality in which the autobiographical persona finds herself; it is a reality from which these self -representations evolve and authors begin to tell their stories. These two narratives have been dealt with previously in a number of studies, building the researcher’s analysis on alternative conceptual terrains is one way of relocating them to highlight unexplored areas. The conclusion shows that for Arab women, cultural hybridity opens up a playing field of performative contestation in which identity politics thrives in ongoing endeavor to reformulate debates on acculturation, integration and occidentalism within such a discursive territory
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