Where Do We Go From Here?: Reading “Arab Women’s Writing” Today

Abstract

Al-Hassan Golley, Nawar, ed. 2007. Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing. New York: Syracuse University Press. $45.00 he. $22.95 sc. xxxvi + 271 pp.Mehta, Brinda. 2007. Rituals of Memory In Contemporary Women's Writing. New York: Syracuse University Press. $45.00 hc. 303pp.No one today is purely one thing.(Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism)Who is writer? Both Nawar el-Hassan Golley s edited collection and Brinda Mehta's book confront us with this label. Indeed, category of often functions as a stock subset of both postcolonial and studies. The classification Arab may expand into North African and Eastern, women's studies into gender studies.These represent slightly more pertinent, but still extremely general categories. In aftermath of pan-Arabism, rise of Islamism, and increasing examples of sectarian conflicts throughout region, usefulness of term Arab must itself be interrogated. As example of Morocco perhaps illustrates best, women who under current theoretical paradigms fall under Arab or Middle Eastern umbrella may, in fact, define themselves as neither, choosing simply Moroccan or Amazighii instead. However, as is usually case, categories remain maddeningly hard to shift. Indeed, at its worst category writing serves to sell odalisque back to (ex)colonizer, giving us opportunity to once again turn a sexualized yet politically correct gaze on orientalized Other. In this way, socio-political and economic consequences of decolonization have created a curious reversal: Oriental woman has too-often become (writer), who now sells her story of brutal opression, followed by liberation and realization of Western values, to ex-colonizer.In this light, entire category of writing can be seen as a kind of literary prostitution in which teller performs empowerment of Western reader. Ayan Hirsi Alis Infidel provides a recent, popular example of this new genre, whilst highbrow literary texts such as Fatima Mernissi's Dreams of Tresspass or Assia Djedbar's L'amour, la fantasia take a second path, attempting to correct Western misperceptions of their oppression by offering a more complex narrative framwork. Both narrative types enjoy a new popularity in wake of post-September 1 1 politics. Also building on interest in grouping of texts we call writing are critical works such as those by al-Hassan Golley and Mehta. Academic work on as it appears most often today tends to overlap a great deal with discourse of postcolonial studies, both in its choice of primary texts and tendency to rely always on same three theorists (Said, Homi Bhaba, Spivak).We also find a marked tendency to focus on autobiographical writing, or at least to point out way in which a given fictional text exemplifies lived reality. In all fairness, as Lydie Moudelino has pointed out, this is in part due to production of a large quantity of autobiographical or semi-autobiographical material as a necessary first step as those whose voices have been silent begin to write (Moudelino 2006, 13).With its choice of subject matter, Women's Lives Retold follows in steps of its predecessors, such as Cooke and Badran's Opening Gates (2004) or Fedwa Malti-Douglas's Women's Body, Women's Word (1991), or even alHassan Golley's previous book Reading Women's Biographies (2003). In her introduction to new collection, Golley lays out four main theoretical areas anthology will address: cultural hybridity, transnationalism, communal identity, and the personal and political (xxviii). All four areas are hotly contested in this critical moment for postcolonial studies, where many are trying to write a way out of more traditional theoretical paradigms. …