National Allegory: Land and Body in Nawal El Saadawi and Assia Djebar
Faulkner, Rita
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87292
Description
Title
National Allegory: Land and Body in Nawal El Saadawi and Assia Djebar
Author(s)
Faulkner, Rita
Issue Date
2005
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Palencia-Roth, Michael
Department of Study
Comparative Literature
Discipline
Comparative Literature
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Romance
Language
eng
Abstract
My project examines how Nawal El Saadawi of Egypt and Assia Djebar of Algeria treat the national allegory that makes use of images of nation as woman and land as woman as well as woman as land and woman as nation. My question is what these two women do with this Arab narrative tradition used mainly by male writers. Do El Saadawi and Djebar treat differently this national allegory some twenty years after their respective nations have achieved independence? My contention is that these fragmented uses of variations on the trope of national allegory are employed by these Arab women writers of Muslim cultures in order to rewrite the body (a female body, but one in relation to the male). This dissertation employs post-colonial theory and its issues (in particular the work of Fredric Jameson, Homi K. Bhabha, Francoise Lionnet, Reda Bensmaia, and Anne Donadey) to analyze the authors' works in question. The problems of women are symptomatic of those of the nation. Being subject to patriarchy, the two cannot be divided. These writers both subvert and appropriate the national allegory of land and body to call into question the use of this tradition by the previous generation through their repetition and mimicry, and, at times, their specific rejection of it.
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