Good Mothers, Bad Sisters: Arab Women Writers in the Nation
This study will examine contemporary Arabic feminist writings that offer various perspectives on the nation vis-à-vis their fictional narratives on marginalized groups. The research is broken down into a number of key political questions: How do these women-writers tackle the experiences and histories of marginalized groups, specifically migrants, blacks, and the stateless? How do they challenge or reproduce hegemonic accounts, rhetoric, and representations in their approaches to subaltern subjectivities? How do their writings address the archaic question of politics and aesthetics? What kind of intellectual history is summoned and generated in their praxis of writing? The choice to focus on the contemporary Arab feminist novel has multiple reasons and functions. One, it is instigated by the rise of the genre. Two, the dominant mobilization of the feminist novel as a vehicle for sociopolitical critique calls for a sociopolitical reading. Three, it allows for a critique of the Arab feminist thought, to examine their feminist praxis in writing literature, and to subsequently debunk the hegemonic understanding of Arab women as one entity, centered around the experiences of middle-class citizen-women.