Unreading passivity: the oppositional consciousness of the Arab-muslim woman in Leila Aboulela's novel The Translator (1999)

Leila Aboulela’s main character in her debut novel The Translator (1990) represents an example of a migrant, Muslim British Sudanese woman grappling with the vagaries of relocation and grief. As a translator working at university, Sammar engages with the power structures that produced the oriental other through her intimate conversations with Rae Isle, a scholar in Middle Eastern affairs. Far from offering mere answers to issues of colonialism, islamophobia and racism, the paper claims that their interaction evinces that Sammar possesses a differential consciousness. The latter is a concept that Chela Sandoval (2000) uses to capture the strategic shifting and moving of the tactics employed by the marginalized and the colonized to respond, speak with, transform and ultimately resist the multitudes of oppressions they face. The paper argues that Sammar’s enactment of religious norms to affirm her faith and produce herself as an ethical subject is the location from which her differential consciousness stems. Such enactments redefine her relationship with the outer world and with Rae as a prospective partner from binary opposition to interconnection. The analysis of her active engagement with signs of power not only undermines the stereotype of passivity and submissiveness with which Muslim women have been associated, it also contributes to the growing discussion on how to understand agency beyond modern, liberal conceptions

Gheorghiu, Oana-Celia. British and American Representations of 9/11: Literature, Politics and the Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, IX, 269, 96.29 €, ISBN 978-3-319-75249-5 (hardcover), 978-3-030-09182-8 (softcover)

This study catalogues 9/11 fiction pro­duced by American and British writers with the purpose of revealing the untenability of keeping fiction and reality separate. By viewing its selected corpus as belonging to contemporary realism, it employs the framework of New Historicism/ Cul­tural Materialism, both of which are deemed nec­essary to account for the study’s undertaking in establishing a continuity between literature and reality, using Stephen Greenblatt’s writings as a guideline. Particularly, his concept of “cultural poetics” is mobilized to highlight the exchange occurring between the social space and the aes­thetic practice in the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror. It aims to showcase how the chosen literary repre­sentations mirror the turmoil that Western identity went through after the event. Moreover, it sheds light on how the authors and their social milieu apprehend the Muslim other

Az egyiptomi muszlim nők oktatásának problémája a 19-20. század fordulóján: Qasim Amin The Liberation of Women [A nők felszabadítása] (1899) és The New Woman [Az új nő] (1900)

Qasim Amin (1863-1908) is one of the most controversial thinkers in the history of modern Egypt. He is part of the second generation of Nahda thinkers, for whom tradition and modernity were puzzling issues, and in whose work the past is re-examined in search of authenticity in the face of change. His two books, The Liberation of Women (1899) and The New Woman (1900) discusses women’s role in terms of their possible contribution to the nation-in-the-making. He articulates a new understanding of Woman within a society about to enter the capitalist world system as an independent nation. Speaking from a rational, detached perspective to analyze Egyptian women’s behavior, he actively embarks on presenting their social existence as valueless and nefarious. Simultaneously, as a solution, he posits bourgeois Western norms of femininity as not only desirable, but as the surest and only route for national progress. The means to achieve such a remaking is education, one that, in his formulation, imposes a specific gendering process that would produce an “educated” Egyptian woman closer in value to her Egyptian male counterpart. Ultimately, she would  help produce a nation equal to its Western counterpart.Qasim Amin (1863-1908) a modern Egyiptom történetének egyik legvitatottabb gondolkodója. A Nahda gondolkodók második generációjához tartozik, akik számára a hagyomány és a modernitás viszonya komplex kérdéseket vetett fel. A modernitás kihívásaival szembesülve a hitelesség keresése érdekében újravizsgálják a múltat. Az 1899-ben megjelent The Liberation of Women (A nők felszabadítása) és az 1900-ban publikált The New Woman (Az új nő) című két könyvében a nők lehetséges szerepét gondolja át a formálódó egyiptomi nemzetben, egy olyan társadalomban, amely független nemzetként készül belépni a modernizmus kapitalista világrendszerbe. Racionális, távolságtartó perspektívát használ az egyiptomi nők viselkedésének elemzésére, hogy újradefiniálja a közösségen belüli társadalmi létüket, ami azzal is jár, hogy korábbi szerepüket negatívan láttatja, értéktelennek és aljasnak konstruálja az ’egyiptomi nőt’. Ezzel párhuzamosan a nőiség nyugati normáit nemcsak kívánatosnak, hanem a nemzeti fejlődés legbiztosabb és egyetlen útjának állítja be. Az újjáalakulás elérésének Oasim által elgondolt eszköze az oktatás, amely az ő megfogalmazásában egy sajátos „nemesítési” folyamatot ír elő, ami olyan „művelt” egyiptomi nőt hozna létre, aki értékeiben közelebb állna az ’egyiptomi férfi’-hez. Quasim, elképzelése szerint, így végső soron a korabeli nyugati társadalommal egyenrangú nemzet jöhetne létre

Творческие переговоры о вере мусульманок в диаспоре: пересекающиеся женские субъектные позиции в романе Лейлы Абулелы «Минарет» (2005)

Leila Aboulela’s novel Minaret (2005) depicts how Najwa, a Sudanese emigré to London, is precipitated into a spiritual journey subsequent to losing a secure and secular upper middle-class life. Many critics of the novel read this turn to faith as a passive acceptance of overarching social and ideological influences on Najwa’s life. In contrast, the paper argues that Najwa’s religious transformation can be read in terms of her active rejection of the materialism that shapes the life she was born into back home in postcolonial Sudan. From this perspective, her turn towards faith in the diaspora encompasses a creative potential to negotiate diverse cultural expectations.Роман Лейлы Абулелы «Минарет» (2005) рассказывает о том, как Наджва, суданка, эмигрировавшая в Лондон, отправляется в духовное путешествие после того, как теряет обеспеченную и светскую жизнь в высшем среднем классе. Многие критики романа рассматривают этот поворот к вере как пассивное принятие всеобъемлющих социальных и идеологических влияний на жизнь Наджвы. В отличие от этого, в статье утверждается, что религиозная трансформация Наджвы может быть прочитана с точки зрения ее активного неприятия материализма, который формирует жизнь, в которой она родилась дома, в постколониальном Судане. С этой точки зрения, ее обращение к вере в диаспоре несет в себе творческий потенциал для того, чтобы договориться с различными культурными ожиданиями