Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- List of Transliterated Names
- List of Figures
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Writing Arab Selfhood – From Taha Husayn to Blogging
- 1 Autobiography and Nation-Building: Constructing Personal Identity in the Postcolonial World
- 2 Writing Selves on Bodies
- 3 Mapping Autobiographical Subjectivity in the Age of Multiculturalism
- 4 Visions of Self: Filming Autobiographical Subjectivity
- 5 What Does My Avatar Say About Me? Autobiographical Cyberwriting and Postmodern Identity
- Conclusion: Arab Autobiography in the Twenty-first Century
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Writing Selves on Bodies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- List of Transliterated Names
- List of Figures
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Writing Arab Selfhood – From Taha Husayn to Blogging
- 1 Autobiography and Nation-Building: Constructing Personal Identity in the Postcolonial World
- 2 Writing Selves on Bodies
- 3 Mapping Autobiographical Subjectivity in the Age of Multiculturalism
- 4 Visions of Self: Filming Autobiographical Subjectivity
- 5 What Does My Avatar Say About Me? Autobiographical Cyberwriting and Postmodern Identity
- Conclusion: Arab Autobiography in the Twenty-first Century
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
“I realized the body has a private landscape without words, and I knew I had to find a language to talk about my scars.”
Kim Hewitt, Mutilating the BodyAutobiographical Bodies: Theory and Practice
Writing about physical human bodies and their sexualities has always been a controversial issue in Arabic literature. Although classical Arabic literature contains a number of exceptions (most remarkable of which is medieval erotic poetry), the love theme – one of the most popular themes in both classical and modern Arabic literature – is, as a rule, highly romanticized and detached from any notion of corporeality. In contemporary Arab narrative culture, some writers took on the challenge of incorporating aspects of sexuality in their works, but in most cases they were careful to avoid graphic depictions. Yusuf Idris, for instance, while bravely focusing his story ’Abū al-Rijāl (published in Arabic in 1987 and translated as A Leader of Men) on a homosexual character, still uses the kind of language that renders the physical desires of the body in a rather subtle, veiled manner. Consider, for example, the following excerpt depicting the protagonist's homoerotic fantasy that avoids any references to sexual organs and, instead, focuses on “neutral” body parts such as arms and legs:
a feverish groping that makes his hands shake and his whole body shiver as he swoops down on the young man, squeezing the powerful muscles of his arms and the bulging muscles of his legs, and inside him yearning howls boldly and madly unleashing a wailing cry that represents his masculinity. (Idris 1988: 5)
Similarly, many Arab and Western scholars of Arabic literature often preferred to investigate the subject of sexuality from a body-less point of view by treating it as an ideological device and utilizing metaphorical language to talk about it, rather than depicting sexual identities through specific physical experiences. For example, Hilary Kilpatrick suggested that in Arabic literature, “the search for love is intimately connected with the individual's desire for freedom and fulfillment, while the frank affirmation of sexuality, of whatever kind, represents a challenge to a rigid and hypocritical social order” (Kilpatrick 1995: 15).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Autobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Culture , pp. 75 - 106Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014