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Situating Arab women’s writing in a feminist ‘global gothic’ : madness, mothers and ghosts
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Douglas, Roxanne (2021) Situating Arab women’s writing in a feminist ‘global gothic’ : madness, mothers and ghosts. Feminist Theory . doi:10.1177/14647001211019188 ISSN 1741-2773. (In Press)
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14647001211019188
Abstract
This article sketches a new way of approaching some contemporary Levantine (Egyptian and Lebanese) feminist texts. Extending Glennis Byron’s notion of the ‘global gothic’, I examine Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra (1986), Mansoura Ez Eldin’s Maryam’s Maze (2007) and Joumana Haddad’s The Seamstress’ Daughter (2019) as examples of an Arab feminist Gothic approach, which serves as a framework to theorise difficult and pressing questions that feminism poses regarding women’s rights. Arab feminist Gothic writers use the jahiliyyah period, or the ‘time of ignorance’, as a folkloric referential backdrop for texts which theorise the female condition under contemporary patriarchal society. The presence of ghosts, madness, doubles in the form of the folkloric qarina spirit-doubles and dreams can be read as part of a local Gothic feminist mode. This as-yet unacknowledged Arab feminist Gothic tradition, while emerging from debates over statehood and postcolonial subjectivities, delves into the intensity of personal traumas through the lens of women’s relationships to other women, especially mothers and daughters. Taking Arab feminist fiction as its focus, this article models how feminist scholarship can use genre, particularly the Gothic, to trace artistic feminist theorising in non-western contexts.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PJ Semitic P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
| SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Feminists -- Arab countries , Feminism -- Arab countries, Gothic revival (Literature) -- Arab countries , Gothic fiction (Literary genre) , Gothic fiction (Literary genre) -- 20th century -- Women authors , Gothic literature -- Arab countries, Gothic fiction (Literary genre) -- 21st century -- Women authors , Women's rights -- Arab countries , Feminism and literature -- Arab countries | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Feminist Theory | ||||
| Publisher: | SAGE Publications | ||||
| ISSN: | 1741-2773 | ||||
| Official Date: | 26 May 2021 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| DOI: | 10.1177/14647001211019188 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | In Press | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 21 June 2021 | ||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 June 2021 |
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