Table Of ContentAutobiographical Identities in
Contemporary Arab Culture
Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature
Series Editor: Rasheed El-Enany
Writing Beirut: Mappings of the City in the Modern Arabic Novel
Samira Aghacy
Autobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Culture
Valerie Anishchenkova
The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts
Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham
Figuring the Sacred in the Modern Arabic Novel
Ayman A. El-Desouky
Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel
Ziad Elmarsafy
Gender, Nation, and the Arabic Novel: Egypt 1892–2008
Hoda Elsadda
Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction: Home Matters in the Diaspora
Syrine Hout
War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction
Ikram Masmoudi
Rifa’a Al-Tahtawi: A 19th-Century Egyptian Educationalist and Reformer
Daniel Newman
The Arab Nah∂ah: The Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement
Abdulrazzak Patel
Occidentalism, Maghrebi Literature and the East–West Encounter
Zahia Salhi
Sun’allah Ibrahim: Rebel with a Pen
Paul Starkey
www.euppublishing.com/series/smal
Autobiographical Identities in
Contemporary Arab Culture
Valerie Anishchenkova
To Mom and Dad, and all my grandparents
© Valerie Anishchenkova, 2014
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 4340 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4341 7 (webready PDF)
The right of Valerie Anishchenkova to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No.
2498).
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword vi
Acknowledgments ix
List of Transliterated Names xi
List of Figures xii
Introduction: Writing Arab Selfhood – From Taha Husayn to
Blogging 1
1 Autobiography and Nation-Building: Constructing Personal
Identity in the Postcolonial World 37
2 Writing Selves on Bodies 75
3 Mapping Autobiographical Subjectivity in the Age of
Multiculturalism 107
4 Visions of Self: Filming Autobiographical Subjectivity 142
5 What Does My Avatar Say About Me? Autobiographical Cyber-
writing and Postmodern Identity 170
Conclusion: Arab Autobiography in the Twenty-first Century 197
Bibliography 203
Index 225
Series Editor’s Foreword
The Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature is a new and unique
series which will, it is hoped, fill in a glaring gap in scholarship in the
field of modern Arabic literature. Its dedication to Arabic literature in the
modern period, that is, from the nineteenth century onwards, is what makes
it unique among series undertaken by academic publishers in the English-
speaking world. Individual books on modern Arabic literature in general or
aspects of it have been and continue to be published sporadically. Series on
Islamic studies and Arab/Islamic thought and civilization are not in short
supply either in the academic world, but these are far removed from the study
of Arabic literature qua literature, that is, imaginative, creative literature as
we understand the term when, for instance, we speak of English literature or
French literature, etc. Even series labeled “Arabic/Middle Eastern Literature”
make no period distinction, extending their purview from the sixth century
to the present, and often including non-Arabic literatures of the region. This
series aims to redress the situation by focusing on the Arabic literature and
criticism of today, stretching its interest to the earliest beginnings of Arab
modernity in the nineteenth century.
The need for such a dedicated series, and generally for the redoubling of
scholarly endeavor in researching and introducing modern Arabic literature
to the Western reader has never been stronger. The significant growth in the
last decades of the translation of contemporary Arab authors from all genres,
especially fiction, into English; the higher profile of Arabic literature interna-
tionally since the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz
in 1988; the growing number of Arab authors living in the Western diaspora
and writing both in English and Arabic; the adoption of such authors and
others by mainstream, high-circulation publishers, as opposed to the aca-
series editor’s foreword | vii
demic publishers of the past; the establishment of prestigious prizes, such as
the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arabic Booker), run by the
Man Booker Foundation, which brings huge publicity to the shortlist and
winner every year, as well as translation contracts into English and other
languages – all this and very recently the events of the Arab Spring have
heightened public, let alone academic, interest in all things Arab, and not
least Arabic literature. It is therefore part of the ambition of this series that it
will increasingly address a wider reading public beyond its natural territory
of students and researchers in Arabic and world literature. Nor indeed is
the academic readership of the series expected to be confined to specialists
in literature in the light of the growing trend for interdisciplinarity, which
increasingly sees scholars crossing field boundaries in their research tools and
coming up with findings that equally cross discipline borders in their appeal.
Autobiography is an area of modern Arabic literature that calls for further
study. The genre predates modern Arabic fiction by a few decades, going
back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century, as we see, for exam-
ple, in elements of the writings of two major figures of that time, viz. Rifa’a
Al-Tahtawi (1801–73) and Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq (1804–87). But autobi-
ography was truly to establish itself in the first half of the twentieth century
at the hands of most major men of letters writing at the time, notably Taha
Husyan (1889–1973), Abbas Mahmud Al-Aqqad (1889–1964), Ahmad
Amin (1886–1954), Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) and Tawfiq
Al-Hakim (1898–1987), who produced autobiographical texts of varying
lengths, form and structure; some direct and others thinly disguised as fic-
tion. Many of these autobiographies have long since become part of the
modern classics of Arabic literature, with some translated into English and
other languages, such as Husayn’s The Stream of Days and Amin’s, My Life,
to name but two. The genre has gathered momentum since the second half
of the twentieth century, with the last three decades or so witnessing both
a qualitative and quantitative leap in its development, as well as a notable
growth in its popularity among both writers and readers, with noticeably
more women writers contributing to it in a manner commensurate with the
rise of their participation in Arab intellectual and literary life generally. There
has also been a refreshing openness in the writing, with authors exercising less
viii | series editor’s foreword
and less self-censorship, and sometimes showing a readiness, often controver-
sially, to share with their readers the most intimate details of their personal
life, as we see, for instance, in the writing of the Moroccan, Muhammad
Shukri (1935–2003).
This growth in the genre has yet to be matched by scholarship, and
the current volume travels a good distance in that direction. Perhaps most
refreshingly, this book does not stop at exploring some of the most interest-
ing autobiographical texts of modern Arabic, but also ventures into little-
trodden ground: that of the autobiographical motion-picture and the virtual
autobiographical narratives of the blog.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Edinburgh University Press for the wonderful partner-
ship, in particular the series editor Professor Rasheed El-Enany and his
endless support, and all the staff, especially Michelle Houston and Jenny
Peebles, who answered perhaps a million questions and were always there to
help in every way.
I am very grateful to the authors, artists and their representatives who
generously allowed me to use examples of their work as illustrations: Oreet
Ashery and Larissa Sansour; Mona Hatoum and White Cube Gallery; Ghada
Abd al-Al; Misr International Films; and especially author and artist Samia
Halaby, since our email correspondence has gradually evolved into a wonder-
ful thought-provoking discussion.
There are many people and places whose presence in my life have influ-
enced this book project in both direct and indirect ways, and I particularly
want to thank:
Carol Bardenstein: for being the best advisor and mentor a person can
ask for.
Anton Shammas: for the thought-provoking graduate classes and discus-
sions, and for always encouraging the most unorthodox and brave research
ideas. The initial idea to explore the autobiographical came to me in his class
upon reading Jurji Zaydan’s Mudhakkirat.
The University of Michigan: for the very best graduate school and for
opening my eyes to new and exciting horizons of the world. Go Blue!
Students in my “Writing Lives in Arabic” class taught at the University
of Maryland in spring 2010, for excellent debates and bright ideas that reen-
ergized my research and inspired me to expand it.
C (Chelsea): for being my best friend, my closest family away from home,
