A Century of Encounters: Writing the Other in Arab North Africa

211 Pages·2019·4.78 MB·English

by  Tanja Stampfl

A Century of Encounters
A Century of Encounters analyzes Arab, American, and European liter-
ary depictions of self and other as they interact with each other in Arab
North Africa throughout the twentieth century and introduces the trope
of the encounter as a lens through which to read contemporary world
literature comparatively. A focus on the transnational encounter allows
for the in-depth study of constructions of gender, race, and national
identities both for the self and the other in order to answer the seemingly
simple questions: What makes up different encounters in the twentieth
century, and how can we facilitate a productive and positive encounter
between these groups? This book illustrates connections between liter-
ary texts that have hitherto been overlooked and establishes an inter-
textual genealogy of transcultural encounters throughout the twentieth
century that coalesce around the themes of desire, family, and travel. In
its literary analysis, A Century of Encounters aims to facilitate a better
understanding of other cultures in general and contribute to constructive
cross-cultural interactions between the United States, Europe, and Arab
North Africa in particular.
Tanja Stampfl is Associate Professor of English at the University of the
Incarnate Word in San Antonio, TX, where she teaches and researches
issues of race, gender, and identity in postcolonial and world literature.
Her articles have been published in College Literature, CCTE Studies,
International Journal of the Literary Humanities, and various edited
collections.
Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
Series editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial
Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury, this series presents a wide
range of research into postcolonial literatures by specialists in the field.
Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in pre-
viously (or presently) colonized areas, and will include material from
non-anglophone as well as anglophone colonies and literatures.
62 Popular Postcolonialisms
Discourses of Empire and Popular Culture
Edited by Nadia Atia and Kate Houlden
63 Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the Future of Critique
Critical Engagements with Benita Parry
Edited by Sharae Deckard and Rashmi Varma
64 The Body, Desire and Storytelling in Novels
J. M. Coetzee and Olfa Belgacem
65 Caring for Community
Marijke Denger
66 A Century of Encounters
Writing the Other in Arab North Africa
Tanja Stampfl
Related Titles
Postcolonial Life-Writing
Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation
Bart Moore-Gilbert
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
A Century of Encounters
Writing the Other in Arab North Africa
Tanja Stampfl
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Tanja Stampfl to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stampfl, Tanja, author.
Title: A century of encounters: writing the other in Arab North
Africa / Tanja Stampfl.
Description: New York; London: Routledge, [2019] |
Series: Routledge research in postcolonial literatures; 66 |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018054766 (print) | LCCN 2018056998
(ebook) | ISBN 9780429199424 (ebook main) |
ISBN 9780429581205 (ePub) | ISBN 9780429583100
(Web PDF) | ISBN 9780429578984 (Mobi/Kindle) |
ISBN 9781138363106 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Comparative literature—Arabic and
European. | Comparative literature—European and Arabic. |
European literature—Arab influences. | Other (Philosophy) in
literature.
Classification: LCC PN879.A7 (ebook) |
LCC PN879.A7 S736 2019 (print) | DDC 809/.9335861—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054766
ISBN: 978-1-138-36310-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-19942-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 A World of Encounters 1
Fictional and Critical Encounters 5
Navigating a Century of Encounters 14
2 Imperial Fantasies/Colonial Desire 24
Edith Wharton’s “Seeing Woman” 27
In Morocco: Reading the Other to Write the Self 28
E. M. Hull’s “Desiring Woman” 38
Domesticating the Desert in The Sheik 40
Converging Texts Continued 48
3 The Neocolonial Tourist 52
Postimperial Encounters 52
Paul Bowles and His Work: Encounter between
East and West 53
Old and New Empires 55
The Inauthentic Self 62
Female Desire and Agency in The Sheltering Sky 66
Conclusion: Global Collisions 70
4 Tourist Paranoia 74
Political Paranoia and Sexual Homophobia 78
Acts of Aggression in Patricia Highsmith’s The Tremor
of Forgery 81
An Armistice of Sorts: Ingham’s Transformative Encounters 89
Converging Worlds 94
vi Contents
5 Crossing Over 98
Arab and Western Traditions of the
Cross-Cultural Encounter 98
Confronting the Other within the Self in Season of
Migration to the North 102
Sexual Encounters: The Role of Women Revisited 108
The Storytelling Continues 119
6 Constructions of Belonging 124
The Suspended Self in Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s
Memory in the Flesh 128
Artistic Allegories 131
Disrupting Dominant Discourses 140
Redefining Self, Other, Home 146
7 Building Common Ground 150
Disrupting Dominant Discourses: History, Family,
and Nation in The Map of Love 154
Building Shared Histories and Crafting
Alternative Discourses 160
Reading Literatures Side by Side 168
8 Shared Literatures 173
Encountering the Other and Self in
a Transnational Context 174
Possible Practical Applications 181
Bibliography 185
Index 199
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Johns Hopkins University Press for granting me per-
mission to reprint an earlier version of Chapter 6, which was originally
published in 2010 in College Literature. I would like to express my
gratitude to the Office of Research and Development at the University
of the Incarnate Word, which provided vital support for me to return
to this manuscript in a meaningful way. My gratitude also goes to the
English Department of the University of the Incarnate Word, both in
its entirety and as individual friends and colleagues. The Sr. Margaret
Patrice Slattery Chair and Lectures in particular allowed for invigo-
rating discussions to test and further develop several of the ideas and
connections expressed in here. This manuscript could not have ma-
tured without the friendship and mentorship of three wonderful leaders,
Sr. Martha Ann Kirk, Nancy Anderson, and Sr. Walter Maher, who
encouraged, believed, and cheered me throughout. Adrienne Ambrose
and Chris Edelman, thank you for keeping me accountable, even during
busy semesters. I owe special thanks to Dan Mangiavellano, whose
comments and insights brought out the best in my drafts. Vielen Dank
an meine Familie, Anna, Luis, und Heiko Stampfl, dass ich immer ein
wahres Daheim habe auch wenn ich meilenweit entfernt bin. Finally, I
am thankful for and to Andre Martinez, who facilitates cross-cultural
encounters every single day, and to Alexa and Lukas Martinez, who
force me to live to the fullest.

1 A World of Encounters
Ours is a transnational world, where cultures, religions, cuisines, and
lives overlap and flow into each other. Even though we constantly cross
paths, enjoy instant access to cultures half a world away, and mingle and
mix with individuals of all possible backgrounds, origins, and beliefs,
for the most part, we still remain under- or misinformed about other
cultures, people, and places. It is mostly the more violent and radical
encounters, such as the 2015 Paris attacks, the killing of 14 churchgoers
in South Carolina in the United States, or the mass-killings committed
all over the Middle East by the Islamic State group (ISIS), that raise
awareness of these ongoing tensions, conflicts, and misunderstandings
between different racial, cultural, and religious groups. Immigration, for
example, more than ever, is perceived as an existential threat both in the
United States and in Europe. One only has to think of the controversial
2017 US travel ban or the ongoing Syrian migrant crisis in Europe. Too
often, violent encounters prompt immediate condemnation and retalia-
tion rather than critical study or further exploration. While some of the
interactions between people and their movements between places have
been viewed through a political, economic, and scientific lens, this study
employs a humanist perspective.
A Century of Encounters investigates the many ways in which we
cross or crash into each other and how we represent these collisions.
We find ourselves constantly at a marketplace of ideas, a crossroads of
experiences, and in a way, it is only through and in the encounter with
the Other (person, idea, location, circumstance) that we challenge and
channel ourselves. What Trinh Minh-Ha has called the “process of oth-
ering” is a dialogic process, where “one is a being-for-other, but also
a being-with-other. The seer is seen while s/he sees. To see and to be
seen constitute the double approach of identity: the presence to oneself
is at once impossible and immediate” (23). This dynamic process and
the dialectic nature of cultural identity have also been central in dias-
pora studies and Deleuzian theory, which argue that entering history in
all its contradictions enables “Becoming” and the fluidity of identities.1
Epistemology in particular provides us with an apt metaphor of identity
construction that speaks both to the constant shaping and reshaping of