UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Unruly Bodies

183 Pages·2017·1.53 MB·English

by  Ghada Mourad

UC Irvine
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Unruly Bodies: Modernity, Dissensus, and the Political Subject in the Postcolonial Arab World
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Author
Mourad, Ghada
Publication Date
2017
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
IRVINE

Unruly Bodies: Modernity, Dissensus, and the Political Subject in
the Postcolonial Arab World

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in Comparative Literature

by

Ghada Mourad

Dissertation Committee
Howard Baskerville Professor Nasrin Rahimieh, Chair
Associate Professor Dina Al-Kassim, Co-Chair
Chancellor’s Professor Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan
Chancellor’s Professor Aijaz Ahmad

2017
© 2017 Ghada Mourad
DEDICATION

To

my parents

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CURRICULUM VITAE

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1: ‘THE ROMANTICISM OF STRUGGLE 39
IS OVER’: DISSENSUS AND/AS MODERNITY
IN SONALLAH IBRAHIM

CHAPTER 2: ‘DIEU A CRÉÉ LA BEAUTÉ COMME UNE FITNA’ : 78
MODERNITY IN THE MAKING IN MOHAMED
LEFTAH’S LE DERNIER COMBAT DU CAPTAIN
NIMAT

CHAPTER 3: ‘THE SUFFERING OF THE RULE IS US’ : UNRULY 111
BODIES IN HODA BARAKAT’S AHL AL-HAWA AND
HAJAR AL-DAHIK

BIBLIOGRAPHY 147

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest appreciation goes to my co-advisors, Dina al-Kassim and Nasrin Rahimieh,
without whose guidance, encouragement, and mentorship this dissertation would not have taken
shape. I am very grateful to Dina Al-Kassim who believed in me since we first met, and
remained my most incisive reader. This dissertation proudly carries her imprint, but the mistakes
and limitations are certainly my own. Despite the distance, she has always had the right words to
say at the right time, and I have always held her words, coming from afar, near and dear. Nasrin
Rahimieh has been for me a caring mentor every graduate student dreams of having. I feel so
fortunate to be her advisee and to have met her. She has always been very much a reassuring
support throughout many of my trepidations and doubts. Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan has
encouraged me to believe in my work with his enthusiastic feedback. I am very grateful for Aijaz
Ahmad’s encouraging and edifying reading.

I thank Mr. Schaeffer for the funding he provided me with the Schaeffer fellowship in
literary translation. I also thank the Humanities Collective at UC Irvine for the grant that allowed
to conduct research at the American University of Beirut. The Department of Comparative
Literature at UC Irvine has provided me with much support, and I am most grateful for Rei
Terada for being there whenever I was desperate for help and advice. She is the compass that
guides every lost soul, and certainly has been my compass in so many ways. Bindya Baliga has
provided me with much-needed organization through her constant reminders. I thank Karen
Friedlander at the UCI Graduate Resource Center for her unwavering support and camaraderie.
Maryse Mijalski has provided a much-needed guidance and wisdom throughout my teaching in
the French department. With her, Laura Klein, and Ann Rosen, I had the chance to shamelessly
share all my embarrassing moments and much-needed laughs. I thank Alexander Jabbari for
including me in his reading groups, and Sina Salessi for his insightful reading and comments.

I have been exceptionally fortunate to meet Sonallah Ibrahim and have many rich
exchanges with him. I thank Richard Jacquemond for putting me in touch with him, and I am
very grateful for Mr. Ibrahim’s detailed and candid answers to my questions, and most of all for
his meticulous reading and enthusiastic feedback on my work. I have also been fortunate to have
met Nezha Leftah, the daughter of the late writer Mohamed Leftah. I am humbled by the trust
Nezha has put in me, answering my questions, and providing me with the resources I needed for
my research. I thank my Moroccan friends who have persistently provided me with support and
guidance. I thank Mohamed Hmoudane, Kenza Sefrioui, Touriya Fili, and Ayoub Mouzaine, for
assisting me in every step of my work on Mohamed Leftah, and certainly Omar Berrada and
David Ruffel who introduced me to the work of this great author.

My family has been constantly and relentlessly supporting my endeavors. I am much
thankful to my children, Jerome Raphael, Christelle Raphael, and Marc Raphael, whose
childhood memories consist of little outside their mother’s papers and exams. They have been
my inspiration and my incentive to bring this project to completion. I thank them for their
patience, understanding, and unflagging encouragement. My siblings, Omar Murad, Zeina
Murad, and Hussam Murad, have always been the best cheerleaders a sister could wish for. My
parents, Mtaweh Mrad and Mariam Mansour, have taught me to persevere and believe in my
abilities. I owe much to the love and faith they have put in me throughout the years.
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CURRICULUM VITAE

Ghada Mourad

2007 B.A. in English, magna Cum laude, California State University, Los Angeles

2010 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

2009-2014 Teaching Assistant, French Program, University of California, Irvine

2015-2017 Graduate Writing Consultant, Graduate Resource Center, University of
California, Irvine

2017 PhD in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

FIELD OF STUDY

The role of dissenting gendered bodies in the instigation of modernity in postcolonial Arabic and
Francophone literature in the Middle East and North Africa

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

“Unruly Bodies: Modernity, Dissensus, and the Political Subject in the Postcolonial Arab World”

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

2016 Travel grant, University of Chicago

2010-2015 Outstanding 2008-Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine

2008-2015 Schaeffer Fellowship in Literary Translation, University of California, Irvine

2014 Humanities Collective Award, University of California, Irvine

2012 Travel Grant, Fondation des Sciences de l’homme à Paris

2012 Travel Grant, Centre National de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale, Oran,
Algeria

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2012 Summer Language Study Fellowship, University of California, Irvine
2009-2012 Travel Grants, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine

2016 Travel Grant, Associated Graduate Students, University of California, Irvine

LANGUAGES

Arabic and French (Bilingual native proficiency)

Russian (Reading and writing proficiency)

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Unruly Bodies: Dissensus, Modernity, and the Political Subject in the Postcolonial Arab World

By

Ghada Mourad

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature

University of California, Irvine, 2017

Professor Nasrin Rahimieh, Chair

Associate Professor Dina Al-Kassim, Co-Chair

This dissertation studies the articulation of modernity in its understanding as dissensus
through the performativity of queer bodies in post-1960 Arabic and Francophone literature in the
Middle East and North Africa. More specifically, I study Sonallah Ibrahim’s Tilka al-Rāʾiḥa,
Mohamed Leftah’s Le Dernier combat du Captain Nimat, and Hoda Barakat’s Ahl el-Hawa and
Ḥajar al-Ḍaḥik. I challenge the prevailing depiction of the modern Arab subject as ideological
and/or submissive, an image that has been tainting this subject since the 1967 Defeat, and which
has re-emerged in force following the recent political disappointments in the Arab world, by
demonstrating that this subject is formed and expresses itself as a subject of desire, the engine of
change.
The introduction theorizes modernity as a dissenting attitude that is both atemporal and
historically contextualized, framed by the intersection of various theories: Adonis’s theorization
of Arab modernity as creative and innovative forces instigated by the marginals and seditious
(al-khurūj); Michel Foucault’s understanding of modernity as an attitude, and his theorization of
assujetissement; Jacques Rancière’s configuration of politics in the aesthetics of literature, as an
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intervention in the sensible; Judith Butler’s conceptualization of the subject through a
psychoanalytic lens that adds the gender dimension to this subject that, as a biopolitical subject,
dissents from the prism of sexuality; and Dina Al-Kassim’s elaboration on Judith Butler’s work
by theorizing the abject expression of dissent by sexual minorities. My first chapter studies how
the male narrator’s body registers dissent through the performativity of sexual, social, and
literary non-conformity. The second chapter builds on Abdelkebir Khatibi’s understanding of
decolonization to analyze dissent through the male narrator’s sexuality. I conclude that
Mohamed Leftah envisages modernity as a process in the making, looking for an epistemology
to articulate its ontology. The third chapter analyzes male queerness to assess the war’s role in
society’s multifaceted regulation of its marginals and seditious. This chapter imagines modernity
in the space opened by Barakat’s deconstruction of binaries. Centered around male queerness
and abnormality, these texts register dissent while pointing at the need to recenter Arab feminist
discourse on queerness away from women’s veil.
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