Generational differences in three Egyptian women writers: Finding a common ground

Abstract

Postcolonial Egypt has witnessed significant cultural and political developments, and undoubtedly it has been a challenging era for writers attempting to negotiate a physical and ideological space within the public and private spheres. Ideologies of national self and national others have simultaneously been advocated and questioned by successive generations of contemporary women writers. In an era in which the conflict between a modern western-orientated narrative of the self is often pitted in direct opposition to an Islamic fundamentalist outlook on life, and used to polarize cultural differences in reductive ways, the modern Egyptian literary writer has an even greater challenge ahead of them. Three women writers, Latifa Zayyat, Ahdaf Soueif and Rehab Bassam, who have in different ways striven to restore the delicate balance between the personal and the public, represent three important modes of modernity. Where Zayyat focuses on the relationship of the whole to the self and the nation to the individual, Soueif focuses on the hybrid, the self and the other. Soueif’s work seeks to occupy a ground common to Arab and western culture alike. Rehab Bassam, on the other hand, initially began her literary career on weblogs. This new medium is reshaping our understanding of the dynamics of public and private, and is one that inevitably will influence how current modes of modernity are being shaped in contemporary Egyptian writing. The three writers attempt to find a common ground of cultural interaction between modern secularism, globalization and indigenous literary forms that can be developed into a meaningful communal narrative: present and future.

Keywords:

• common ground
• hybrid text
• prison narrative
• public and private sphere
• generational differences
• weblog

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank EUME for granting me a Research Fellowship that enabled me to work on this project. The discussions during the seminars of EUME and the exchange with my co-fellows and colleagues at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, as well as the workshop at Cairo University 2010 (funded by an AHRC/ESRC grant), helped to clarify and develop my ideas.

Notes

1. The term “public sphere” encompasses a variety of meanings. It implies here a spatial concept, in which meanings are articulated, distributed, and negotiated within social sites and arenas; the collective body here is constituted by, and referred to, as “the public”. See Negt and Kluge.

2. Rehab Bassam, <http://hadouta.blogspot.com>, January 2009; all quotations from the stories refer to the published edition Rice Pudding for Two, and are my translations. I have chosen to use blogger’s transliteration in keeping with the spirit of the texts discussed. Hamza = 2; ayn = 3; ghayn = 3’; ha’ = 7; kha = 5’.

3. I have applied concepts developed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish, in particular his analysis of genealogy of the prison system as a structure of domination in the modern era.

4. It is important to note here that Zayyat was not a sympathizer of Islamic political movements, nor did she herself embrace the wearing of the veil. She points out earlier in the chapter that the warders presumed the two groups of liberal thinkers and Islamists would be fighting and that they would benefit from a lack of solidarity between the two groups which belonged to very different political backgrounds. (Zayyat, The Search 116). However, Zayyat sees this attack on the girls as an ideological and symbolic act of humiliation and violation, and acts accordingly.

5. Abbas Bridge is situated between Cairo University and Old Cairo and used to open for boats and barges to pass. The Abbas Bridge incident – 21 February 1946 – involved Egyptian students on their way to present a memo to the king demanding the cancellation of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty. They were ambushed by the security forces who blocked both ends of the bridge and then opened it, causing hundred of students to drown.

6. For further discussion on this topic see Houston.

7. See Luo 100.

8. I conclude that it is directed at a female audience because of the grammatical structure of the sentences, in which Bassam uses the feminine verb: sta7tagin, a5rigi, da3’i, qumi, etc.

9. 7 February 2008, <http://hadouta.blogspot.com/>, January 2009.

10. 10/3/10 2:29 PM, <http://hadouta.blogspot.com/>, February 2011. This response was written in English so I decided to leave it as it is without editing.