‘Giving memory a future’: women, writing, revolution

Abstract

The aim of this article is to draw a few theoretical links between writing and revolution, whilst exploring how the acts of writing/witnessing/remembering can metaphorically ‘give memory a future’ in Paul Ricoeur’s words. The article situates the two memoirs of Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif Cairo: My City, Our Revolution and Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution and their first-hand experience of the uprisings in Egypt and Syria within the genre of writing and memory. I argue that these writers combine reflexive observation with eyewitness testimony and in each there is a staging, a performative act of memory-making, in the sense that they are constructing a present for remembering, with the writer as witness within a ‘we-memory’ community. The writers are conscious of the historicity of the moment and are endeavouring to produce what might be called legacy writing.

Keywords:

• Arab Spring
• memory
• writing
• memoir