Résumé:
The present thesis focuses on the thematic and discursive properties of four
contemporary novels, written in English by Arab immigrant novelists, which are
respectively The Moor’s Account (2014) by Arab-American writer Laila Lalami, The
Return (2016) by Arab-British novelist Hisham Matar, The Lebs (2018) by ArabAustralian author Michael Mohammed Ahmed and Cockroach (2008) by ArabCanadian writer Rawi Hage. The attempt is to analyze these literary productions using
a postcolonial approach. The study focalizes on how Arab writers write back to the
West that has launched, in the aftermath of 9/11, an unprecedented anti-Muslim/Arab
campaign. This xenophobic attitude that targets Muslims and Arabs alike has
extensively fuelled the sentiments of hatred and loathing towards Arab and Muslim
minorities in Western countries. Such a threatening situation urged many Arab
immigrant writers to venture into the writing-back literature, literature that carries the
burden of resisting the stereotypical negative view that the West has created and
maintained vis-à-vis the Arab world. This is the case of the authors we are dealing with
in this work. The four writers who have dissimilar cultural affiliations and backgrounds,
offer distinct critical insights with regard to belonging, identity, exile, racism,
oppression, and history. Each of the selected writers has creatively and originally
contributed to the writing-back process. First, Laila Lalami has offered a new version
of history through her historical novel. She interpolates imaginary, but true-like,
characters and events in official historical annals written by Westerners. In so doing, the
writer destabilizes the established version of history to embrace history in parallel.
Second, Hisham Matar has addressed the global reader by providing universal themes,
themes of exile, loss, and despair. He transcends the boundaries of a mere story of
oppressed and tortured people to reach a status of a national/ international allegory, an
allegory of hope and emancipation. Third, M. M. Ahmed presents a unique way of
writing back. The Arab-Australian author, unlike his counterparts, has decided to
confirm and consolidate the Orientalists’ and neo-Orientalists’ stereotypes about Arabs.
He portrays, honestly as he claims, his community as stupid and dumb. As such, the
author writes back, in a reconciling tone, to the West, a place to which Ahmed seeks to
adhere, distancing himself from his community. Fourth, Rawi Hage has questioned
multiculturalism in Canada and has covertly accused the Western governments of being
the cause of Arab immigrants’ misfortunes. Last but not least, the writers have
linguistically deterritorialized English to convey the revolutionary trait of minor literary
artifacts. They have used minor forms and expressions, in their prose, to subvert the
major language , in an attempt to fissure the English code and to create, to borrow
Deleuze’s terms, lines of Flight that enable the minor writer to transcend the linguistic
constraints that may constitute an impeding factor to their literary expression.
