Arabs Write Back in English(es): A Study of Selected Contemporary Arab Anglophone Narratives

Abstract

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.