Identifier

etd-04022009-210023

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

My work deals with what I call (im)possible encounters, possible (mis)understandings between the West and the Rim of the World (in my case The Maghreb). I focus on writers (such as Paul Bowles, Patricia Highsmith, Edith Wharton, Tayeb Salih, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Ahdaf Soueif) who stepped across the cultural dividing line to claim a voice of their own; a voice that enabled them to represent and at times misrepresent the host culture they chose to live in, and which acts as a “lieu” and at times “milieu de mémoire.” It is what the late Edward Said aptly called “intertwined histories, overlapping territories.” I analyze the trope of shared space, food, song, pleasure, sexuality, laughter, and even the concept of time between the cultures as they appear in In Morocco, The Sheltering Sky, Tremor of Forgery, Season of Migration to the North, Memory in the Flesh, and Map of Love. My approach is variational in that it seeks to look at what Raymond Williams termed the “alternative”: a telling that looks at both sides of the story—from the bottom up as well as from the top down. Suffice it to add that my way of seeing and/or narrating is hybrid insofar as it draws on Maghrebian, American, and European history, culture, and story-telling. It is meant to be worldly: its intention and method goes so far as to break down the boundaries of race, gender, creed, and even pleasure. I examine three works written by Western authors and three novels written by North African authors in order to trace and classify (mis)presentations of the other. My goal is to implement a way of reading that transcends Manichean binaries and to introduce Mezzaterra, a utopian meeting ground made up of fragments of recognition between various cultures, as a concept inherent in Post-Colonial literature and a transnational world. In tracing these encounters, I re-contextualize the actual time and space of shared history while reading the narratives not as unique depictions of encounters but as classic examples of (mis)recognitions between cultures.

Date

2009

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Mustapha Marrouchi

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.2451

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