Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Toward a Resuscitation of Postcolonial Theory: Reshaping Homi Bhabha's Colonial Discourse Within an Arabic Context(University of Sussex, 2024) Althobaiti, Hissah; Masterson, JohnThis thesis explores the colonial/postcolonial discourse articulated by Homi Bhabha, with a specific emphasis on the concept of mimicry as it is performed in Arabic contexts. Departing from the conventional method of applying theory to literary texts, I utilise fiction to both challenge and augment Bhabha’s notion of colonial mimicry within the Arab world in light of his totalising tendency to broaden the scope of his study (both spatially and temporally) without adequate consideration or contextualisation. To achieve this, four writers and texts are selected: Ali Bader’s The Tobacco Keeper (2008; trans. 2011), Yasmina Khadra’s What the Day Owes the Night (2008; trans. 2010), Sahar Khalifeh’s The End of Spring (2004; trans. 2008), and Sayed Kashua’s Dancing Arabs (2002; trans. 2004). These emerge from diverse geo-political locations such as Iraq, Algeria and Palestine, with distinctive histories of colonialism and its afterlives. I investigate the extent to which Bhabha’s conceptualisations of ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ resistance materially translate into effective forms of opposition for the colonised. In this, I seek to expose, what I, along with other critics, see as Bhabha’s mythologisation of some excessively abstract concepts. I do so by foregrounding and analysing the concrete hurdles that confront the mimic men featured in my chosen novels as they are performing and/or existing in various interstitial positions/locations. The thesis proposes that these writers and their work demonstrate some inherent complexities and/or risks when it comes to applying Bhabha’s resistance tool/s. They encompass, but are not limited to, the emergence of degrees of mimicry ranging from resistance to complicity, the conditions of mimicry, the act of authorisation, the distinction between mimicry and camouflage, and self-hatred as an aftermath of mimicry. These are all core preoccupations of this study. This thesis identifies the performance of mimicry within Arabic contexts as ensnared by hindering factors that directly impede its efficacy. It asserts that this process commences with the imposition of prerequisites, progresses through stages of exclusion and estrangement, and ultimately concludes with experiences of rejection and self-revulsion.11 0Item Restricted The Othered ‘Other’ in Cross-Cultural Encounters: Redefining Homi Bhabha’s Theory of Third Space in the Case of Arab American Women’s Narratives Before and After September 11, 2001(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-03-21) Al Ghamdi, Alaa; Mohanram, Radhika; Beeston, AlixThe narratives produced by Arab American women authors inhabit a unique in- between place within the clash between the West and the East. Binary political, racial, cultural, and gendered elements are at stake when Arab American women negotiate their ethnic, hybrid and gendered identity. This, eventually, leads them to negotiate aspects of their identity in what Homi Bhabha terms the Third Space of encounter between different groups of power, where both groups are offered a space for communication, articulation, and negotiation to articulate their identities, resulting in demolishing binary oppositions and superiority- inferiority relationships. However, given the complicated historical and contemporary clash between the two worlds, gaps in Bhabha’s theory are evident in the case of contemporary Arab American women narratives. The intersectional nature of their experience as Arab, American, woman and writer intensifies their ambivalent space between the two worlds, marking them as the Othered Other and placing them at the margin of both centres, the American society, and the Arab American community. Thus, my PhD project argues against the utopian tone of Bhabha’s definition of Third Space, reveals the gaps using the narratives of Arab American women and redefines it to cover the intersectionality of Arab American women identities. This thesis reveals the limitations of Bhabha’s theory of Third Space as it oscillates between the genres of fiction and non-fiction while highlighting the different immigration status of the characters in the examined texts. This thesis draws its temporal parameters between the periods before and after September 11, 2001 (i.e., 1990s to the 2010s), as this timeframe witnessed the emergence of a solidified Arab American identity in the face of the dominant discriminatory discourses resulting from the various political and social clashes between the Arab world and America at the time.15 0