Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film

9780415404167

0415404169

Given a long history of representation by others, what strategies have Arab and Muslim women writers, filmmakers and visual artists used to represent their own experience? This groundbreaking book brings together a wide range of literary and visual texts, many of which have not received extensive treatment elsewhere. Lindsey Moore makes a case for the pertinence of Arab, Muslim women's creative work to a postcolonial feminist canon. She provides an accessible but theoretically-informed analysis - using postcolonial, feminist, psychoanalytic and other critical methodologies - including texts by Leila Aboulela, Assia Djebar, Fatima Mernissi, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Nawal el Sa'adawi, Hanan al Shaykh, Leila Sebbar, Zineb Sedira, Ahdaf Soueif, Moufida Tlatli, and many others. The overarching argument is that women writers and artists appropriate a textual economy of representation to refigure and resist ways in which they have been framed visually, textually and discursively. Thus Moore foregrounds tropes of vision, visibility and voice, locating these themes in relation to the temporal and spatial paradigms and thresholds that shape women's creative and critical interventions.