Ensiyeh Darzinejad; Leila Baradaran Jamili
Volume 14, Issue 19 , October 2018, , Pages 169-186
Abstract
The concept of home is pivotal in diaspora studies. Mohja Kahf (1967- ), the Syrian Muslim novelist residing in the United States, challenges the fixity of home in her diasporic novel, The Girl in Tangerine Scarf (2006). The efforts of her heroine, Khadra, to find home in the fixed geographical territories, ...
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The concept of home is pivotal in diaspora studies. Mohja Kahf (1967- ), the Syrian Muslim novelist residing in the United States, challenges the fixity of home in her diasporic novel, The Girl in Tangerine Scarf (2006). The efforts of her heroine, Khadra, to find home in the fixed geographical territories, such as Syria, United States, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, are futile. She finds out that as a diasporic subject, instead of trying to satisfy her desire for home, she has to please her homing desire. Taking part in the community of Muslim religious rituals such as Haj pilgrimage and congregational prayer enables her to create a translocal space for herself. This space is engendered round the pivotal point of religious belief and the plurality and multiplicity of transnational Islamic community. The present study regards translocality as a solution to the challenge of home in diaspora. James Clifford, Avtar Brah, Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, and Tim Oakes and Louisa Schein are among the main theoretician of this research.
Ensiyeh Darzinejad; Leyla Baradaran Jamili
Volume 14, Issue 18 , June 2018, , Pages 59-85
Abstract
Leila Aboulala (1964 -) is a Sudanese-Egyptian Muslim novelist who lives in the Scottish diaspora. She is one of the emigrant Muslim women writers who try to initiate a new discourse in their literary works. In her diasporic discourse she challenges the depiction of the identity of Muslim women as innate, ...
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Leila Aboulala (1964 -) is a Sudanese-Egyptian Muslim novelist who lives in the Scottish diaspora. She is one of the emigrant Muslim women writers who try to initiate a new discourse in their literary works. In her diasporic discourse she challenges the depiction of the identity of Muslim women as innate, timeless, and static and represents the subjectivity of her female protagonists as performative. In this respect the subjectivity of Muslim woman is a "doing" rather than a "being" and each step she takes makes her approach the Islamic subjectivity or deviate from it. The theories of William Safran, James Clifford, and Homi K. Bhabha are consulted to delineate diaspora an its capacity for discourse formation. Judith Butler's performative theory is used to investigate the performativity of subjectivity of the Muslim women in Aboulela's novels. The performativity of language and cultural practices like sartorial practices, culinary preferences, and religious rituals are the pivotal points of this article.