Mary Youssef
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474415415
- eISBN:
- 9781474449755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415415.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign ...
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This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising.
This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.Less
This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising.
This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.
Ann Charters and Samuel Charters
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604735796
- eISBN:
- 9781621031666
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604735796.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In the early 1960s John Clellon Holmes began to describe in his journals his sexual experiences in graphic detail. He wanted to become “whole again” by shedding the sexual inhibitions he believed ...
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In the early 1960s John Clellon Holmes began to describe in his journals his sexual experiences in graphic detail. He wanted to become “whole again” by shedding the sexual inhibitions he believed were the cause of all human violence in the world. In an essay titled “Revolution Below the Belt,” which received Playboy’s Best Non-Fiction award in 1964, Holmes expressed his strong dissatisfaction with conventional attitudes toward sex and his desire for a “New Consciousness.” His journals reflected his desperate sense of loneliness and his obsessive physical desire, what he termed his “despair-become-lust.” Consistent with this obsession, Holmes found himself fantasizing a sexual experience, a ménage a trois, with both his wife Shirley and their neighbor, who previously had a brief affair with Alan Harrington. Yet he refused to acknowledge that his adventuring to the edge of eros had ruined his relationship with Shirley. Holmes also thought of writing a novel with an erotic theme, but was unable to finish the project.Less
In the early 1960s John Clellon Holmes began to describe in his journals his sexual experiences in graphic detail. He wanted to become “whole again” by shedding the sexual inhibitions he believed were the cause of all human violence in the world. In an essay titled “Revolution Below the Belt,” which received Playboy’s Best Non-Fiction award in 1964, Holmes expressed his strong dissatisfaction with conventional attitudes toward sex and his desire for a “New Consciousness.” His journals reflected his desperate sense of loneliness and his obsessive physical desire, what he termed his “despair-become-lust.” Consistent with this obsession, Holmes found himself fantasizing a sexual experience, a ménage a trois, with both his wife Shirley and their neighbor, who previously had a brief affair with Alan Harrington. Yet he refused to acknowledge that his adventuring to the edge of eros had ruined his relationship with Shirley. Holmes also thought of writing a novel with an erotic theme, but was unable to finish the project.
