Imperialism and Gender in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

Considering how power relations govern the construction of race and gender, this article looks at the ambivalent relationship between the Magistrate and the "barbarian" girl in J. M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), exploring intersections between imperialism and gender and negotiating how issues of representation are implicated in questions of identity construction. It highlights how identities inflicted by gender are constructed in imperial discourse: first by the colonizer who speaks the language of power and inscribes on the colonized meanings serving imperialism; second by the humanist colonizer who fails to relate to the other on equal terms except for a position of "feminized" weakness; and third by the resistant colonial subject eluding imperial constructions yet still manipulated in language. Between the discourses of pain and humanism, the colonized body remains a malleable yet impenetrable object of colonial discourses. Coetzee subverts dominant gender boundaries, aligning oppressive patriarchal practices with imperialism while undermining hegemonic ideologies that construct gender through the figure of the enigmatic other

J. M. Coetzee's 'Postmodern' Corpus: Bodies/Texts, History, and Politics in the Apartheid Novels, 1974-1990

This dissertation examines the apartheid novels of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. Using postmodernism as its main theoretical framework and working at its intersections with feminism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism, the dissertation seeks to restore the political and historical significance of Coetzee's apartheid novels published between 1974 and 1990. It closely looks at the representation of the material body and its mediation in landuage and discourse to show our textualized access to the historical real. The middle chapters problematize the representation of the body with relation to notions like metafiction, historiography, writing the body, illness narratives, self-conscious relation of pain, and individual versus collective bodies. The dissertation begins by discussing the suffering, oppressed body from a globalized persepctive and concludes by offering a new reading of Coetzee's apartheid novels, one that highlights their allegorical viscerality

Love and Marriage in the Work of Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, and al-Razzaz

In their article Love and Marriage in the Work of Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, and al-Razzaz Qusai A.R. Al-Debyan and Shadi S. Neimneh posit that love, marriage, and sexuality represent important aspects in Mu\u27nis al-Razzaz\u27s 1997 novel Alive in the Dead Sea, Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki\u27s 2000 novel Ghost Songs: A Palestinian Love Story, and Diana Abu-Jaber\u27s 2003 short story Madagascar. Issues of love, marriage, and sexuality in these texts suggest a rebellious attitude on the part of women protagonists against taboos of religion, politics, and sexuality and Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, and al-Razzaz employ descriptions of sexual intimacy to reflect the social and political conditions of characters\u27 lives. Al-Debyan and Neimneh argue that the narration of women\u27s lives and women\u27s attitudes toward love and marriage in the texts analyzed — written by two women and one male writer — reflect the emergence of a more open and liberal conception of gender relations in a changing Arab world

Exile and Self-Actualization in Pauline Kaldas’s “He Had Dreamed of Returning” and “Airport”

Against common pessimistic readings of exile in postcolonial fiction, this article employs the notion of “self-actualization” that argues for people’s desire to accomplish everything they are capable of and their need to realize their potential. Within a comparative context and using identity theory and diaspora studies, the article illustrates how self-actualization keeps the immigrants from experiencing exile in two Arab American short stories by Pauline Kaldas: “Airport” (2009a) and “He Had Dreamed of Returning” (2009b). This article shows how the main characters of “Airport” and “He Had Dreamed of Returning,” Samir and Hani respectively, fulfill the American Dream and how Hoda, Samir’s wife, pictures America as the place where she can realize her ambitions. However, Nancy, Hani’s wife, achieves her potential in Egypt rather than America, where she feels needed as a teacher. Thus, Samir and Hani do not get dislocated in America, and Nancy has a sense of belonging in Egypt. Hence, the article utilizes the American Dream and a reverse side of it, and it shows how Samir’s, Hani’s, and Nancy’s self-actualization is a counter to feelings of exile. In other words, the three characters do not experience loss of identity and displacement in the countries they emigrate to. Rather, they fulfill their dreams there and find/create new identities which have been suppressed in their hometowns, which enhances a view of identity as fluid rather than fixed. Briefly put, this article presents the self-actualization of immigrants in new locales as a counter to different levels of dislocation and exile.

Hashemite university English department graduate students' perspectives on Angloamerican literature and culture: a pedagogical viewpoint

This study complements another conducted earlier by the researchers, which examined undergraduate student responses in the same department. The findings of the previous study were published in an article entitled “Bridges or Walls? The article mainly focused on the pedagogical approach that attempts to find out the best practices for teaching courses on Anglo-American literature and culture in a given context stated above. After investigating the responses of a little more than forty graduate students, it was found out that (30) students, 75% of the whole group of students/respondents, have positive attitudes towards the teaching practices of the courses under investigation.Este estudio complementa otro realizado anteriormente por los investigadores, que examinó las respuestas de los estudiantes de pregrado en el mismo departamento. Los hallazgos del estudio anterior se publicaron en un artículo titulado "? Puentes o muros El artículo se centró principalmente en el enfoque pedagógico que intenta encontrar las mejores prácticas para impartir cursos sobre literatura y cultura angloamericanas en un contexto dado anteriormente. Después de investigar las respuestas de poco más de cuarenta estudiantes graduados, se descubrió que (30) estudiantes, el 75% del grupo total de estudiantes / encuestados, tienen actitudes positivas hacia las prácticas de enseñanza de los cursos bajo investigación

Subverting children’s literature: A feminist approach to reading Angela Carter

This article argues the importance of the short stories of Angela Carter to the field of children’s literature and its current adaptations. It looks at two of her stories. The result is fiction building on some patterns of children’s literature yet with a feminist tinge that questions the foundations of patriarchy. Her stories do not simply reverse patriarchy but subvert it from within. Sexual victimization and complicity in one’s oppression might be harmful, Carter seems to argue, but equally harmful is the underlying sexual slant of the popular fairy tales told/taught to children and instilling patriarchal values.Este artículo argumenta la importancia de los cuentos de Angela Carter en el campo de la literatura infantil y sus adaptaciones actuales. Mira dos de sus historias. El resultado es que la ficción se basa en algunos patrones de literatura infantil pero con un matiz feminista que cuestiona los fundamentos del patriarcado. Sus historias no solo revierten el patriarcado sino que lo subvierten desde adentro. La victimización sexual y la complicidad en la opresión de uno pueden ser perjudiciales, parece argumentar Carter, pero igualmente perjudicial es la inclinación sexual subyacente de los populares cuentos de hadas contados / enseñados a los niños e inculcando valores patriarcales

Living in the Borderlands: A Postcolonial Reading of Nerdeen Abu-Nab’ah’s Oh, Allah, I Delivered a Female Child

Within a postcolonial theoretical framework, this article highlights the political struggles and cultural displacement of Palestinians using a recent novel published in 2013 and entitled   (Oh, Allah, I Delivered a Female Child) by  (Nerdeen Abu-Nab’ah). It investigates the meaning of living in the borderlands and the effects of double consciousness on the main characters/narrators: Abbas, his brother Abu-Raja, and his daughter, Miriam, who visits Gaza strip in Palestine for the first time in her life. The analysis shows that Abu-Nab’ah strongly believes in such idea as the borderlands being the place most Palestinians inhabit physically and symbolically inside and outside their homeland because of the oppression and discrimination they face. The article examines the complicated interrelationships among ideas of dislocation/exile, the (in)visible borderlands, and double consciousness by applying the theories of Gloria Anzaldúa, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Homi Bhabha. Moreover, it interrogates the role of memory in reconstructing a national story about resistance and exile while simultaneously endorsing the role of women in documenting national loss and revolution. The result is a tale of cultural resistance against dislocation and exile and an articulation of the predicament of being a stranger within one’s country and abroad