Literary Activism in Anglowaiti Writing: Gender in Nada Faris's Literature

En el mundo occidental, las mujeres árabes musulmanas son generalmente estereotipadas como reprimidas y pasivas, además de carentes de voz y agencia en la sociedad, pero algunos textos de ficción muestran lo contrario. A lo largo de la historia, las mujeres árabes musulmanas de la región de Oriente Medio siempre han encontrado diferentes formas de luchar por sus derechos y promover el cambio social en sus comunidades. Una de las muchas formas en que muchos escritores árabes eligen emprender fue y sigue siendo la literatura. Para muchos, la literatura representó no solo un reflejo de las condiciones culturales, sociales y políticas, sino también una forma de cambiar mentalidades y crear nuevas alternativas. Las autoras kuwaitíes apelaron a la escritura como una forma de apoyar, promover el feminismo y crear conciencia sobre las hegemonías dominantes y reafirmar la agencia, un medio para expresar su condición. La escritora kuwaití y contemporánea Nada Faris expone magistralmente a lo largo de su obra literaria algunos de los problemas y luchas más importantes de las mujeres kuwaitíes en el siglo XXI. Esta investigación sostiene que las heroínas de Nada Faris son representadas como resistentes y subversivas al dominio patriarcal, representando figuras revolucionarias que es lo contrario de la creencia común. Esta categoría de mujeres encarna el cambio que Nada Faris prevé para la sociedad kuwaití. Al analizar la literatura de Nada Faris, este estudio intenta contribuir a la popularización de la literatura kuwaití, que ha recibido poca atención en la academia occidental, y más precisamente de los escritos de Nada Faris, una representante relevante dentro de las tradiciones literarias femeninas kuwaitíes contemporáneas. Los textos de Nada Faris constituyen un recurso invaluable del siglo XXI del escenario literario kuwaití debido al inmenso conocimiento social, cultural y político que estos textos literarios representan cuando se enfrentan a los lectores occidentales.In the Western world, Arab Muslim women are generally stereotyped as being suppressed and passive as well as lacking voice and agency in society, but some fictional texts depict the contrary. Throughout history Arab Muslim women in the Middle East region have always found different ways to fight for their rights and to promote social change in their communities. One of the many ways that many Arab Muslim women and men writers choose to undertake was and it is still writing. For many, writing represented not only a reflection of the cultural, social and political conditions but also a way to change mentalities and create new alternatives. Kuwaiti women authors appealed to writing as a way to support, promote feminism and raise consciousness about dominant hegemonies and reasserting agency, a means of voicing out their oppressed condition. The contemporary Kuwaiti writer Nada Faris masterfully exposes throughout her literary works some of the most important issues and struggle of Kuwaiti women in the twenty-first century. This research argues that Nada Faris’s heroines are portrayed as resistant and subversive of the patriarchal dominance, representing revolutionary figures which is the contrary of the common notion belief. This category of women embodies the change that Nada Faris envisions for the Kuwaiti society. By analyzing Nada Faris’s literature, this study attempts to contribute to the popularization of Kuwaiti literature, which has received little attention in the Western academia, and more precisely of the writings of Nada Faris, a relevant representative within contemporary Kuwaiti female literary traditions. Nada Faris’s texts constitute an invaluable resource of the twenty-first Kuwaiti literary scene due to the immensely social, cultural and political knowledge that these literary texts represent when confronted by Western readers

Social effects of economic crisis: risk of exclusion. An overview of the European context

Sustainability is a complex concept. It only can be achieved from a global perspective, where social, economic and environmental issues are all key factors for achieving the goal. This paper is focused on the importance of social sustainability and, as a consequence, the importance of avoiding each and everyone’s risk of poverty and exclusion as due to the recent crisis effects. Nevertheless, this crisis resulted in higher inequalities and put a lot of people at risk of poverty, even in “developed” countries. Through a statistical and econometric analysis, some of the key factors to which the European Union should aim to avoid unsustainable scenarios are analysed. A regression, factorial and cluster analysis is carried out and this leads to conclude that the labour market is key in promoting economic policies in order to achieve social sustainabilityResearch results presented in this paper are an element of research project implemented by the National Science Center Poland (Polskie Narodowe Centrum Nauki) under the grant OPUS13 no UMO-2017/25/B/HS4/0217