Date of Graduation

8-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies

Advisor/Mentor

Mohja Kahf

Committee Member

Ted Swedenburg

Second Committee Member

Yajaira Padilla

Keywords

Anti-Black racism, Domestic Workers, Gender, Intersectionality, Modern Arabic Literature, Postcolonial feminism, Marxist feminism, Slavery, Sexuality

Abstract

In this study, I have examined the representations of domestic workers in a number of Arabic mid-century and contemporary novels, using feminism and intersectionality as my overarching framework. I employed several scholarships of feminism such as Marxist and postcolonial feminism to examine the discourse on working-class women. The initial assumption of this study is that there is a noticeable invisibility of domestic workers in Arabic novels. If these characters manage to find their way into a text, they are typically ahistorical figures whose subjectivity is not centered.

Among the Arabic novels I have examined, I found that the tradition of underrepresenting domestic workers appears in iconic texts of the mid-century. In Naguib Mahfouz’ Trilogy, domestic workers function as either signs of class, subaltern figures, or loyal servants. In The Open Door of Latifa al-Zayyat and Sha’rawi’s Muthakkirat of Huda Sha’rawi, working-class characters are used as the others who emphasize the superiority of upper and middle-class communities. In contemporary novels, however, this tradition no longer seems to be the norm; domestic workers are given more space in the narrative. The new generation of Arab writers tackles more issues related to marginalized groups, such as slavery, anti-Black racism, and sexuality. Most of these texts speak to the notion of intersectionality that calls for the examination of representations of women from multiple dimensions of oppression. Al-Bahriyyat by Omima Alkhamis and Wojhat al-Bawsala by Noura al-Ghamdi, for instance, tackle the matter of slavery as a multi-faceted form of oppression that involves gender, class, and color rather than one-dimensional oppression be it patriarchy or color alone. I also find that contemporary novels such as Najwa Bin Shatwan’s Zarayib al-‘Abeed and Samar Yazbek’s Ra’ihat al-Qirfa provide distinctive narrative regarding interracial and cross-class relationships. Such relationships are perceived in these texts as a means of class mobility and empowerment for working-class female characters. Nevertheless, dominant stereotypes of domestic workers are still popular as shown in some texts such as Ali Badr’s Papa Sartre and Fatiha Murshid’s Almulhimaat.

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