ART N72 .F45 G46 1996 GENERATIONS AND GEOGRAPHIES possibly precise a few chapters on some of
the non-U.S./European artists [Re-Hyun Park, Jin-me Yoon, Shimdao Yoshiko, possibly another].
ART N7260 .A818 1996
Dinah Dysart and Hannah Finnk, ASIAN WOMEN ARTISTS
ART N7304 .E97 precis of at least one of the modern artists in Sinha, Expressions & Evocations
ART/SAL NX165 .O94 1992 Craig Owens on modernism and feminism is available, copy & highlight
ART/SAL NX180 .F4 H4 NO.21-24 1987-1989
TITLE: Interview [with Trinh T. Minh-ha, filmmaker]
AUTHOR: Hirshorn, Harriet A.
SOURCE: Heresies, 22:14-17 (1987)
ART NX164 .B55 P37 1990
Passion : discourses on blackwomen's creativity / edited by Maud Sulter. 1990.
ART NX180 .F4 T36 1998 Ella Shohat, Talking Visions: Multicult Fem Transnational Age MIT 1998 0r 99.
ILL ??
4. I mention Maud Sulter's photo exhibit MUSES, which used African American women as the muses of
creativity - got it from Imagining Women, but they have only a passing reference. if it is not too hard to find a
description or review of the work, that would be great. not highest priority re: time spent looking
Malvern, Sue, `The muses and the museum: Maud Sulter's retelling of the canon', in eds. Michael Biddiss and
Maria Wyke, The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999) * (UCI?)
JC571 .B6735 1996 WOMEN RESHAPING HUMAN RIGHTS, M Guzman Bouvard [for later, chap 15 rev
SEARCHING PR275 .W6 S86 2000 Summit, Jennifer. Lost property : the woman writer and English literary
history, 1380-1589 [on women writers in early modern england] - if not available, buy at bookstore
SEARCHING PR6069 .O78 M3 1999 Soueif, Ahdaf. The map of love / Ahdaf Soueif. 1999.
reviews or interviews or reviews essays re: Egyptian feminist writer living in London, last name SOUEIS,
author of MAP OF LOVE (99) and EYE OF THE SUN (92—780 pages!). online links are fine.
PS3535 .U4 O75 1992
Out of silence : selected poems / Muriel Rukeyser ; ed. Kate Daniels
minor question: what is the date of Muriel Rukeyser's poem "Kathe Kollwitz"? - and since i need to
check the spacing for her poem MYTH, might as well get a book of her poems with both from the library,
if they are in the same volume.
PS147 R87 1995 Joanna Russ, To write like a woman: essays in feminism and science fiction
PS153 .M4 S25 1990A Saldivar-Hull, FEMINISM ON THE BORDER - precis and/or intro, reviews
PT111 .P38 1997 Gendering German studies : new perspectives on German literature and culture / edited by
Margaret Littler. 1997.
5. I have an old reference for an anthology of German women writers with an introduction ed by
Herrmann and Spiz - bakc in 80s, I think. If there is a more recent anthology or overview with a quick
and dirty introductory essay, go for it. if not, don't worry.
PT167 .H57 2000 A history of women's writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. 2000.
PT405 .A17 1993
Adelson. 1993.
Adelson, Leslie A. Making bodies, making history : feminism & German identity / Leslie A.
S480.842 .M46 1998 anthologies of writing by Indian women edited by Ritu Menon - if is a recent one that gets
into the 1990s and especially if she has an intro overview, i'd like to take a look.
KING, TONI C.; BUKER, ELOISE A. "To and Fro": Deepening the Soul Life of Women's Studies Through
Play.(Critical Essay) NWSA Journal v13, n1 (Spring, 2001):105. Pub type: Critical Essay
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nwsa_journal/v013/13.1king.pdf
RECALLED RLCP recall the Trinh Minh-Ha book, When the Moon Waxes Red, I'll look at it - hard to tell from
reviews –
literature, esp non U.S., after 1980s. I have complete runs of Signs and Feminist Studies at home - if you can
find any articles in them listed in data bases I can easily read them - it would be easier than simply reading
through all the contents. looking for any literary articles [not nec. theory, just what is happening out there,
but lit crit is okay] that cover the 1990s!
PR6069 .O78 M3 1999 Soueif, Ahdaf. The map of love / Ahdaf Soueif. 1999.
reviews or interviews or reviews essays re: Egyptian feminist writer living in London, last name SOUEIS,
author of MAP OF LOVE (99) and EYE OF THE SUN (92). online links are fine.
http://www.cairotimes.com/content/culture/suef.html (Interview)
Costantino, Roselyn, “And She Wears It Well: Feminist and Cultural Debates in the Work of Astrid Hadad, in
Arrizon, Alicia (ed.)--Manzor, Lillian (ed.); 444 pp.; Latinas on Stage: Practice and Theory; Third Woman,
Berkeley, CA Pagination: 398-421 Third Woman, Berkeley, CA
AP4 .T45 Stacks Said, Edward W. Map of Love.(Review) TLS. Times Literary Supplement, n5044
(Dec 3, 1999):7 (1 pages).
Pub type: Review
028.8 B725
Booth, Marilyn In the Eye of the Sun. World Literature Today v68, n1 (Winter,
1994):204 (2 pages).
Call Kathy Kerns—index Feminist Studies & Signs?
Bookstore: Showalter, Elaine. Inventing herself : claiming a feminist intellectual heritage / Elaine Showalter.
2001. [HQ1154 .S527 2001
PR275 .W6 S86 2000 Summit, Jennifer. Lost property : the woman writer and English literary history,
1380-1589 [on women writers in early modern england] - if not available, buy at bookstore
1. Magazine & Journal Articles
Author: KING, TONI C.; BUKER, ELOISE A.
Title: "To and Fro": Deepening the Soul Life of Women's Studies Through Play.(Critical Essay)
Journal: NWSA Journal, v13, n1 (Spring, 2001) :105 .
Publication Type: Critical Essay Subfile: Academic Index Subjects: Women's studies--Criticism, interpretation,
etc.
Author: Diamond, Jo Title: HINE-TITAMA: MAORI CONTRIBUTIONS TO FEMINIST DISCOURSES AND
IDENTITY POLITICS.(Critical Essay)
Journal: Australian Journal of Social Issues, v34, n4 (Nov, 1999) 301 .
Abstract: Feminist discourses attend to the experiences of women in many social spheres, including that of the
artworld. In this paper I, as a Maori woman, offer an outline of Postcolonial Maori Feminism that complies with
the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha's notion of 'Post-colonial criticism'. The connection between feminist
discourse and the accomplished Maori artist Robyn Kahukiwa has not been strongly emphasised in current
published literature. The cultural context that Robyn Kahukiwa refers to in her art is, primarily, that of Maori
women. I argue, by using one exemplary picture entitled Hine-Titama, that Robyn Kahukiwa and her artwork
align with the work of some other Maori feminists. I also posit an association between Kahukiwa and some
examples of 'non-Maori' feminist writing that furthers our understanding of cultural identities based on gender
and race. I refer to those cultural identities as they relate to Maori women in New Zealand.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Australian Council of Social Service Abstract: 'Post-colonial criticism bears witness to the
unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority
within the modern worm order'. (Homi Bhabha 1994, p. 171)
COPYRIGHT 1999 Australian Council of Social Service Hine-Titama 1980
Kahukiwa's picture entitled Hine-Titama (see Figure 1) was completed as part of the exhibition Wahine Toa
(Women of Strength) in 1980 (Kahukiwa & Grace 1991, p.10). This exhibition emphasised the importance of
female characters in Maori mythology or, as one observer noted, Üit attempted to redress the portrayal of
women as shadowy figures in conventional Pakeha White versions of Maori mythology by giving their immense
personalities full due' (Kirker 1995, p. 4). Another observer noted that Üseveral of the "Wahine Toa" images
have subsequently been "canonised" as "icons" of New Zealand art' (Mane-Wheoki 1995, p. 12). Hine-Titama
qualifies as a candidate for such canonisation due to its wide exposure through the New Zealand media (for
example Baughen 1982; Menehira 1982; Te Awekotuku 1991) and its use as the cover picture for the book
(Kahukiwa & Grace 1991) that developed from the Wahine Toa exhibition. In this paper, I describe of the
painting's content and form so that a critical analysis can follow. Notions of interdependency and
complementarity in Maori cosmology have been aptly emphasised in published literature (see Marsden 1975;
Kawharu 1975). Such work indicates a generally held (rather than feminist) interpretation of complementarity in
Maori cosmology. With such work in mind I discuss ways in which female roles within the complementarity of
this Maori cosmos are highlighted. My description necessarily begins with an account of some Maori mythology.
Hine-titama is known as the Üdawn-maid' in some accounts of Maori mythology, including the book Wahine Toa
(Kahukiwa & Grace 1991, p. 70). In records of Maori cosmogony (Best 1952, p. 41; Te Rangi Hiroa 1982, p.
453) Hine-titama is considered to be the mother of all human beings. She is one of three main interconnected
manifestations of the female element (uha) in Maori cosmology. The other two manifestations are Hine-ahuone, whom the male god Tane fashioned from the earth to become the first female form, and Hine-nui-te-po who
presides over after-life. Maori male deities sought uha as an indispensable part of the creation of human beings
(Best 1952, p. 41). In this cosmogony, Hine-titama represents the female component of human existence and
procreation. She is also, however, an offspring of the sexual union between Tane and Hine-ahu-one. After
producing a number of children with Tane, and later realising the incestuous nature of her relationship with him,
Hine-titama fled in shame to another dimension called Te Po, one of death rather than life, and she became
Hine-nui-te-po. There is, however, an inter-dimensional quality about these three female figures that mirrors the
three parts of a Maori cosmological order: ÜMaoris (sic) do not accept the idea that the universe is limited to the
world in which men live and die. Instead they see the World of Men as existing in relation to two other realms,
Te Po night and Te Rangi day ' (Merge 1976, p. 55). The three female manifestations represent godly and
earthly realms, day and night, and also an interdependent cycle that includes conception, pregnancy, life and
death. For the Wahine Toa exhibition, Kahukiwa produced paintings of all three of these female figures. Each
work bears the name of its featured deity.
Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED
In Kahukiwa's picture that takes Hine-titama's name as a title, the artist presents the goddess as a young Maori
woman. Her head and shoulders are realistic in appearance although her facial features may be seen by some
viewers as more caricatured than realistic. Similarities to the autobiographical features in some of Frida Kahlo's
paintings denote that artist's acknowledged (Mane-Wheoki 1995, p. 10) influence on Kahukiwa.
The texture of the Hine-titama's hair and the indentations of her neck and upper torso are realistic in
appearance. The form of her body becomes more abstract further down.
A highly stylised male figure, able to be viewed as both within and immediately in front of Hine-titama's body, is
a dominant feature of the painting. This figure's appearance is ambiguous because the upper sections of the
figure's arms appear to be outside Hine-titama's armpit area yet the remainder of his arms seem more within
and part of her arms. The black and white, green-eyed figure has long, skeletal arms that extend to the bottom
of the picture. His head, torso and genitals appear to have the tattoo-like markings that can be seen on figures
in many examples of Maori carving (whakairo). Hine-titama's body also extends to the bottom of the picture and
its form changes into a red placenta-like mass.
The entire length of space that extends beneath Hine-titama's arms is ambiguous. Within it, on her right side, is
placed a human foetus enclosed in a sac and with an umbilical cord that seemingly stretches back into the
middle of Hine-titama's body. Within a corresponding space to her left is a lizard. These two spaces seem to
have a directional function where the unborn child descends and the lizard climbs.
Above this symmetrically placed collection of figures is a large halo-like circular radiating design that surrounds
Hine-titama's head. The pattern appears three-dimensional and brings to mind the curvilinear patterns of Maori
art, especially whakairo. The double spiral form (Te Rangi Hiroa 1982, p. 315) of whakairo can be read into the
Ühalo', as can a representation of the rays of the sun. The halo's gold-coloured appearance that it shares with
the double spiral form accentuates the golden aura surrounding Hine-titama's body. Dawn is suggested by a
thin red line above a green hilly landscaped background and a white skyline gradually breaks into blue then
appears to encroach on a black starry sky. The blackness of the disappearing night sky is mirrored in the lowest
portion of the painting but the eye descends to this point through a gradation of layers that are earth-coloured.
The number of these layers equals that of the rings that make up the Ühalo' around Hine-titama's head.
An interpretation based on knowledge of Maori symbolism is necessary to gain a full appreciation of the
painting's meaning. The corresponding number of rings and ground layers is significant. The artist considers
the rings to be part of a spiral that: Üportrays both an important element of traditional Maori carving, and ten
overworlds. The ten underworlds are shown as horizontal layers, beginning with the grass and topsoil and
going through various stages until they reach Meto, the extinct' (Kahukiwa & Grace 1991, p. 70).
This reference to a multi-layered Maori cosmos corresponds with layers of the three dimensions of Maori
cosmology mentioned earlier. Life, death, day and night are also represented symbolically by the foetus and
lizard. Kahukiwa's explanation is helpful in decoding this symbolism: ÜThe black, stylised figure which forms the
bones of Hine-titama's arms, symbolised Tune, who is both her own father and the father of her children. The
foetus represents mankind, the children of Hine-Titama and Tune, and the lizard is a disguise Maui a wellknown heroic figure in epical Maori myths adopted when he tried to conquer death' (Kahukiwa & Grace 1991, p.
71).
A broader, though related, interpretation is also possible: the descending foetus is a metaphor for birth whereas
the ascending lizard metaphorically marks a return to death. This life-death cycle is continuous. A sense of the
inter-connectedness of day and night, life and death, surround a female entity who is inseparably linked to a
male entity, the god Tane. Hine-Titama is symmetrically composed suggesting harmony and balance. The
relationships between male and female, life and death, night and day originate from a Maori cosmological
context that is not organised so distinctively. These pairs are juxtaposed in Maori cosmology suggesting
something akin to Üyin-yang' interdependency rather than an opposition.(1) This interdependency is reflected in
some Maori feminists' views of the relationship between Maori men and women discussed later.
A value-system based on notions of good and evil that corresponds to ideas of light and darkness is, however,
absent in Hine-Titama. This absence confirms Metge's (1976, p. 56) observation of Maori cosmology: The
relation of Te Rangi and Te Po is not one of conflict and negation, as it is between Heaven and Hell, but one of
complementarity. As light cannot be comprehended except in relation to darkness, as life cannot be
appreciated except in relation to death, so Te Rangi and Te Po define and complete each other. Together they
are united as spiritual realms in contrast with the World of Men, alternatives that are equally possible and even
interchangeable, not mutually exclusive (my emphasis).
Hine-Titama represents a manifestation of the female element in a Maori cosmogony that considers this element
an indispensable part of human existence. The female deity represents life and death and a cosmological
connection between three dimensions inhabited by spiritual entities, ancestors and those of us who continue to
inhabit a more physical world. In Hine-Titama this deity is one of compassion, understanding and benevolence.
In Maori terminology she is filled with Üaroha' which can be translated as a combination of Ülove' and
Ücompassion'. I will return to this concept of aroha later.
The use of a painting style in Hine-Titama that is design-based and illustrative belies its instructive and symbolic
purpose. Hence there is a need for accompanying texts and artist's notes, especially for those viewers who
have no prior knowledge of Maori myths, cosmogony and cosmology. The painting's ability to engage the
viewer could be limited to those with this knowledge, as may its potential to impress some critics.
The Maori Goddess and Maori Feminism
References to Ügoddesses' and other female entities from Maori legends and mythologies have been used
recently in a highly political fashion in New Zealand. The governmental policy analyst and performance artist,
Hinemoa Awatere (1995), for example, writes about Maori women of her own genealogical lineage. In doing so,
she provides, from a feminist standpoint, a reinterpretation of records of Maori mythology (for example, Alpers
1964, p. 23) that distinguish the roles of male deities in Maori cosmogony above those of females. Kahukiwa's
Wahine Toa paintings reflect Awatere's revisionism and also invite respect for female Maori deities and for Maori
women. The incorporation of female deities into writing and art supports the idea of an innate strength in all
Maori women. This incorporation is used strategically, in a political effort to raise the morale of Maori women
and to lobby for recognition and respect for Maori women in New Zealand society: ÜWhat it is all about is
affirming the unlimited potential of Maori women. It is about affirming that as Maori women we hold all the
knowledge that we need within us, and that no white government or white legal system -- no one in fact but
ourselves -- will actually make any changes in our lives' (Awatere 1995, p. 38).
In her writing, Awatere entreats all Maori women to participate in a political struggle. Her plea would appeal to
many Maori women who feel disadvantaged by the current social climate in New Zealand, and emulates the
revisionist messages in Kahukiwa's Wahine Toa paintings and her other artwork. Like Awatere's writing,
Wahine Toa exalts Maori female mythological figures. Figures such as Hine-titama are used symbolically to
highlight the strength and challenges of Maori women in everyday life. Regardless of the origins (Maori or nonMaori) of the referents that Kahukiwa adopts, her art can be placed in the milieu of current Maori feminist
political concerns.
The inclusion of male figures in Kahukiwa's paintings throughout most of her career indicates her willingness to
engage in a Üunified struggle with Maori men' (Larner & Spoonley 1995, p. 53).
Kahukiwa's primary focus in her painting, however, has been on engendering pride and boosting morale
amongst Maori women. Kahukiwa's paintings are, therefore, politically based though she has made no attempt
to produce negative images of relationships, such as those of domestic violence or acts of racism, between
Maori women and men or between Maori people and non-Maori people. She appears to leave that type of
imagery to other artists and may invite some criticism for doing so from commentators including other Maori
feminists. To date, however, this kind of criticism has not been published. Nevertheless, Kahukiwa represents
one strand of Maori feminist discourses. She contributes to a political movement that can be called ÜMaori
feminism' because of its particularised attention to Maori women.
Main Concerns of Maori Feminism
There is a common and recurring theme in the artistic production and literary publications of Maori women that
concentrates on the social problems Maori women have endured, succumbed to and/or resisted in the past and
continue to experience today. Maori women experience a higher incidence of illness and premature death,
higher crime rates reflected in penal detentions, and greater involvement in domestic violence and homicide
compared to other groups in New Zealand. Also, there is a higher unemployment rate among Maori women
with a corresponding lower educational attainment level and a higher dependence on Government Social
Welfare benefits. Many Maori women currently live in socio-economically disadvantaged situations compared to
Maori men and non-Maori New Zealanders.
As noted earlier, Awatere (1995) and Kahukiwa address Maori women living today, ancestral Maori women and
deified Maori women in order to inspire political action against a particular social order.
This order can be called Üpatriarchal' at the very least because Government statistics show that men in New
Zealand society have more job and education opportunities than women.
These opportunities afford men an unequal advantage in New Zealand's capitalist economy. For example, men
hold most of the powerful decision-making positions in that society, the current holder of the office of Prime
Minister notwithstanding. Nevertheless, Awatere's writing, and Kahukiwa's art, is not intended to be separatist
or exclusive.
Their endeavour is directed more towards equality between Maori women and men than any oppressive
matriarchal Maori alternative.
Representation and Identity
The Maori feminist writer, Irihapeti Ramsden (1995) proposes a Maori feminist agenda that fosters the
preservation of and respect for Maori culture without imposing a policy of segregation between Maori men and
Maori women. Kahukiwa contributes to Ramsden's agenda as none of the published examples of her artwork
explicitly attack Maori men. Hine-Titama encompasses both male and female cosmological elements.
Kahukiwa's work can be analysed in Ramsden's feminist terms that do not foster the separation of Maori women
from men and is in keeping with the interdependency of female and male in Maori cosmology.
Maori film critic and educator, Leonie Pihama (1994, p. 240) includes herself in a Ücritical struggle by Maori
people that is related to our images and the ways in which we are presented and re-presented by the dominant
voice' (my emphasis). The Ücritical struggle', that Pihama refers to, is against visual misrepresentation of Maori
people and is part of a deconstructionist effort to uncover underlying assumptions upon which our
epistemological positions are based ... that necessitates a depth of analysis that reaches into questions which
seek to unmask modernist metanarratives that validate the belief that eurocentric constructions of history, and in
particular of the histories of the colonised, present the Üone true' interpretation (pp. 241-2).
Pihama's observation of a Maori Ücritical' struggle can be used as a model to combat inaccurate or inadequate
representations of Maori people. Kahukiwa's paintings, and my interpretation of them, can be placed in the
same context of Ücritical' struggle; a struggle towards a more complete discourse than that which currently
exists about her work and is available for public consideration.
The Creative Process and Role-Juggling
The Maori feminist Education scholar Kathie Irwin (1995, p. 10) fosters the realisation of artistic potential
amongst Maori women, and its public recognition, though she cautions: Knowing what we do about the reality of
Maori women's lives, being creative is probably the last thing many would expect Maori women to aspire to, let
alone dabble in; even, dare I say it, excel at!
As a group, the demographic and statistical profile of our lives is depressing, indeed alarming, on almost every
social, economic and educational indice.
In Irwin's (1995, p. 12) opinion ÜWriting, painting, singing about our worlds is a critical part of Maori women's
survival kit!'. Irwin (p. 11) refers to the family life and internationally-recognised work of Maori writer Patricia
Grace as a role model for creative endeavour undertaken in concert with a demanding number of other
responsibilities such as motherhood and housekeeping on a low budget.
Irwin's views can be related to the art and life of Robyn Kahukiwa. Kahukiwa combines both artistic and political
endeavour in her art and this practice coincides with family demands. Painting began as an activity Kahukiwa
undertook at home: ÜAroand 1967, as a housebound young mother ... she succumbed to an impulse to paint'
(Mane-Wheoki 1995, p.10). Grace and Kahukiwa's (1991) collaboration in the book Wahine Toa is a fitting
testimony to the creative endeavour of both the writer and the artist given their family responsibilities. Their
book, along with other examples of their creativity, could inspire other Maori women, including many mothers, to
use their creativity inside and outside their homes if they are not already doing so. It could also inspire other
people besides Maori women. Irwin's commentary (1995) is also inspirational as it may encourage more Maori
women, and other people, to engage in feminist discourse that addresses art criticism and promotion.
I conclude from this comparison of the work of Maori feminists and Kahukiwa's art that they are comparable and
also intersect. However, despite Irwin's reservations (quoted by Larner& Spoonley 1995, p. 54) about
international forms of feminism, which she suspects may have similar potentially detrimental consequences as
those of British colonisation, other Üpost-colonial' (to borrow from Bhabha's definition quoted earlier) feminist
theory -- critically appraised -- can be aligned with Maori feminist endeavour.
Beyond Maori Feminism
I emulate the feminist scholar Vicki Kirby's (1993, p. 2 l) Ügrafting, rereading and recycling' of Anglo-American
feminism and cultural criticism undertaken by Australian feminists by highlighting areas where Kahukiwa, Maori
and some non-Maori postcolonial feminist discourses intersect. These areas are entitled ÜDifference' and
ÜComplementarity'.
Difference Political Objectives
The promotion in New Zealand of a Üspecial' or essential cultural identity for Maori women as a political strategy
against social disadvantage, particularly in relation to the art of Robyn Kahukiwa and the writing of Hinemoa
Awatere, can also be analysed in relation to the following comment: ÜSpecialness as soporific soothes,
anaesthetizes my sense of justice; it is, to the wo/man of ambition, as effective a drug of psychological selfintoxication as alcohol is to the exiles of society' (Trinh 1989, p. 88). This comment implicitly warns of the
danger of being lulled into egotistical complacency when undertaking political action that adopts an oversimplistic notion of a cultural identity named ÜMaori woman'. This complacency could result in dogma that
ignores, or chooses to forget, the variety of experience and interests, political or otherwise, among those who
identify as Maori women.
Cultural theorist and film-maker, Trinh T. Mirth-Ha (1989, p. 82 & p. 95) also offers a feminist perspective of
those notions of cultural difference that separate ÜMaori' from ÜNon-Maori', ÜEast' from ÜWest' and ÜFirst
World' from ÜThird World': Ü"difference" is essentially "division" in the understanding of many. It is no more
than a tool of self-defense and conquest. You and I might as well not walk into this semantic trap which sets us
up against each other as expected by a certain ideology of separatism.... Difference as uniqueness or special
identity is both limiting and deceiving'. It is not surprising that in an effort to promote an understanding and
appreciation for Maori culture, Kahukiwa and other Maori feminists may appear to promote representations of
Maori women that, in Trinh's terms, only convey Üdifference as uniqueness or special identity'. Kahukiwa and
Awatere's use of essentialist notions of Maori womanhood based on female Maori deities as discussed earlier
could seem, to some people, to verge on a form of ethnocentricity that could discourage wider, more
international, support for their political effort.
Some dissident opinions among women who identify as Maori, but feel alienated by Kahukiwa and Awatere's
portrayals of Maori women, may also fracture an otherwise resolute feminist political lobby that supports the
rights of Maori women. I am thinking, in this instance of women who, due to their ideological (for example
Christian or other religious and/or political) beliefs, may not support Kahukiwa and Awatere's promotion of Maori
mythology.
It is, however, necessary to remember that Kahukiwa and Awatere are advocating equal rights for and selfrealisation amongst Maori women. Therefore, their representations of Maori women are strategically political.
In this regard Kahukiwa, Awatere and the other proponents of Maori feminist discourse mentioned earlier,
intersect with elements of non-Maori postcolonial feminist discourse. For example, the well-known feminist
scholar Gayatri Spivak's (Spivak & Rooney 1994, p. 153) notion of a Üstrategic use of positivist essentialism in
a scrupulously visible political interest' follows this form of political action. This notion also has particular bearing
on the critical assessment of Üindigenous' art that can be undertaken by those of us in academic circles who
advocate social equality.
Deconstruction
Spivak (Harasym ed. 1990, pp. 56-58) also makes a plea to proponents of literary criticism, warning against
condescension and over-generalisation in the political involvement of academic scholars: There is an impulse
among literary critics and other kinds of intellectuals to save the masses, speak for the masses, describe the
masses. On the other hand, how about attempting to learn to speak in such a way that the masses will not
regard as bullshit.... One ought not to patronize the oppressed ... Unlearning one's privilege within the
academy is very different from clamoring for anti-intellectualism, a sort of complete monosyllabification of one's
vocabulary within academic enclosures ... one's practice is very dependant upon one's positionality, one's
situation ... the prime task is situational anti-sexism, and the recognition of the heterogenity of the field.
Spivak's (Spivak & Rooney 1994, p. 156) argument supporting a deconstructionist form of analysis also
pertains to my role as a cultural commentator and interpreter who undertakes a deconstructionist analysis of
Kahukiwa's art: What I am very suspicious of is how anti-essentialism, really more than essentialism, is allowing
women to call names and to congratulate themselves.... if I understand deconstruction, deconstruction is not an
exposure of error, certainly not of other people's error. The critique in deconstruction, the most serious critique
in deconstruction, is the critique of something that is extremely useful, something without which we cannot do
anything. That should be the approach to how we are essentialists (my emphasis).
Spivak's argument provides us with some salient advice. Deconstruction of cultural referents such as art can
take place without discouraging further artistic endeavour because of an unnecessary or over-zealous
Üexposure of error', to requote Spivak. I certainly aim to encourage and promote the work of Maori women
artists such as Kahukiwa and I believe this can be achieved without self-congratulation. To borrow Spivak's
terms, my Ücritique' of Kahukiwa's art involves an attempt to comprehensively understand her art as it is
Üextremely useful' in interpreting and promoting some aspects of the cultural identity of Maori women in New
Zealand.
Intersubjectivity
My analysis of Kahukiwa's art and feminist discourses is one example of many possibilities of an academic
involvement in identity-based politics and theory that depends on recognising the subjective position of a
researcher. Trinh (1989, p. 90 & 94) points out a diversity in the Üsubject' position beginning with a critique of a
eurocentric perception of an Üauthentic' unchanging self: The differences made between entities comprehended
as absolute presences -- hence the notions of pure origin and true self -- are an outgrowth of a dualistic system
of thought peculiar to the Occident (the Üonto-theology' which characterizes Western metaphysics).
They should be distinguished from the differences grasped both between and within entities, each of these
being understood as multiple presence. Not one, not two either. ÜI' is, therefore, not a unified subject, a fixed
identity, or that solid mass covered with layers of superficialities one has gradually to peel off before one can
see its true face. ÜI' is itself infinite layers (1989, p.
94).
Therefore, I (the ÜI' of Trinh's Üinfinite layers'), in analysing artistic expression, such as Kahukiwa's art,
endeavour to adopt a multiple perspective without attempting to Üspeak' about the art, or Kahukiwa, in absolute
terms. I consider this approach to be one that requires some sense of a fluid inter-subjectivity between myself
and Kahukiwa. My approach involves a rigorous analysis of Kahukiwa's art; one that is not seamless and one
that invites debate with other commentators.
If Maori and non-Maori feminist scholars heed Spivak and Trinh's caution to avoid over-generalisation, some
room remains for a feminist-based drive, both within and beyond academic institutions, to analyse all forms of
oppression in New Zealand society, not only those that adversely affect women. The work of Irihapeti
Ramsden, referred to earlier, which does not emphasise a separatist delineation between Maori men and
women, indicates that work in this direction has begun in Maori feminist discourses.
On this note, I wish to turn to an emphasis on complementarity rather than difference in postcolonial feminism.
Complementarity
I must, at the outset, reaffirm my earlier observation (Diamond 1998, p. 43) that Maori women have a history of
engagement in political action in New Zealand. This activism does not indicate Maori women's passivity and
compliance in New Zealand's patriarchal society. Indeed, Maori women can be seen as major players in the
production of a Maori identity that is partly based on political activism, regardless of the fact that they do not
necessarily share the same experience of hardship, subjugation or oppression. Kathie Irwin's recommendations
for encouraging creativity amongst Maori women that begins in the home also indicates not only her own
political activism but the creative and political endeavour that currently exists amongst some Maori women
artists and writers. While Irwin's comments are encouraging, more work needs to be done towards the
realisation and critical appraisal of the artistic potential of many Maori women.
Echo, Narcissus and the Aporetic Position
I use Maori mythology as part of a process of describing the role of a critic who lives in a Ücolonised' society
such as New Zealand. Similarly, Gayatri Spivak (Spivak & Papastergiadis 1991, p.66) interweaves references to
Greek mythology with a potential for critical analysis to use well-defined Üspaces' of inquiry that exist between
the Ücoloniser' and the Ücolonised': We are shuttling between Narcissus and Echo: fixating upon the prefixed
image, a pre-fixed staging, saying to other women within the culture that is how we should be identified. On the
other hand, the construction of ourselves as counter-echo to the Western dominance, we cannot in fact be
confined to behaving as we have been defined. Where there is a moment of slippage there is also a robust
aporetic position, rather than being either the self-righteous continuist narcissism in the name of identity, or the
message of despair of nothing but Echo (my emphasis).
An ‘aporetic position' between Spivak's ‘Echo and Narcissus' could be favourably compared to Leonie Pihama's
call for Ücritical struggle' against the misrepresentation of Maori women that I referred to earlier. Spivak's
Üshuttling, aporetic position' intersects with Pihama's observation that there needs to be a revised critically
based discourse about the representation in art and other cultural media of Maori women. It could be argued
that Kahukiwa's artwork incorporates a certain feminist perspective based on an introduced colonial discourse
and that the Maori Üauthenticity' of her art is questionable. Be that as it may, it requires rigorous and
demanding involvement in Pihama's Ücritical struggle' from Spivak's Üaporetic' position to accurately determine
and understand the scale of this incorporation in Kahukiwa's art. There is a vital, yet demanding, current need
for critically based assessments, and in some cases reassessments, of all representative images of Maori
women.
Aroha: an Open ‘Conclusion'
In order to reitierate and enhance the concepts of difference and complementarity presented, I wish to return to
the concept of aroha. The aroha described in relation to the Ügoddess' of Hine-Titama intersects with the views
of Black American feminist and cultural theorist bell hooks (1994, pp. 243-6) who asks, using the words of the
famous black', female' singer Tina Turner, ‘What's love got to do with it?' and makes the following comment on a
‘love ethic' that should be incorporated into emancipatory, feminist or otherwise, political action: ÜThe absence
of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arises from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of
the spirit and an over-determined emphasis on material concerns. Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves
and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed' (my emphasis). There is immense
aroha in hooks' statement, where she focuses on spiritual needs amongst human beings. Along with that of
other feminist discourses I have described, hooks' advice may be taken by those of us who engage in Pihama's
‘critical struggle'. While my description of feminist theory focuses mostly on women, this theory de-emphasises
separatist, anti-male politics. This politics and feminist theory relates more to recognition of situation-based
variety in human experience that transcends race and gender based boundaries but is geared towards
progressive political action. My engagement with this worldly political Üstruggle' never deviates far from a
connection with a Maori spiritual world. Accordingly, in this paper I have attempted to emulate, despite my
earthly limitations, that which I see in Hine Titama as the omniscient aroha of a Maori goddess.
I have been discerning in my choice of postcolonial feminist terms. This choice is related to my understanding
of Maori culture, including art, mythology and politics that resonate in a wider, more transnational world beyond
New Zealand's shores. References to the Maori deity Hine-titama permeate this paper. These references have
connections, in some cases obvious and in others implicit, with other examples of Kahukiwa's art. Paintings
such as Hine-Titama evoke notions of the strength, vitality and potential of Maori women. The goddess Hinetitama can also be incorporated into a recognition, based on compassion not self-aggrandisement, of the
negative consequences of an over-simplistic approach to art analysis. With this incorporation in mind, I have
attempted a more complex and rigorous analysis of Robyn Kahukiwa art and the sociopolitical, culturally-based
world she inhabits. There is a necessary and politically progressive intersection between the examples of
feminist thought I have given and Kahukiwa's art and life. Therefore, I conclude that a certain, criticallyassessed, selection of feminist analyses intersect with Kahukiwa and the art and life of some, though not all,
other Maori women artists.
In my survey of postcolonial feminist discourses, I have been particularly inspired by Irihapeti Ramsden's
Ücritical struggle' from Gayatri Spivak's Üshuttling aporetic position'. My personal reading of Kahukiwa's
paintings (Hine-Titama is only one of many examples) also encourages me to contribute responsibly to the need
for rigorous analysis. Mine is a politically-based critical Üstruggle' to extend knowledge about Maori women
artists and the visual and literary representation of Maori women within and beyond the Academy.
References
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6. Magazine & Journal Articles Massad, Joseph The politics of desire in the writings of Ahdaf
Soueif.(novelist) Journal of Palestine Studies v28, n4 (Summer, 1999):74 (1 pages).
Abstract: This review of the works of novelist Ahdaf Soueif explores the major aesthetic and political themes of
her novels and short stories. Soueif's honesty in exploring questions of sexual desire, intercultural dialogue, and
the politics of language are further examined in the accompanying interview.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Institute for Palestine Studies. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.
In contrast to Arab novelists writing in French (Etel Adnan, Tahar ben Jalloun, Assia Djebar, Abd el-Kabir
Khatibi, Kateb Yacine, inter alia), only a few Arabs have written poetry or novels in English, and fewer still have
made names for themselves in the English-speaking world. This short list was inaugurated by the Lebanese
Jibran Khalil Jibran, whose success in gaining recognition in the West and in the Arab world was
unprecedented. Few since have approached this achievement. Palestinian writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's
Hunters in a Narrow Street, Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali's Beer in the Snooker Club, or Palestinian writer
Fawaz Turki's The Disinherited are some such attempts, although Ghali's novel stands in a class of its own.
But a new name has suddenly emerged on the scene: Ahdaf Soueif. Although she received rave reviews for
her first collection of short stories, Aisha, published in 1983, it was Soueif's first novel In the Eye of the Sun,
published in 1992, that launched this talented writer onto the international scene. Critical acclaim poured in from
every corner of the English-and Arabic-speaking worlds, reigniting interest in Aisha. Soueif followed with a
second book of short stories in 1996 called Sandpiper and the same year published a collection of short stories
translated into Arabic under the title Zinat al-Hayah. Both books received more acclaim, with Zinat al-Hayah
winning a 1996 award. Soueif's second novel, The Map of Love, to be published in Britain in June (by
Bloomsbury), is her fourth book and second novel to date. Aside from Arabic, her work has been translated into
Dutch, French, German, and Italian. Soueif is perhaps the first Arab writer of English fiction since Jibran to
achieve such recognition.
Soueif's writings investigate the possibilities of cultural dialogue as well as the politics of desire, both within and
outside this dialogue. Desire, in Soueif's work, always exists in a context of politics, history, and geography, all
of which are intermeshed and cannot be disentangled. She works through this intricate web, tirelessly
portraying the difficulty and ease of negotiating desire on such dangerous terrain. Central to her investigations
is the encounter of East and West, of Arabic and English, and of men and women in an intercultural context.
Soueif explores the lives of middle class and poor Egyptian women (Muslim, Christian, Arab, and Greek), as
well as the lives of foreign expatriates, American, Canadian, English, Turkish, black, white. These characters
and their psychologies emerge as the effects of all that surrounds them - culture, domestic and international
politics, economics, society, family, and above all desire and love. Everything about them is overdetermined in
intricate and simple ways and rendered in a prose of high aesthetic quality.
Soueif identifies strongly with her characters. The heroine of her first collection, Aisha, shares with Soueif the
first letter of her first name (as it is spelled in English), as do her subsequent heroines, Asya al-'Ulama in In the
Eye of the Sun and Sandpiper and Amal in The Map of Love, giving these characters an autobiographical bent.
Soueif's aim is to cut through the confusion and stereotypes of society; the dissimulation of international,
national, and family politics; and the secure matrix through which life and its desires are defined. The journey of
her characters is not one where liberation is the necessary telos, but rather the complex process through which
the unfolding of desire(s) - sexual, social, economic, and political - is shaped by the characters themselves and
all that surrounds them. It is this complicated picture that is painted by Ahdaf Soueif's meticulous brush.
THE BILDUNGSROMAN
In the Eye of the Sun is a coming of age novel in the European Romantic tradition of the bildungsroman. Its
cultural referents, however, are always varied and multilayered. Although the title of the novel comes from a
Kipling poem, the Arab reader of this novel cannot miss its resonance with the famous 1960s song of Egyptian
singer Shadia: "Tell the eye of the sun not to get too hot, for my heart's beloved sets out in the morning."
Although Soueif cites many songs in her novel, she never cites this one, letting it linger in the cultural
preconscious of its Arab reader.
This is both an English and an Arabic novel in ways that are truly fascinating. Soueif transforms English into
Arabic and Arabic into English in revolutionary ways. This is not limited to her rendering of Arabic phrases into
English without any syntactic compromises ("God gives earrings to those without ears," "He is like a grain of salt
which dissolved," "Long live he who sees you," etc.), but also in the very narrative structure of the novel, in its
very affect. English is reworked by Soueif to tell the story of Asya al-'Ulama, a young Egyptian girl who visits
Britain as a child, grows up in Cairo where she finishes high school and college, marries her sweetheart, and
then moves alone to England to pursue her doctorate in linguistics (though he joins her later for a brief stay).
Her journey to England - like the many Arabs before her whose fictionalized journeys were registered in novels
like al-Tayyib Salih's Mawsim al-Hijra Ila al-Shamal, Tawfiq al-Hakim's 'Usfur min al-Sharq, Yahya Haqqi's Qindil
Umm Hashim, Baha' Tahir's Bi al-Amsi Halimtu Bika - frames a number of developments, including her
continued pursuit of self-actualization, the use of Egypt as a referent and measure by which England is
evaluated, and her ongoing exploration of emotional and sexual desires. Several of these developments had
already been present during Asya's Cairo period. England, however, was a time and a place in her life that
gave a new context that shaped them. This is not the first time that Soueif transports an Egyptian girl or woman
to the heart of Empire. In Aisha, we witness the journey of a teenage Aisha to England, a strange and exotic
place, where she cannot seem to fit in. Unlike much of the Arabic literary genre within which she is writing,
Soueif sends her female, not male, characters to Europe.
It is Asya al-'Ulama who explores the meanings of home and exile through interweaving the personal and the
social and the political and the sexual.
England is not reduced to the imperial center that it was, although its imperial role is never ignored. The British
Empire was " b uilt of course on Egyptian cotton and debt, on the wealth of India, on the sugar of the West
Indies, on centuries of adventure and exploitation ending in the division of the Arab world and the creation of the
state of Israel etc. etc. etc." (pp. 511-12).
The motor of this story is Asya's quest to combine love and desire. When she met Saif as a teenager, she
experienced both. As her parents insisted that she could not marry Saif until she finished college, and as Saif
refused to consummate their sexual desires before the marriage despite Asya's insistent requests, Asya longed
for the marriage that would finally consummate her love and desire for Saif. But, the moment their romance had
social sanction through the official engagement, it ceased to be the organizing principle of the relationship.
When the wedding night arrived, the moment of consummation failed. In naming her leading male character
"Saif," which is related to "Soueif," Soueif is identifying (and affiliating) with him. There is, however, an
ambivalence about this identification. Perhaps, it is here that the autobiographical element is strongest, as
Soueif's ambivalent identification with Saif coupled with Asya's inability to consummate her relationship with him
might be the effect of an unconscious incest taboo at work. For Asya, however, the failure to consummate the
relationship was to function as an indefinite deferment of the combining of love and desire. From then on, Asya
could only have one or the other, never both.
DESIRE AND CULTURE
Asya's journey of learning teaches her the difference between love and desire. When she finally consummates
her sexual desire with Gerald Stone, an overbearing uncouth English hippie (who is the antithesis of the
debonair, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan Saif) she realizes that only desire, not love, was involved. She is
also attuned to how race and sex are intertwined in the West. She questions Gerald:
"Why have all your girl-friends been from 'developing' countries?"
"What?"
"You've never had a white girl-friend, why?"
"I don't think that way, man."
"Yes you do - and the reason you've gone to Trinidad - Vietnam - Egypt - is so you can feel superior. You can
be the big white boss - you are a sexual imperialist -"
"You don't even believe what you're saying," Gerald laughs.
"Yes I do. You pretend - to yourself as well - that it's because you don't notice race - or it's because these
cultures retain some spiritual quality lost to the West - you pride yourself that you dance 'like a black man' - but
that's all just phoney - " (p. 723)
There she was, hopelessly in love with her husband Saif, who would not, could not sleep with her, while being
utterly desirous of the unlovable Gerald. Asya finally rids herself of both, gets her Ph.D., and returns home to
Cairo, love and desire remaining separate and ununifiable.
In the Eye of the Sun is far more than Asya's emotional journey. Soueif meticulously documents not only Asya's
emotional life but also that of the Arab world. In the Eye of the Sun takes us from the devastating defeat of the
Arabs in the 1967 War and the shock of Nasir's sudden death to the massacres of Palestinians in Jordan,
Sadat's new era, the bread riots of 1977, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Washington Post's list of foreign
leaders on the CIA payroll. She is also a chronicler of cultural politics. We listen to Umm Kulthum's "al-Atlal"
and its political overtones and read the incomparable explication of al-Shaykh Imam's "Sharraft Ya Nixon Baba"
as an instance of the (im)possibility of a certain type of cultural dialogue. We listen to Western pop and rock.
Even film actors such as Mahmud Mursi and Ahmad Mazhar make an appearance, as do directors and films,
including Pasolini, Fellini, and Rossellini's Roma, Citta Aperta. The reader is also subjected to a litany of
technical aspects of Asya's linguistics dissertation. These are not simple props that carry the narrative, they are
all integral to Asya's emotional journey of learning and knowledge.
Edward Said has described Soueif as "one of the most extraordinary chroniclers of sexual politics now writing."
That she indeed is. Soueif explores desire not as a Western binary of hetero- and homosexual desire, but
rather as a fluid set of possibilities existing on a continuum. It is this that allows her to describe in a short story,
"Her Man" (in Aisha), how two poor Egyptian women (co-wives) can experience sexual pleasure together as well
as with men, albeit as a ruse so that one of them can get her man by having him divorce the other. In "The
Apprentice" (in Aisha), where Soueif registers her major reference to male homosexual desire, she seems less
comfortable, as she registers it only as aggression. A young poor boy, Yosri, newly employed at a ladies' hair
salon, Salon Romance, begins to explore his desire for his female customers through a series of sensual
encounters with their hair, heads, and ears. His sensuality is reflected sartorially, through his donning white
denims, a dark blue shirt, unbuttoned half way, and a gold chain with a Pisces pendant on his chest. In his new
attire, Yosri arouses the desire of a manly mechanic who seems intent on having his way with the young
feminized
apprentice (the mechanic was the realization of some mythical pirates of whom the women at the salon had
spoken: "Maybe they worked both ways. Took what they could find. Sometimes a boy, sometimes a
woman..."). The encounter is announced at the end of the short story, but unlike female homosexual desire in
"Her Man," male homosexual desire is not explored as pleasure. The only other time that mention is made of
male homosexual acts is in the context of defeat, when an angry and humiliated Saif tells Asya, after she
informs him about her affair with Gerald Stone in ln the Eye of the Sun, "You can invite him back and he can
fuck me too" (p. 633).
Soueif also explores incestuous desire sensitively in "The Water Heater" (in Sandpiper). A young God-fearing
law student named Salah averts his eyes on the street from women lest he be tempted by sinful desires. His
sexual self-discipline, however, erupts in an uncontrollable and incessant desire for his younger sister Faten.
So as not to compromise himself, he sacrifices his sister, making her pay for his sinful thoughts by marrying her
off to a cousin, sabotaging her plans to continue her university education.
In tracking these inter-and crosscultural rhetorics of desire and discovery, Soueif's literary techniques are varied,
including a sophisticated use of stream of consciousness. She uses letters, diaries, flashbacks, and political
communiques to contextualize, layer, and interrupt the narrative, creating prose of shimmering complexity.
Soueif is unwilling to close the book (literally) on her major characters or on important episodes in their lives.
There is always something that exceeds the characters and that Soueif still wants to explore. This is evident in
the reappearance of a number of incidents and characters from (and within) Aisha in In the Eye of the Sun.
Asya al-'Ulama herself, as well as other characters from In the Eye of the Sun, spill over beyond the perimeter of
that novel and into a number of short stories in Sandpiper and in Soueif's upcoming novel The Map of Love. In
these reincarnations, the reader is introduced to other aspects of these characters' lives, to different angles from
which to view certain of their experiences, or to more detail in narrating the same experiences. Time here is not
necessarily chronological. In Sandpiper, for example, Asya and episodes of her life are reexamined from a time
period that precedes the moment at which In the Eye of the Sun ends.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Soueif's temporal organization of her novels adds to both the bildungsroman aspects of her novels and to her
implicit discussion of the possibilities and pitfalls of crosscultural dialogue. In the Eye of the Sun begins in
medias res in July 1979 and goes back to May 1967, only to proceed chronologically again to April 1980. In
doing so, Soueif is telling a story that is still happening. This is quite different from the way she sets up a
dialogic of past-present juxtapositions in The Map of Love. The Map of Love begins with the present (1997) and
then transports the reader into a series of back-and-forth temporal peregrinations between the last fin de siecle
and the current one.
This playing with various time frames to organize narrative allows Soueif to explore another of her central
concerns more effectively, namely, geographic dislocation. If In the Eye of the Sun and Aisha took Arab women
and girls to the heart of Empire, Sandpiper and The Map of Love transport European and North American
women to the colonies. The Map of Love transports Anna Winterbourne, an English woman, at the last fin de
siecle from London to Cairo, and Isabel Perkman, an American woman, at the current fin de siecle from New
York to Cairo and back. Moreover, it transports the Egyptian-Palestinian Amal from London to Cairo and then
from Cairo to Tawasi in Upper Egypt, and takes Amal's brother 'Omar from New York to Palestine and Cairo and
back to New York.
In "Melody" (in Sandpiper), we are transported to a Gulf Arab country where a middle-class Canadian woman
(whose husband works there), in an air of superiority, describes her encounter with a middle class Turkish
woman, Ingie (whose husband also works there). Ingie's husband wants her to bear more children. She
pretends to agree but surreptitiously takes contraceptive pills. The Canadian, on the other hand, wants more
children, but her husband had a vasectomy to make sure she does not trick him. What is fascinating about this
short story is the subtlety with which Soueif explores the blindness of the white Canadian to her own experience
of sexist oppression-as she was too busy noticing that of her Turkish counterpart - which is concealed under a
facade of racial/cultural superiority.
The Map of Love ushers in moments of intercultural understanding and dialogue. Soueif, however, is all too
aware of the rarity of such achievements. She understands that the predominant Western journalistic interest in
the Arab world is not aimed at cultural dialogue and understanding, but rather at exoticizing the Arab and
Muslim other through covering topics like "the fundamentalists, the veil, the cold peace, polygamy, women's
status in Islam, female genital mutilation..." (p. 6). Still, the two Western characters in the novel, Anna and
Isabel, who fall in love with Arab men, Sharif Basha al-Baroudi and 'Omar al-Ghamrawi (thus reversing the
gender course that desire took in In the Eye of the Sun, where it was an Arab woman who desired an
Englishman), are fully capable of understanding the other. Their understanding is not necessarily based on the
obliteration of radical alterity and the transformation of the other into an approximation of the self (as is the case
with many Western do-gooders); rather, it is based on understanding the other on the other's own terms.
The Map of Love does not have the same autobiographical bent of Soueif's other writings. This is a fictional
love story that evolves within the context of real historical events. It begins at a moment when the British
Empire was an Empire and ends with the indefinite and unchecked growth of the American Empire and its
current "globalization." The old colonial order, when the British roamed the country freely, is compared with the
present neocolonial globalized one: "It must be hard to come to a country so different, a people so different, to
take control and insist that everything be done your way. To believe that everything can only be done your
way.... I read the memoirs and the accounts of these long-gone Englishmen, and I think of the officials of the
American embassy and agencies today, driving through Cairo in their locked limousines with the smoked-glass
windows, opening their doors only when they are safe inside their Marine-guarded compounds" (p. 70). One
wonders if the American limousines and their smoked-glass windows are the veil that Americans must wear in
public spaces inhabited by dangerous, yet seductive, locals!
BRIDGING CULTURES
The Map of Love is a love story about an English aristocratic widow (Anna Winterbourne) who decides to travel
the empire and a middle-aged aristocratic Egyptian bachelor (Sharif Basha al-Baroudi). Anna, already
influenced by her English father-in-law's opposition to imperial expansion and racism (in the context of the Boer
War), is receptive to liberal ideas of anticolonial nationalism. Her friendship with Sharif's sister, Layla, is one of
the main bridges of cultural dialogue in the novel. Almost a century later, Isabel, the young New Yorker (who is
the great granddaughter of Anna and Sharif), falls in love with 'Omar al-Ghamrawi, a renowned New York-based
Egyptian-Palestinian musician. Her friendship with Areal ('Omar's sister) parallels that of Anna and Layla as a
contemporary cultural bridge. An important element that Soueif uses to effect a cultural dialogue is her creative
use of etymology in explaining Arabic words, which constitutes one of the many delicate pleasures that the
novel offers the reader. Here is Areal teaching Isabel Arabic:
"Qalb: the heart, the heart that beats, the heart at the heart of things.
Yes?"
She nods, looking intently at the marks on the paper.
"Then there's a set number of forms - a template almost - that any root can take. So in the case of 'qalb' you get
'qalab: to overturn, overthrow, turn upside down, make into the opposite; hence 'maqlab': a dirty trick, a turning
of the tables and also a rubbish dump. 'Maqloub': upside-down; 'mutaqallib':
changeable, and 'inqilab': coup...."
So at the heart of things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal.
Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you're blown away - (p. 82)
The novel is a sort of investigative story. Isabel finds an old trunk in her dying mother's belongings containing
mounds of paper written in Arabic and English. It is said that the trunk had traveled at the end of the previous
century from London to Cairo and back and then to New York. Isabel, an American journalist on assignment in
Egypt (1997/1998) writing an article on the millennium and Egyptian youth, brings the trunk with her so that
Amal can help her unravel its mysteries. It turns out that the trunk belonged to Isabel's great-grandmother,
Anna, and contains her journal entries, letters, and other papers as well as Layla al-Baroudi's letters and
writings. As the story is unraveled, we live, through these letters and memoirs, the love story of Anna and
Sharif, whose love persevered against many odds - the ostracism to which Anna was subjected by the English
colons in Cairo on account of her marrying an Egyptian and the questions raised about Sharif's nationalism by
Egyptian nationalists on account of his marrying a colonizer. This love story is paralleled by the more
complicated and fragmented love story between 'Omar al-Ghamrawi and Isabel. On the sidelines of these two
love stories is Amal, the investigator and unraveler. Whereas Anna and Sharif's love ends in tragedy in the
context of colonialism and anticolonial nationalism, the novel ends with Amal's hallucinatory apprehension that a
similar fate might be awaiting her brother and Isabel in our neocolonial globalized context.
Aside from the letters and memoirs, Soueif uses her skill as a writer to narrate certain sections in a way
reminiscent of both a traditional hakawati (Arab storyteller) style and that of Trollope, Dickens, and especially
Thackeray's Vanity Fair: "And so it is that our three heroines - as is only fitting in a story born of travel, unfolded
and shaken out of a trunk - set off upon their different journeys. Anna Winterbourne heads eastward out of
Cairo, bound for Sinai in the company of Sharif al-Baroudi. Amal al-Ghamrawi and Isabel Perkman take the
Upper Egypt road which will lead them to Tawasi, in the Governorate of Minya" (p. 164).
Whereas history and politics were almost hors de texte in In the Eye of the Sun, they are au fond du texte in The
Map of Love. As the fictional and the real are intermingled in terms of family relations and historical events, the
fictional characters become real historical figures that could very well have existed. The Baroudis, although
fictional characters, belong to a real family. Their paternal uncle Mahmoud Sami Basha al-Baroudi, in addition to
being an important poet, is one of the Egyptian heroes of the 'Urabi revolt. Other fictional characters belong to
the real Palestinian family of Khalidi.
Although politics sometimes overpower the narrative of The Map of Love, this perhaps was unavoidable in
maintaining the integrity of the text. Yet this beautiful and at times surreal novel, too, explores the politics of
desire and love.
The amount of historical research that Soueif must have undertaken to produce this novel is truly monumental.
She has familiarized herself with minute details about a period of Egyptian history (Autumn 1897-December
1913) that is not particularly well studied (except for the infamous shootings at Denshwai), as it is bracketed
between two revolutions - the 'Urabi revolt of 1882 and the 1919 revolution - to which it is subordinated. The
Mashriqi and Palestinian histories of the period are also meticulously revisited. From the beginning of the
Zionist colonial project to the apex of Arab anti-Ottomanism, Soueif transforms history into a guide to the
present. She renders historical actors real by giving them a tangible human dimension. Characters that play a
role or make an appearance include Shukri al-'Asali, Rashid Rida, Yusuf al-Khalidi, Theodor Herzl, Rabbi Zadok
Kahn, Cattaoui Pasha, and Shaykh Muhammad 'Abduh. Even a number of current characters are either real or
based on real people. 'Omar al-Ghamrawi, for example, is a fictionalized character loosely based on Palestinian
intellectual Edward Said.
The depth of Soueif's historical research, her enlivening the history she traverses in the novel, as well as her
concern with negotiating the problem of difference across the boundaries of culture, are evident in her
remarkable attention to clothes. Whereas her fastidious descriptions of clothes provide the reader with a tactile
feel for the characters, they also play another crucial role. As in "The Apprentice," where sartorial change
produced an epistemological change for Yosri, gender and cultural crossdressing in The Map of Love (Anna
wears the clothes of Western men as well as that of Arab women and men in order to travel incognito) signal a
complete epistemological break. When Anna dresses as an Egyptian Muslim woman in public, not only are her
looks transformed but so are her perceptions as well as those of others toward her. Thus disguised, she sees a
number of English aristocrats pass her by unawares at Cairo's train station: "but the oddest thing of all was that I
suddenly saw them as bright, exotic creatures, walking in a kind of magical space, oblivious to all around them;
at ease, chattering to each other as though they were out for a stroll in the park, while the people, pushed aside,
watched and waited for them to pass" (pp. 194-95). It is experiences like this one that helped Anna maintain
her culture and identity and understand - not appropriate as many do - that of the Oriental other. French, not
English or Arabic, is the medium of communication between Sharif and Anna (who was being taught Arabic by
Layla). French, it would seem was the most "neutral" of available languages for both.
Soueif's talent has been praised by a large number of Arab and Western literary figures and scholars. These
include Leila Ahmad, Radwa 'Ashur, Victoria Glendinning, Sun'allah Ibrahim, Frank Kermode, Hilary Kilpatrick,
Penelope Lively, Hilary Mantel, and Edward Said and Gabir 'Asfur. Soueif is a product of a middle-class
quintessentially Cairene intellectual milieu. Her mother, Fatmah Musa, is a well-known professor of English
literature at Cairo University, and her father, Mustafa Soueif, a professor of psychology at Cairo University who
used Ahdaf, when she was a child, as a case study in his dissertation. When she was born in 1950, they named
her "Ahdaf" to express their commitments to the aims and goals of the revolution to come. Soueif's interest in
language and psychology are perhaps the direct effect of her lineage. In In the Eye of the Sun, Soueif writes
that a "middle-aged spinster from Manchester came out to Cairo in the Thirties to teach English. A small untidy
12-year-old girl fell in love with her and lived and breathed English literature from that day on. That girl was my
mother." This may be so, but Soueif's feel for and understanding of language - any language - derive from a rare
intellect that is entirely Soueif's own achievement.
On a recent visit to Washington to read parts of her forthcoming The Map of Love at the Kennedy Center, Ahdaf
Soueif and I sat on 9 May at a sidewalk cafe for an interview.
JM: Your writing has a strong political inflection that varies in style depending on the novel. Macropolitics play
very important yet different roles in In the Eye of the Sun and in The Map of Love. What accounts for this
difference?
AS: Well, In the Eye of the Sun really started out as the story of Asya al-'Ulama and then the story of the family
and friends surrounding her. It was not possible to do that without the history and politics, but the impulse that
generated the novel was interest in this character and in her immediate circle. I think that it can be described as
a classical novel of education, as it were, of growing up. History and politics come into it only insofar as they
affect our protagonist and those around her: Chrissie's fiance lost in the Sinai in 1967 or Bassam being thrown
out of Egypt at the time of Camp David.
The impulse behind The Map of Love was different. It was more overtly historical and political, to do with
crosscultural relationships, with history, with the relationship of the Western world to Egypt and to our area. So,
there, the history and the politics are much more in the forefront, much more central to the novel and the plot.
Part of what The Map of Love is about is how much room personal relationships have in a context of politics and
history. And so history and politics are as much players as the characters maybe even more so.
JM: Stylistically, it seems to me that although politics are intermingled in the narrative of In the Eye of the Sun,
they also interrupt it to announce political events that seem external to the narrative yet provide background.
As you said, in The Map of Love, politics are very much part of the structure.
Is the difference between the two the difference between a bildungsroman and a historical novel?
AS: I'm a bit wary of the term "historical novel." But I think that the difference also reflects my preoccupations at
different stages of my life. In the bildungsroman, in Asya al-'Ulama's life, there is a large event, which is the
1967 War. She is also a child of the revolution and is shaped by it, but these are not the central problems of her
life. Her awareness, her consciousness is much more about her personal predicament, what she's going to do
with her life. I think that at the end of the book, her vision broadens to include a lot of things other than herself,
to see herself as part of all that she has come home to. In that sense, the politics in the novel do interrupt the
flow. I used to think that maybe I, as the writer, had not found the ideal way of merging the political information
necessary for this book into the narrative. That the method I chose - of cutting to documentary, as it were - was
not ideal. Now, I wonder if it would have been possible to do it any other way. How do you integrate something
that is, in a sense, extraneous to the inner life of your characters? There is a scene during the 1967 War, where
Asya goes down into the streets, and there the events are integrated. But on the whole, as a large event, it isn't,
because it did not directly impinge on her life at that point. In The Map of Love, it's quite different. The politics
are there from the beginning, and possibly that's because I now see politics and history as central to our lives,
and therefore I created a situation and characters to whom politics and history are central. Also, politics and
history are very much a part of the novel - in fact are an essential part of the engine that drives it.
JM: Your work is engaged in a certain type of sexual politics. In Aisha and in In the Eye of the Sun, desire is
foregrounded in the narrative, whereas it seems more subordinated in The Map of Love. Is the role of desire in
The Map of Love similar to the role of politics in In the Eye of the Sun?
AS: No, I wouldn't say that, because it is still central - it's still desire that brings the characters together, it's
desire that has shaped Amal's life into the way it has become. But desire itself is no longer the subject under
examination. Maybe that's just because I am older.
JM: I thought that perhaps the issue of time had something to do with it, the fact that in the late 1960s and the
1970s desire could be explored in ways it could not in the beginning and end of the century.
AS: It's possible. Certainly, the late 1960s and the 1970s was a time of breaking old conventions and old
taboos. Romance and sex seemed to be the focus of general concern, whereas now, it feels as if that's been
done and there are more general issues that people are concerned about. Coming close to the end of the
century, I suppose there is also a historical nerve exposed that makes you think in historical terms: to examine
where we are and why.
JM: The Map of Love also chronicles cultural history, and music has a pronounced presence - from al-Shaykh
al-Manyalawi and 'Abdu al-Hamuli to Umm Kulthum, al-Shaykh Imam, Layla Nazmi, and Sabreen. You also
chronicle Western musical genres and opera. Aside from the ambiance for a scene, what other roles does
music play in your writings?
AS: I think music does shape us in a way. It not only provides an ambiance in the novel, but also in life. For
me, when I remember certain moments, certain key events, they are always accompanied by the soundtrack, by
what music one was listening to then. So in In the Eye of the Sun, the music is pop/rock/soul and the songs that
were current in Egypt at the time. In The Map of Love, it's broader. There are the songs that drift up from the
street in today's Cairo. But there is also the beginning of "song" as we know it at the turn of the century. There
is also the sense of music representing Art in its healing or cathartic function. The thing that happens to Anna
when she hears Tosca's laments or Tosca's huge question, "What have I done to deserve this?" - for me, that
was quite central. It presents people caught up in a situation not of their own making yet having to deal with it.
There are two things, I suppose: how art expresses our lives and our feelings for us, and also what it does to our
feelings - the function that it performs in our lives.
JM: You have also used music as an occasion for cultural interpretation, for a certain crosscultural dialogue. It
seems to me that your interpretation of al-Shaykh Imam's song in In the Eye of the Sun instantiated a moment of
cultural dialogue of what is perhaps not translatable.
AS: Again, in both books, there is a concern with interpreting between cultures, which is expressed in The Map
of Love in the articles that Sharif writes and Anna translates for the world at large. Anna expresses the problem
quite clearly when she says, in effect, I am not talking about being able simply to translate from one language to
another, I am talking about being able to represent the feelings expressed in one language - to represent them
in an idiom that is immediately comprehensible in another culture. In In the Eye of the Sun, the al-Shaykh Imam
sequence tackles this head-on. In The Map of Love, there is a constant attempt to render Arabic into English,
not just to translate phrases but to render something of the dynamic of Arabic, how it works, into English. So,
there is this question of how to open a window into another culture, and is it doable?
JM: and also the function of roots, of etymology...
AS: That is the dynamic of the language, how the language works, and what it tells you about anything that's
said in that language and about how the people for whom this is a primary language think...
JM: Sort of what Edward Said calls the athletic flexibility of Arabic?
AS: Beautiful!
JM: Your work is considered sexually daring: from the two famous scenes in In the Eye of the Sun, the first
dealing with Asya's wedding night in a posh hotel room in Cairo, and the second when Asya sleeps with Gerald
in a rustic cottage in England, to the scene in "The Wedding of Zeina" in Aisha, when Zeina is being deflowered
in a village, to the scene between Zeina and her co-wife in "Her Man, "also in a village, and finally the rape
scene of Aisha by a butcher in "The Nativity" in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo. What is the function of
place in these scenes?
AS: I don't have any general guiding principle. Obviously, in "The Nativity," that act took place against a tomb in
a cemetery.... But, other than that, I don't know. Thinking of these scenes that you mention, what strikes me
now is that the one scene where the sexual act was not successful was where love was present. In the others
there was no love.
JM: One of your distinguishing characteristics as an Arab author writing in English is how sensitive you are to
"the politics of reception." You are careful not to censor anything that might be unflattering to the Arab world and
Egypt while simultaneously combining it with the proper contextualization. But your short stories "Her Man" and
"The Wedding of Zeina" left me a bit uneasy, not only reading them in English, but even were I to read them in
Arabic, given the middle-class Cairene and urban Egyptian attitudes and exoticization of the village and poor
urban folks. How do you imagine these stories being read?
AS: "The Wedding of Zeina" and "Her Man" were the first things I ever wrote, and at that time I wasn't really
aware of "the politics of reception." I had sat down to write, and I had assumed that I was going to write in
Arabic. But the words didn't come, the Arabic didn't happen for me, the words came in English. That was the
area where I was struggling. I kept trying to write in Arabic, because I hadn't thought that I would write in
English. Eventually, it was a choice between writing in English or not writing at all, so I wrote in English. So the
whole problematic of what it meant to be writing in English had not occurred to me at all - these early stories
might just as well have been written in Arabic. These are the two stories that I feel most distant from now, but
they got me a lot of attention in England and were very popular.
I think that in itself tells us something about this whole question.
JM: Well, what does it tell us?
AS: It tells us, I suppose, that there is a certain amount of, I hesitate to use the term "exoticization," because
again that wasn't something that I was doing consciously. If it's there at all, it's because genuinely for me these
stories describe an exotic world. So, in the sense of what I was doing, I was doing something genuine and real.
I was turning into fiction stories or fragments of stories that I had heard. But reading them now, I can see that
they do present Egypt or the East in terms that perhaps the West is comfortable with: as a world that is very
traditional, very close to magic, ritualistic, a little brutal, and very sensual - our world as perceived by aficionados
of the Arabian Nights. And that is possibly why they struck a chord immediately. Because, that was the Eastern
world that the West was comfortable with and wanted to read about.
JM: You have a wonderful way of rendering Arabic phrases into English without any syntactic compromises.
The Arabic syntax of the phrases, most of the time, remains intact, and yet is understandable to readers of
English. Does your training in stylistics contribute to this talent?
AS: If so, it's at a subconscious level. I only do this in two sets of circumstances: when it is not possible to have
an English equivalent, and in cases where if you were to transpose the phrase into proper English, the character
would step out of character.
Actually, when I'm doing dialogue, I sort of hear it in my head. If it's in Arabic, I hear it in my head in Arabic
while my fingers are typing it out in English, more or less automatically. I don't know whether that's to do with
training in stylistics or whether it has to do with being so immersed in language that you are genuinely thinking in
two languages at the same time and move automatically between them. Sometimes I'll read an article or a
letter, and afterward I'll remember the content, but not what language I read it in. So I do have this real "merger"
in my head between Arabic and English. Radwa 'Ashur, in her article about In the Eye of the Sun, said that the
English was a sort of transparent veil through which you could see the Arabic and that the English followed the
rhythm of Arabic in those places. I suppose I am writing in Arabic disguised as English!
JM: Whereas Aisha, In the Eye of the Sun, and parts of Sandpiper seem autobiographical in nature, The Map of
Love is not. Are you moving away from the autobiographical genre?
AS: I think that with Aisha, I was definitely putting down things that I had known. Stories I had been told, things I
had seen. "Knowing," for example, is very much a record of being thirteen in England. In the Eye of the Sun is
a bit more complex, a bit more removed, but still, a lot of the characters are drawn from life, and the
consciousness of Asya al-'Ulama is my consciousness at her age. In The Map of Love, it was time to break
away - there is an attempt to create characters and situations that have nothing to do with me and with my life.
It was quite scary. I've been very heartened by the fact that the few people who have read it already liked it. In
my heart, at the deepest level, it's like if this one comes off, if it speaks to people, then I am a novelist, because
I've actually created a story and its people out of nothing.
JM: One of the amazing things about The Map of Love is the way the reader is led to disentangle history from
fiction, since you have real historical figures among the fictional characters. What was your aim here?
AS: I think that I've become more and more convinced that most everything we do is determined by our context.
And that embraces the wider context as well.
To understand a character, to work out their motivations, reactions, what they're capable of and what they're
not, is all tied to their history, to what
surrounds them. In The Map of Love, what I was trying to do was to explore the possibilities and the limitations
of their personal life under particular historical circumstances - what happens when a man, who has lived his life
by nationalist principles, falls in love with a member of the force that is occupying his country, for example? I
wanted to map out my characters' lives against a genuine historical background. Why should I invent a
historical background, when it's all there really? What I did was to take history as it was, working out what was
happening month by month, and then map my characters' lives against it - if they were really living at that time,
then how would they have dealt with these things? What would these things have meant to them? How far did
public events encroach upon their personal life?
So, everything in The Map of Love that's historical is real, and all the historical characters are real. Slotted
within that are my fictional characters.
JM: Your work is replete with literary references. Who are the writers who have influenced your work?
AS: The obvious influences are the nineteenth-century novelists - George Eliot, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Theirs are
the books that I read when I was growing up and go back to again and again - the books that do for me what I
want a novel to do, which is to open up a new world and seduce me into it, to make me feel that I am living there
and getting to know these people.
JM: But it seems that there are specific novels that influenced In the Eye of the Sun. I mean, you speak in it
about Madame Bovary not L'education sentimentale. You don't speak about War and Peace, you speak about
Anna Karenina, you speak about Middlemarch not Daniel Deronda. So I think that Asya ends up, clearly
unconsciously, sort of seeing herself through these characters.
AS: Yes. But it is also interesting, I suppose, that these are all novels that are primarily about women, about a
woman finding or not finding herself.
But there are other novels as well. For example, I am influenced by all the Mills and Boone books that I read as
a teenager, which are a kind of subliterary rendition of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. One novelist who I
really feel close to is Colette. She is primarily interested in romance and in personal relationships - although she
wrote a wonderful book about her mother, Sido. She is also unashamedly interested in clothes and in makeup
and living the good life and all the fripperies that make up so much of our lives. Yet, her novels end up being
about something bigger than that. For me, she very successfully and creatively treads that fine line where you
could tip over into sentimentality - into the "woman's novel" in the derogatory sense - and yet you don't. I feel
very close to her. I love her work and the risks that she takes.
JM: What about modern Arabic literature?
AS: My problem is that I live in England and that therefore I am not as au courant of what's happening on the
Arabic literary scene as I ought to be, and probably what I read is quite haphazard. I did read a fair amount of
what was current when I was growing up. I still remember the air of excitement in the house when al-Liss wa alKilab came out, as my mother was one of the main critics who wrote about Naguib Mahfuz. This was a major
event for her. I still remember that. I read al-Tayyib Salih, I read Naguib Mahfuz, I read Yusif Idriss and Fathi
Ghanim, a lot of current poetry, but in the end I read more English. Maybe it was because English was the
language I first read in - the time I started to read was the time I was in England, when I was four till I was
seven. Of course I am constantly trying to catch up, but the limitations of time and place probably mean that
what I read is haphazard. There are writers that I admire, Huda Barakat is one, for example, and Radwa 'Ashur,
and Sahar Khalifa. I think that the first novel that I identified with in Arabic was Latifa al-Zayyat's al-Bab alMaftuh. One can clearly see why. There was also a book called al-Hubb wa al-Samt, by 'Inayat al-Zayyat. I
think she committed suicide afterward, but that also was a very real book for me. These are the two books that I
identified with in Arabic.
JM: Why do you think your work has been received so well in both the Western and the Arab worlds?
AS: I think that the reasons are not identical. They overlap, but they're not identical. Where they overlap has
something to do with.., maybe it is not exactly the right word, but in shorthand one could speak about honesty,
or insistence on honesty, if you like. You write what you believe to be true in a profound sense, and you do it
absolutely as well as you can. I think that if you do that, if you write from the heart, then your words find an echo
in the readers' hearts. That's one thing.
In the West, I think that part of why people liked my work is because they felt that it gives them an insight into
another world, into the hearts and minds of people they would not have access to otherwise. Because the
books are written in English - without the medium of translation - because the form is familiar to them, they find
that they respond to it, and they're able to empathize. In the East, people have said that even though the writing
is in English, that this is an authentic Arab voice, an authentic Arab wigdan inner soul, passion, or sensibility ,
which is being expressed in English. It's as if these stories speak for them, in a way, as if they're their emissary
to the world at large. So, I guess I'm lucky - to have the Arab wigdan and the English language, I mean.
JM: Do you have plans to have your novels translated to Arabic?
AS: Yes. When In the Eye of the Sun came out, and it was very well received and annexed, if you like, into the
Arabic novel, bits of it were translated, and people who had no access to English liked them. So, I became
aware that I should be in Arabic as well. But translating In the Eye of the Sun was a very big project, and by that
time I was already beginning to work on The Map of Love and wasn't able to do anything about it. As an
experiment, I had some short stories translated, but when I read the translations, I didn't recognize them as my
work and had to rework them, which told me that I would have to do the same thing for the novel. But there
again you run up against the problem of time. However, in that experiment of having my work translated, there
was one story, "Sandpiper," that when translated was immediately "mine," that was how I would have written it
in Arabic. This story was translated by my mother. So we decided to try to translate The Map of Love ourselves
- my mother will translate Anna's journals and Amal's narrative, and I will translate Layla's narrative and some of
Amal's scenes. We'll see how that goes, but it's a very interesting exercise. What I would really like is for The
Map of Love to come out in Arabic very soon after the English comes out.
JM: Palestine seems to have a very important place in your writings, lt appears in so many places and in so
many different ways. What is the function of Palestine in the novels and for you?
AS: For me, I grew up in Nasir's Egypt, and the Palestinian issue was central to the national project that was
being dreamed of and, we thought, being implemented at that time. I had a lot of Palestinian friends. It was a
firsthand witnessing. In In the Eye of the Sun, the character Bassam, who married Noura, is Palestinian. Just
seeing the stages of his life and what happens to him becomes something that touches you very closely. And
then, ideologically, it's a very big problem for me that what is possibly the greatest injustice in the twentieth
century perpetrated upon an entire people is not perceived as such. I think that Palestine is constantly at the
heart of our relationship with the West, that whatever happens, we see it against the background of what has
been done and continues to be done in Palestine. It's part of one's consciousness on a daily basis. In The Map
of Love, it's very clear that the idea of the creation of a Jewish homeland was part of the general colonial
enterprise, which has now been recognized for what it was, except for the case of Palestine, which continues to
be seen as creating a home for a people without a home and all the rest of it. The Palestine question really has
everything: the basic injustice to the Palestinians and the colonial enterprise that continues to this day but that is
like a chameleon, changing its form to suit the spirit of the age. And of course, Israel and Israeli activities affect
what happens in the entire region today and are a tremendous destabilizing, erosive force.
JOSEPH MASSAD is assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University.
He is also an assistant editor of JPS.