Narrative Alienation and Representations of the Self and the Other in the Contemporary Arab Feminist Novel

Abstract

Women’s venture into the realm of novelistic writing has marked a radical paradigm shift in the structure of contemporary Arab literary discourse. It has effectively destabilized the central male hegemony that had long been entrenched in the collective and cultural consciousness for centuries as the absolute "center of the universe" and existence.

Feminist writing was by no means a mere aesthetic luxury or emotional outpouring; rather, it emerged as a conscious act of resistance. It initiated from a meticulous examination of the self and the depiction of its inner worlds, subsequently expanding to lay bare the underlying mechanisms of the patriarchal order. Furthermore, it lifted the veil on the manifestations of both physical and symbolic violence—such as oppression, exclusion, rape, and forced marriage—which women endure in their daily realities. This narrative shift has ignited a profound value-based and epistemological conflict within the contemporary feminist novelistic corpus, fundamentally reshaping the dialectical relationship between the feminine "Self" and the dominant "Other."

In this context, the manifestations of violence inflicted upon women multiply as a deeply rooted structural phenomenon within the patriarchal authority. This violence does not stop at the boundaries of physical and material abuse; rather, it extends to encompass symbolic, cultural, and linguistic dimensions that reinforce what can be termed the "culture of silence." Consequently, it poses a direct threat and inflicts a genuine alienation upon the Arab feminine identity and its human essence.