Abstract

‘ARAB MARES NEVER CRY’: ARAB WOMEN’S DECISION TO RESIST IN FADIA FAQIR’S PILLARS OF SALT

MARWA ISMAIL KHALIL, ASST PROF DR AZHAR NOORI FEJER

Volume: 9 Issue: 1 2019

Abstract:

Most feminist works about women in general and Arab women in particular are actually conducted to confine common themes such as religion, class, gender, identity formation, but the most important intersectional theme is women empowerment; women with the realms of sexuality, domestication and subjugation. Arab women have been continuously projected as weak and helpless figures with no voice or identity nor salvation especially during colonialism while they suffered double othering. This paper deals with the Anglophone Arab writer Fadia Faqir’s novel Pillars of Salt (1996) that reveals this issue evidently. Relying on Jame C. Scott’s term ‘infra-politics,’ the paper would present Mahaʼs fruitful resistance that detects her as a living individual more than an object of subjugation and possession. Scott’s ‘infra-politics’ which deals with ‘every day resistance’ is a form of spontaneous illegal or unintentional acts, abandonment, withdrawals, silence and inaction. It is evident Arab women sole way to express themselves and face their persistent subordination and oppression through Faqir’s main character, Maha.

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