Email this article 
Hide
Show all
Autonomous Histories of Muslim Women Cultural Poetics; A Critical Reading of the Personal/Academic Narratives of Leila Ahmed and Amina Wadud
Abstract
Louis Montrose's "Professing the Renaissance: the Poetics and Politics of Culture" renewed concern with the historical, social and political conditions of literary productions (1989). He suggested a platform through which autonomous aesthetics and academic issues to be understood as inextricably linked to other discourses. While autobiography is considered as a "writing back," I argue here that it is rather a strategic transitional act that connects the past with the present and remaps the future. Though a very personal opening, autobiography is seen as a documentation of public events from a personal perspective. Academic autobiographies like Arab American history professor Leila Ahmad's A Border Passage from Cairo to America; A Woman’s Journey (2012) and African American theology professor Amina Wadud’s Inside the Gender Jihad (2008) are two examples of the production of interwoven private and public histories. The personal opening in such narratives is an autonomous act that initiates cross-disciplinary dialogues that trigger empowerment and proposes future changes. In that sense, these autobiographies are far from being mere stories of the past. Conversely, they are tools of rereading one's contributions and thus repositioning the poetics and politics of culture as testimonial narratives. Employing post-colonial, Islamic feminism and new historicism, the aim of this study is to critically read the above academic/personal two autobiographies as examples of the private/ public negotiations of culture. It also aims to explore the dialogue between the literary, historical and social elements as they remap the future of women in Muslim societies and the diaspora.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abou El Fadl, Khaled, Foreword, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam, One World Publishing, USA, 2008, vii-xvii.
Aboul-Ela, Hosam, Edward Said's "Out of Place": Criticism, Polemic, and Arab-American Identity, MELUS, Vol. 31, No. 4, Arab American Literature (Winter, 2006), 5-32.
Afzal-Khan, Fawzia ed. Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out, Olive Branch Press, US, 2005.
Ahmed, Leila, A Border Passage: From Cairo to America- a Woman’s Journey. New York: Penguin (1999, 2012).
---- Women & Gender in Islam, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1992. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 February 2016
---- "Early Islam and the position of women: The problem of interpretation." Keddie, N. and Baron, B. (Eds), 1991. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 February 2016 Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174138
---- “Women and the Advent of Islam”. Signs 11.4, 1986, 665–691.
Anderson, L. R. Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered futures. Prentice Hall, USA, 1997.
Badran, Margot, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt; Princeton University Press, New Jersey,1995.
Barbour, J. D., "The Consolations and Compensations of Exile: Memoirs by Said, Ahmed, and Eire. Journal Of The American Academy Of Religion,79(3), 706-734, 2011.
Barlas, Asma; Believing Women in Islam, Understanding Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an, University of Texas Press, Austin (seventh reprinting) 2011.
-------, "The Qur'an, Sexual Equality, and Feminism" University of Toronto, January 12, 2004. Online: ttp://www.asmabarlas.com/TALKS/20040112_UToronto.pdf date of access: 1-13-2013.
Bhavnani, Kum-Kum, & Meg Coulson, "Race," A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory, Mary Eagleton ed. Blackwell Publishing: MA, 2003
--------"The Influence of Social Movements on Articulations of Race and Gender in Black Women's Autobiographies," Gender and Society, 1999, 120-37.
Calderini, S. “Islam and Diversity: Alternative Voices within Contemporary Islam”. New Blackfriars, 89(1021), 324-336. 2008. Web. 13 February 2016 Retrieved from 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2008.00224.x
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York, Routledge, 1991.
Davis, R. G. Academic autobiography as women's history: Jill Ker Conway's True North and Leila Ahmed's A Border Passage. Rethinking History, 13(1), 109-123. 2009. Web. 13 February 2016 Retrieved from ProQuest ebrary. http://www.jstor.org/stable/317413810.1080/1364252080263970
Doorn- Harder, Pieternella, Women Shaping Islam; Reading the Qur'an in Indonesia; University of Illinois Press, Urbana, and Chicago, 2006.
Duderija, Adis; " Review of A. Barlas: Believing Women in Islam- Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an", Middle East Studies Online Journal, Volume 1 No2. 2010, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174138Date of access 1-13-2013.
Fernea, Warnock; In Search of Islamic Feminism, One Woman's Global Journey Anchor Books, and New York: 1998.
Fieldman, Keith. "Poetic Geographies: Interracial Insurgency in Arab American Autobiographical Spaces," Arab Woman’s Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing. Nawar Al Hasan Golley (ed.), Syracuse University Press, NY, 2007.
Golley, Nawar Al Hasan, Reading Arab Women’s Autobiographies, University of Texas Press, Austin 2006.
Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1980- 2005.
Hammer, Juliane. "Identity, Authority, and Activism: American Muslim Women Approach to Quran," the Muslim World, Oct. 2008, 443-64.
Hassan, Wail, and Arab- "American autobiography and the reinvention of identity: Two Egyptian Negotiations." Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 22: 7-38, 2002.
Imtoual, Alia “A View From Feminist Muslim Scholarship," Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 25, No. 66, December 2010.
Jordan, June. Some of Us Did Not Die, New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002.
Karmarae and Treichler, A Feminist Dictionary, Pandora Press, 1985,http://www.jstor.org/stable/464171
Jardim, Georgina L, Dr. Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture. Farnham, GB: Ashgate, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 February 2016.
Al Khadrawy, Deeb. Dictionary of Islamic Terms, Al Yamama Publication, Damascus, 2004. http://www.waqfeya.com/book.php?bid=6538
Lorde, Audre Sister Outsider; Essays& Speeches by Audre Lorde. New York: Crossing Press. 1984, 2007.
Mernissi, Fatima, Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory, London: Zed, 1996.
Montrose, Louis “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture” in Literary Theory: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, MA, 2006.
Myers, D. G. "New Historicism in Literary Studies," Academic Questions, March, Volume 2, Issue 1, 27–36, 1989.
Nash, Geoffrey. “From Harem to Harvard; Cross-Cultural Memoir in Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage” In Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 351-370, 2009.
Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan (ed.) “Introduction: Writing the Past” in Literary Theory: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, MA, 2006.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Sharawi, Huda. Harem Years: The Memories of an Egyptian Feminist. Trans. Margot Badran. Virago, London 1986.
Al-Sharmani, Mulki. "Islamic Feminism, Transnational and National Reflections," Approaching Religion, vol. 4. No. 2, 83-94, 2014.
Smith, Barbra. "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave, Old Westbury, NY, Feminist Press, 1982.
Smith, Jane. “American Muslims and Religious Pluralism”1. Religion Compass, 5(5), 192-201. 2011. doi:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00270.x
Sundquist, Eric. "Melville, Delany, and New World Slaver," in Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan (ed.) Literary Theory: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, MA, 2006. 621-40.
Tuppurianen, Anne Johanna." Challenges Faced by Muslim Women: an Evaluation of the Writings of Leila Ahmed, Elizabeth Fernea, Fatima Mernissi and Amina Wadud", Ph.D. Thesis, University of South Africa, May 2010 http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/3951/thesis_tuppurainen_a.pdf.txt?sequence=3 date of access 31/1/2013.
Wadud, Amina. Qur'an and Woman, Re-reading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, Oxford University press, New York: 1999.
--------,"Qur'an, Gender and the Interpretive Possibilities," HAWA2, 3, Koninklijke Brill, NY, Leiden, 2004.
--------, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam, One World Publishing, USA, 2008.
-------,"American by Force, Muslim By Choice." Political Theology 12.5 (2011): 699-705. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Whitlock, Gillian. Postcolonial Life Narrative, Testimonial Transactions, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Vinson, Pauline Homsi. “Shaharazadian Gestures in Arab Women’s Autobiographies: Political History, Personal Memory, and Oral Matrilineal Narratives in the Works of Nawal El Saadawi and Leila Ahmed," NWSA Journal, Vo. 20, no. 1 (spring). 78- 98 2008.
Yaqin, Amina. “Autobiography and Muslim Women’s Lives” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 25. No.2. 171-184, 2013.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.2p.192
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.