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Circles of Oppression, Circles of Repression: Etel Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Thomas Foster
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Abstract

The Lebanese writer Etel Adnan's novel Sitt Marie Rose tells the story of the title character's execution during the Lebanese civil war and thus questions the gendered body's status within the historical narrative of nationalist thought in the postcolonial world. Through this focus on gender issues, the novel examines what Adnan calls “tribal mentality” without reproducing Western orientalizing assumptions about the Arab world and its “underdevelopment.” The novel's self-consciousness about the problems of postcolonial narration offers a new perspective on Gayatri Spivak's question, “Can the subaltern speak?” In doing so, the novel also reflects my own status as a Western reader.

Type
Special Topic: Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition
Information
PMLA , Volume 110 , Issue 1: Special Topic Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition , January 1995 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1995

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