Description
In contemplating the ailing, patriarchal nations and the marginalized role of women within them, contemporary Arab women writers have learned to move beyond the realm of orality so as to avoid men's cooptation of their stories and lives--what is called the Shadrazad syndrome of orality. Although Shahrazad is acknowledged in the written text of "The Thousand and One Nights" as the narrator of the embedded stories, she is nevertheless placed by the Shah's male scribe within the appropriative prologue and epilogue of a male narrator. The resulting co-optation of her authorial voice has created fear of erasure among her female literary successors. "Anxiety of Erasure" examines the double obsession with Shadrazad and wa'd al-banat--literary and physical annihilation of women--as productive and creative force in the writings of contemporary Muslim and Christian Arab women living in diaspora, women who use their engagement in Western society to reclaim their voice not as exiles, but as continuing participants in their homelands' intellectual life. Nothing less than the transformation of Arab societies depends on their success. Academic Year 2009-2010, Summer 2011
