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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Hoda El Sadda
Cairo University, Egypt
Panel 4: Translation and the Construction of Gendered Identity
Trans/national Myths of Memory: Translating the Life of Hoda Shaarawy
English and Comparative Literature Department,
Contemporary representations of the lives of Arab women are caught between
colonial and nationalist discourses. This state of affairs goes back to the
second half of the nineteenth century when an image of the Arab Muslim woman was
constructed as the quintessentially traditional, or even “backward” “other”, who
functioned as the perfect antithesis to the superior and modern self of the
Western woman. Her perceived weakness or disadvantaged position within her
culture was used to support claims about the intrinsic backwardness and
“anti-modern” condition of Muslim cultures. As a reaction within national
contexts, women became instituted in their cultures as the bearers of tradition
and gradually became the symbols of those “unchanging” qualities in Muslim
cultures that have been successfully preserved by Muslim societies in spite of
Western colonial onslaught. And, most discussions of the representations of
women are forced to carry the burden of this legacy.
A case in point is the story of Hoda Shaarawy, the icon of the women’s movement
in Egyptian history. She comes down in history as the woman who rebelled against
her culture, learned about freedom and the modern way through contact with her
French nanny, and later her links with the international women’s movement. She
is either celebrated for rushing Egyptian women into the modern world, or
condemned for westernized leanings and the betrayal of her cultural values and
identity. And today, the women’s movement continues to carry the burden of being
the child of colonialism and the outcome of Western influence on Arab society.
In this paper I will attempt to deconstruct what I would like to call
trans/national myths of memory by looking at the politics of the translation of
women’s lives in the Arab world.
Shaarawy’s life poses a number of questions about the construction of cultural
identities and the modern project of nation-building in colonial and
post-colonial contexts. It also raises the issue of the geopolitics of the
production and consumption of knowledge. Who produces knowledge and for what
purpose? And, who is the consumer of knowledge and how is it assimilated and
used? The process of translating the lives of Arab women is intricately linked
to the politics of production, reception and consumption in a global context.
What a narrative means varies depending on the geopolitics of reception. Issues
of interpretation and theoretical and ethical dilemmas gain urgency within a
context of contested meanings and power struggles. The final challenge remains:
to what extent can women in Arab cultures initiate a discourse of resistance
that challenges dominant translations and that regains control over their voices
and representations?
© IATIS 2003