Cartographies of Identity

I n “Towards the Development of Post-Islamist and Post-Nationalist Feminist Discourses in the Middle East,” Mervat Hatem outlines the “old and tired concepts and roles that cannot be expected to deliver new solutions”—traditional approaches to nationalism. 1 Hatem categorizes primarily three traditional approaches: the modernist-nationalist discourse, the national liberation discourse, and the dependency discourse. Hatem argues for going beyond such discourses. Yet, as the search continues for a feminist identity that is local and specific to the conditions that Arab women face, the terms of the debate remain centered on issues of cultural identity. In many senses, this is inescapable, given the so-called postcolonial status of any national subject in the Arabic context seeking to define his or her identity. For, as Saree Makdisi points out in “The Empire Renarrated,” the very category of “postcolonial” in Arabic literature implies a crisis, a lack of closure that prevents identity from being fully inscribed within the terms of tradition and modernity that are so much a part of constructing the concept of national identity. 2 This very lack of closure, while apparently traumatic, bodes well from a feminist perspective. The advantage of working in terms of a “postcolonial” identity as opposed to a “national” identity is that the terms of the debate can be seen from a different perspective, allowing women a position that differs radically from the limited and restricted role Arab women have been given within national narratives. 3 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.