Inviting the Self and the Other to "the Common Ground A Feminist, Post-Colonial Reading of Selected Works by Ahdaf Soueif /
Author
Al-Nogair, Su'ad Muhammad Said.
Abstract
The thesis studies selected literary works by Ahdaf Soueif. She is an Egyptian author, who writes in English and discusses themes pertinent to post-colonial literature. Of these themes obvious in the chosen works are: writing back to the Empire and rectifying the image of the Arabo-Islamic world in the dominant Western ideology. To write back to the metropolitan center is an attempt to undermine the assumptions dominant in the ideology of that centre about the Other. This takes many forms and strategies. Literature is among the most influential forms through which writing back can be carried out. Various counter-discursive strategies mark postcolonial narratives that indulge in writing back to the Empire. Of these strategies clearly employed in Soueif's The Map of Love are interpolation of history, abrogation of the colonial discourse, and appropriation of the language and literary medium of the excolonizer. However, Soueif's counter-discursive narrative goes...
