1. Re-identification of Female Suffering A Contrapuntal Reading Hoda Thabet, PhD

2. PhD in Comparative Literature MA in Modern Arabic Literature MA in American Literature BA in Arabic (Major)/English (Minor) Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading2 http://contrapuntal.weebly.com Ass. Prof. Sohar University/Oman http://www.omanbahai.org

3. The Problem 3 The Arab Female is Othered though she is fully obedient to the social rules and she is sentenced to death if she breaks those rules! The Question How women make their truth? How transition towards Death is a sign of Strength? How Truth is made for women?

4. Arab Female Authors Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading 4 The Arab female authors in these lands stand in the heart of cultural reforms due to their leading roles in addressing the state of females in the entire region.

5. Arab Female Characters Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading5 Ferdaus/ Woman at Point Zero Kafa/ The Night of the First Billion Aziza/ The Golden Chariot Nahla/ The Inheritance Ahlam/ Memory in the Flesh Zahra/ The Story of Zahra

6. Non-Western Female Authors Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading6

7. Non-Western Female Characters AMMU JULIE SETHE Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading7

8. Western Female Authors Western Female Characters Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading8

9. The very study of literature presupposes that there is every indication that we can understand each other despite extensive differences in cultural and social conditions. Bakhtín, Míkhaíl Eagleton, Terry Foucault, Michel Said, Edward Eastern Literature and Western Literature Orientalism \ First World Literature \Third World Literature Global Literature

10. Western Literature\ Eastern Literature First World \Third World

11. In literary studies, the problem, of Eurocentric, is symptomatically visible, we use the categories of Western literary history- such as romanticism, realism, modernism, or postmodernism- in non- Western contexts, or of genre to speak of the "Arabic Novel" or the "Urdu short story." It is thus absolutely crucial to acknowledge at the outset that we are all Eurocentric in this sense, even and perhaps especially when we attempt to tell the story of such non- European objects as Indian, Chinese, and Arabic literature. (Mufti, Amir )

13. Limitation of Theories Feminist and Women theories, usually associated thematically with females’ cultural victimization, investigate females’ pain, nostalgia and empowerment in line with the presence of a male culture. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading13

14. The victimized and the victimizer The intact of East and West relation in Orientalism, Imperialism, Colonialism, post-Colonialism, Modernism and post-Modernism theories, usually associates with East as the victimized in line with the presence of the victimizer as being the West. In investigating the power-interaction paradigms, major theories follow similar methodologies. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading14

15. Orientalism as a discourse divides the globe unambiguously into Occident and Orient. (Turner, Bryan)

16. The point of Orientalism, according to Said, was to orientalise the Orient and it did so in the context of fundamental colonial inequalities. Orientalism was based on the fact that we know or talk about the Orientals while they neither know themselves adequately nor talk about us. According to Said there is no comparable discourse of Occidentalism. This is not to say that there have been no changes in the nature of Orientalism, but these changes tend to mask the underlying continuity of the discourse. (Turner, Bryan)

17. ORIENTALISM- GLOBALISM It is a fact about cultures that their boundaries are porous and ambiguous, more like horizons than electrified fences. Our cultural identity leaks beyond itself just by virtue of what it is, not as an agreeable bonus or disagreeable hemorrhage. There may, of course, be serious difficulties in translation from one culture to another. But you do not need to be standing at some imaginary Omega point in order to do this, any more than you need to resort to some third language in order to translate from Swedish into Swahili. Being inside a culture is not like being inside a prison-house. It is more like being inside a language. Languages open on to the world from the inside. To be inside a language is to be pitched into the world, no to be quarantined from it. (Eagleton, Terry)

18. Both, the Gender and the East/West cultural analysis, are limited thematically. With Gender theories the empowerment of Eastern females' necessities Oriental translations. Investigating the Orient/East, is defined through its victimized relation with the West. Therefore though culturally it is possible to translate females’ empowerment there is a gap in modifying it globally. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading18

19. Contrapuntal Theory https://youtu.be/LieCSY5Bajo Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading19

20. CONTRAPUNTAL THEORY In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent. (From Wikipedia) In its most general aspect, counterpoint involves the writing of musical lines that sound very different and move independently from each other but sound harmonious when played simultaneously. In each era, contrapuntally organized music writing has been subject to rules, sometimes strict. (From Wikipedia)

21. The goal of a contrapuntal reading is thus to not privilege any particular narrative but reveal the wholeness of the text, the intermeshed, overlapping, and mutually embedded histories of metropolitan and colonized societies and of the elite and subaltern. A contrapuntal reading is like a fugue which can contain two, three, four or five voices; they are all part of the same composition, but they are distinct. (Chowdhry ) Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading21

22. Edward Said-Contrapuntal Theory 22 There can be no true humanism whose scope is limited to extolling patriotically the virtues of our culture, our language, our monuments.

23. CONTRAPUNTAL THEORY We need to imagine new forms of belonging, which in our kind of world are bound to be multiple rather than monolithic. (Eagleton, Terry). What is a border or boundary? It is, first of all, the line that is drawn, let us call it its "ridge"; its significance is one of definition. This boundary, this line, always has two sides. If I trace around me a closed contour, I keep myself in and defend myself against. One side of the line protects me and the other side excludes others. (Foucault, Michel).

24. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading24

25. In the realm of culture, outsideness is a most powerful factor in understanding. It is only the eyes of another culture that foreign culture reveals itself fully and profoundly (but not maximally fully, because there will be cultures that see and understand even more). A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning: they engage in a kind of dialogue, which surmounts the closedness and one-sidedness of these particular meanings, these cultures. (Bakhtín, Míkhaíl) Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading25

26. Imra'a ʻinda nuqṭat aṣ-ṣifṛ, 1975 Woman at Point Zero, 1983 26 Ḥikāyat Zahrah 1970 The Story of Zahra 1980 Laylatū al-Milyar 1986 Night of the First Billion, 2005 ‘ There is an ancient tragic faith that strength flows from the very depths of abjection. Those who fall to the bottom of the system are in a sense free of it, and thus at liberty to build an alternative. If you can fall no further you can only move upwards, plucking new life from the jaws of defeat. To have nothing to lose is to be formidably powerful.’ (Eagleton, After theory ) Kafa Zahra Ferdaus

27. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading27

28. The Problem 28 The Arab Female is Othered though she is fully obedient to the social rules and she is sentenced to death if she breaks those rules! The Question How women make their truth? How transition towards Death is a sign of Strength? How Truth is made for women?

29. Women in Transition The argument for a model here termed Women in Transition is based upon the notion that there is a characteristic stage- based progression through which women come to identify themselves, not in relation to their society, their bodies or their power, but simply as authentic selves. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading29

30. Death and Utopia Mulkay (1993) argues that, when we die we experience a loss of our social selves. We die socially and are no longer defined by our society. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading30

31. Transition Theory Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading31

32. The First Stage In the first stage, the female character faces various cultural restrictions that are represented as means of undoing her as a person. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading32

33. The Second Stage In the second stage, the female reaches a bottom to the pain. She redefines her relationship to her society and her body. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading33

34. Moving from Death towards Death Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading34

35. The Third Stage The third stage in the “Women in Transition” model is characterized by a movement into death – as this stage comes to symbolize the death of her social roles and also the death of her physical body. Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading35

36. Conclusion How to Read Cultures? “There are no rational grounds for judging between cultures. I can not judge between my culture and yours, because my judgment is bound to be made from within my own culture, not from some disinterested point outside it. There is no such place to stand. So either we are inside and complicit, or outside and irrelevant.” Terry Eagelton Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading36

37. Conclusion If “there is no place to stand” and “nothing to judge” when investigating cultures, how does one proceed with a comparative analysis of works from varying cultures in which one is always on the “outside and irrelevant”? What might be the common ground that exists both inside, outside, and between cultures? Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading37

38. Conclusion How to read female strength in its Global Context? Outline of two theories: Contrapuntal Theory 3-stages Transition Theory Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading38

39. PhD in Comparative Literature MA in Modern Arabic Literature MA in American Literature BA in Arabic (Major)/English (Minor) Hoda Thabet Re-identification of Female Suffering- A Contrapuntal Reading39 http://contrapuntal.weebly.com Ass. Prof. Sohar University/Oman http://www.omanbahai.org