Arab Diasporic Writing

The panel entitled “Arab Diasporic Writing: Figurations of Space andIdentity” was held on Friday, February 27, at the 2004 Twentieth CenturyLiterature conference at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Organized by Carol Fadda-Conrey, the panel featured presentations by Professor SyrineHout and Lisa A. Weiss on two Arab diasporic writers, Rabih Alameddineand Leïla Sebbar, respectively.Syrine Hout, an associate professor of English at the AmericanUniversity of Beirut, presented a paper entitled “Lebanon ‘Revisited’:Memory, Self, and Other in Rabih Alameddine’s The Perv.” Singling outAlameddine as an example of Anglophone novelists of the Lebanese diaspora,Hout’s presentation handled complex themes of memory, nostalgia,the homeland, and relationships that generate binding ties in her analysis ofthe short stories featured in The Perv. Published in July 1999, this isAlameddine’s second work of fiction. Comprising eight short stories, ThePerv presents in-depth portrayals of characters in various states of exile anddisplacement, both mental and physical, cultural and psychological.In her analysis, Hout presented the cogent case that Alamaddine shows,by way of his characters, all of whom have been affected by the Lebanesecivil war, how homesickness is more of a “sickness of home,” manifested bywhat Hout defines as “critical memory of the immediate past of the civilwar.” The presentation’s overriding argument, systematically upheld byHout, shows how the notion of “being at home,” as represented in this work,“is not about belonging to a piece of land but about having a peace of mindwhich can be enjoyed anywhere.” In her reading of the first story, “ThePerv,” and the subsequent stories, Hout arrived at an interesting conclusion:Sammy, the title story’s main character, is actually the creator of the othercharacters in the collection to such an extent that he and Alameddine becomeone and the same person. Hout’s analysis of “being at home” in The Perv asbeing engendered “by an emotional reality [more] than a spatial one” bringsto the forefront significant concerns in the study of diasporic literature.Such thematic concerns were also addressed and probed by Lisa Weissin her presentation entitled “‘Arab’ Paris: Reinterpreting the City-Centerthrough the Writings of Leïla Sebbar.” Weiss, a Ph.D. candidate in Frenchand Francophone literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz,lived in Paris during 2003, teaching at the UC Paris Study Center andresearching “Beur” cultural production. She identifies “Beur” as a “colloquialidentification-term from the 1980s used for second- and third-generationFrench citizens born in France to North African immigrant parents.” ...