Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing

WOMAN'S BODY, WOMAN'S WORD

WOMAN'S BODY, WOMAN'S WORD

GENDER AND DISCOURSE IN ARABO-ISLAMIC WRITING

Fedwa Malti-Douglas

PRINCETON U NIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1991 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08 540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford All Rights Reserved

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To the memory of my father

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ARAB PHYSICIAN AND WRITER, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Woman's body, woman's word : gender and discourse in Arabo­ Islamic writing / Fedwa Malti-Douglas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-69 1-06856-9 (CL)-ISBN 0-691 -0148 8-4 (PB) 1. Women in literature. 2. Sex in literature. 3. Arabic literature-7501258-History and criticism. 4. Islamic literature, Arabic-History and criticism. 5. Arabic literature-Women authors-History and criticism. I. Title. PJ751 9.W66M34 1992 892'.709352042-
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WHOSE LIFE WAS DEDICATED TO HUMAN DIGNITY

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

IX

Note on Translation, Transcription, and Abbreviation

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Introduction

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Narration and Desire: Shahrazad Chapter 2. The Anecdotal Woman Chapter 3. Sacred History as Misogyny Chapter 4. Flight from the Female Body: Ibn Tufayl's Male Utopia Chapter 5. Sexual Geography, Asexual Philosophy Chapter 6. Nawal al-Sa
3 11 29 54 67 85 111 130 1 44 161

Works Cited

179

Index

1 95

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UNEARTHING

Acknowledgments

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the seeds that lead to a book's fruition is a long and plea­ surable task. Innumerable trips to the Middle East, papers at professional conferences, days spent in manuscript collections: these tell only part of the story, the raw material, as it were. The rest is made up of concrete names, of friends and colleagues, without whose presence a project such as this one would never have materialized. Every chapter has its own saga, each mixes the personal and the professional. How can I forget the generosity of my dear friend, the late poet Salah eAbd al-Sabur, when he was the Director of Dar al-Kutub in Cairo, in providing me with a copy of the manuscript of Ibn al-Batanuni's work? I will never forget his wonderful laugh when he realized what the medieval book was about. If it were not for Lawrence I. Conrad's invitation to participate in an interdisciplinary conference on Hayy ibn Yaqzan at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, I doubt that I would have walked the gender path in the analysis of philosophical and mystical treatises. The international list of specialists he gathered in Is­ lamic science, medicine, philosophy, and mysticism was most impressive, and a better environment for honing my ideas could have not been found. It was at Nawal al-Saedawi's urging that I then presented my research on Ibn Tufayl at a meeting of the Jameiyyat Tadamun aI-Mar'a al-eAra­ biyya (Arab Women's Solidarity Association) in Cairo. The Egyptian au­ dience was most lively, the discussions were extremely fruitful, and, as always, al-Saedawi's enthusiasm was infectious. Leila Ahmed, Ann Kib­ bey, William Brinner, Laurence Michalak, and Piotr Michalowski pro­ vided me with forums in which to try out my ideas on Nawal al-Saedawi and benefit from the comments of students and colleagues. Salma Khadra Jayyusi opened my eyes to Fadwa Tuqan's autobiography, and it was Yu­ suf al-Qa eid who generously offered to bring me a copy of the text from Jordan, when it was unobtainable in Cairo. The U.C.L.A. Twelfth Levi Della Vida Award Conference honoring Andre Miquel was a great occa­ sion for me to put into shape my thoughts on Shahrazad. It is to Andre Miquel, Georges Sabagh, and Speros Vryonis that l owe a debt of grati­ tude for that opportunity. Time seems to always be in short supply for academics. How grateful I am, therefore, to the numerous colleagues and friends who sacrificed this precious commodity to read and comment on the whole manuscript or parts of it: Roger Allen, Christoph Burgel, Charles Butterworth, Miriam Cooke, Sherman Jackson, Jane Marcus, Susan Napier, James Piscatori,

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Denise Spellberg, Suzanne Stetkevych. Some of their suggestions will be recognizable, others not. Nevertheless, the book has only been improved by their careful and painstaking readings. Princeton University Press has, to put it simply, spoiled me. From the initial conception of this project, friends and editors like Margaret Case and Robert E. Brown have been guardian angels. Margaret Case elimi­ nated any preliminary hesitations I might have had and gave me faith to continue with the proposed book. Robert E. Brown, with his customary diplomacy and skill, guided the work through the usual publishing intri­ cacies to safe harbor. The enthusiasm of my copy editor, Lauren Lepow, went far beyond the call of duty. Excited yet exacting, she meticulously polished the rough edges of the book with her judicious readings. The intellectual and professional path of an Arab woman is never an easy one. I have been fortunate to have enjoyed the example and, more important, the friendship of prominent Arab women intellectuals and artists: Evelyne Accad, Etel Adnan, Amel Ben Aba, Assia Djebar, Simone Fattal, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Wisal Khalid, Samira al-Mant, Huda al­ Nacmani, cAbla al-Ruwayni, Nawal al-Sacdawl, Hanan al-Shaykh. Be it in London, Paris, the United States or the Middle East, our meetings have served as injections of new blood for me. Always willing to share their experiences, always encouraging, their mere presence has sustained me through the years, teaching me that mine was not a solitary voice. Allen Douglas. I cannot express in words what his presence has meant for me as I conceived and composed this work. We discussed its ideas, we debated its premises. He read and reread it. An intellectual magician, he is always able to dose criticism and encouragement in perfect measure. And what do I say about S. P.-T.? Born alongside the first chapter of this book, she has patiently seen it through. It is the moments of calm and serenity spent with her that have made those otherwise unbearable mo­ ments of life bearable. Austin, Texas February 1991

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Note on Translation, Transcription,

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and Abbreviation wise indicated, ALL TRANSLATIONS in the text are my own, unless other sh or other Eu­ and all references are to the Arabic originals. When Engli the first citation of ropean translations are available, these are noted in the text. I have used a simplified transcription system in which the lengtheners on lowercase vowels are indicated with the French circumflex accent. The cayn and the hamza are represented by the conventional symb9ls. Spe­ cialists should be able to easily identify the Arabic words. EF

refers to the

1960-).

Encyclopaedia of Islam,

2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill,

WOMAN'S BODY, WOMAN'S WORD

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Introduction

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THE ARAB WOMAN is a most fascinating creature. Is she veiled? Is she not veiled? Is she oppressed? Is she not oppressed? Were her rights greater before Islam? Are her rights greater after Islam? Does she have a voice? Does she not have a voice? Book titles and book covers in the West tell part of the tale: behind the veil, beyond the veil, veiled women, partially veiled women, voices that have been heard, voices that are waiting to be heard, and on and on.t Advocates of opposing sides unceasingly cheer one view or another. From the East, writings emerge to support one or another of these positions. Arab feminists rally with their Western coun­ terparts; Muslim apologetic materials provide fodder for the equivalent Western stance. This futile dialogue on gender and women has long attracted the West. The image of women languishing under the yoke of Islam titillates the Western observer and permits him to place himself in the superior posi­ . the West can beat tion. Women and their role become a stick wi the East. More t an that, t e liberation of women in the East poses Its oW'ii"Special dilemmas, complicating and aggravating this dialogue. Since, as Fatima Mernissi eloquently argues, women's liberation in the modern Middle East is associated with westernization, the entire subject, willy­ nilly, becomes enmeshed in political and civilizational debates.2 The parallel literary critical dialogue on women in the Arab world is still in its infancy. The "images of women" tradition still dominates. This � as Toril Moi has shown for Western feminist criticism, is a stage that � though necessary, must be transcended.3 In the study of contemporary Arabic literature, the process has begun, particularly in the areas of war, violence, and gender. The book-length studies by Miriam Cooke and Evelyne Accad are breaking ground and paving the way for more complex literary and cultural questions.4 For the body, and for all of classical 1 For some examples of this phenomenon, see Fedwa Malti-Douglas, "Views of Arab Women: Society, Text, and Critic," Edebiyat 4 ( 1 979) : 256-273. 2 Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1 975), pp. 99-1 02. See, also, the pamphlet by Muhammad Fahmi
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4

INTRODUCTION

Arabo-Islamic letters, the territory remains, if I may use this word, virgin.s Woman's Body, Woma �u1:--Ge.m;l..!r a1!;d Di§.fQ� in A1El2ads­ . ro oses to investigate rec· hose· rsections found lamic in its title. The work is bot revo utionary and heterodox In more than on� way. It is not restricted chronologically, transcending the traditional critical divisions in Arabic letters that permit scholars to speak, on the one hand, of classical or medieval Arabic literature, and, on the other hand, of �odern li�erat�re. It ��������..�� !?��.�nturie�� tuaLtr�.41tlOn, a dlale�� O���!���,��:����_m�E!�.tifr�...w��in g :" modern age and their women and sexualUy...!!! tne antecedents in the clas­ sical perioa.,.Lthat modern1rter-.mIfe1iiiist aTs'o-De�s'eenagaffi:sfttS"'rlassical background. The breaking of chronological boundaries is coupled with a breaking of textual or generic limits. The Arabo-Islamic writing of this book's title will not be isolated simply in belletristic works. Philosophy, mysticism, geography, cosmography, biography: all are essential players in the gender game and in the propagation of cultural ideas and values. Religio-theological conceptions find their way into the world of lexicog ­ raphy and philology. That is why this discourse is Arabo-Islamic. Some of the texts under discussion are among the most profane possible; others are classics of Islamic religious writing. But in even the most profane lo­ cations, religious referents abound, especially when the subject is women. Historically, Arabic culture has been, and remains, an essentially Islamic one, though there are, of course, non-Arabic Islamic cultures. But the Ar­ abo-Islamic discourse is not the statement of the religion Islam in ideal terms, or even. as most Muslims today might wish to understand it. It is the reflection of a civilizational reality in which religious values and ideals become embodied in the literary and cultural expressions of histori cal Middle Eastern societies. All of the texts analyzed are, or were, influen ­ tial. But many are not in the canon. Breaking down this barrier is as im­ portant as breaking down the chronological one. The cultural world of this Arabo-Islamic discourse is that of prose, and in the classical period, that of the male scriptor. This is not entirel ya coincidence. Prose by its nature permits a clearer representation, a more elaborate reformulation and restructuring of the world. Mimesis is tied to its essence. This is especially clear when prose is compared to tradi­ tional Arabic poetry, a highly conventionalized form. While certain care­ fully defined poetic subgenres were assigned to women, the world of '

5 A recent article by Leila Ahmed, "Arab Culture and Writing Women's Bodies " Feminist Issues (Spring 1 98 9) : 41-55, seeks to understand a story by Alifa Ritat against :he context

of classical Arabic medical lore. These issues, I expect, will be given fuller treatment in Ahmed's forthcoming book.

INTRODUCTION

5

prose was effectively closed to them.6 Hence, it is on prose that we shall concentrate, though it must be remembered that certain forms of classical Arabic prose include and effectively subordinate verse selections within their discourse.7 Little did Shahrazad8 know when she stepped into the textual world of The Thousand and One Nights that she would one day become a pawn in this game of gender politics. Little did she know that she would engen­ der (in both senses) modern texts that would recast her own story. Little did she know that her control of narration (alas, but a fleeting phenome­ non) would be used to argue in favor of the Arab woman's access to dis­ course.9 T�bel sf stm,telling,'rltis-m+s�.Qf..!E!:!'�!Qr.�_E�a?d West has a saga so dramatic that it overshadows !�. .l!:,l!�,,�..!!5k.L�h:.!!amlC S in the-re' m'tttne-world ttt of Arabo-Islamic dis­ course is much discussed, her exit not. Pitted against a royal serial mur­ derer, she exploits her body and her words to lead him back to normality. Her attempts to create a functioning heterosexual couple are played out against a greater civilizational pull for a male homosocial couple. Shahra­ zad herself will open the door for us. She will lead us not into her own nights of storytelling but into an investigation of the explosive relation­ ship among sexuality, the body, and woman's voice in the Arabo-Islamic sphere. The gender dynamics her odyssey (in its largest possible meaning) creates will have an uncanny tendency to recur throughout the present book. Shahrazad then speaks. But woman's wice is more than a phys��l faculty. It is the-iiarratiY �ument that perm��.!2..��a literary J11e­ dium, to vie with the mal0,n ibc:pt:Q&@sorti�!!Lal£E��!��!1' 0 contro thenarrative process, however, is no ���hraza emonstrates to her literary cousins and descendants that an intimate relationship must

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6 In her book, al-Mar'a fi Adab al-
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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

be created between writing and the body.This mistress of the word is a mistress of the ruse as well. In Woman's Body, Woman's Word, some of the most quasi-sacred texts of the Arabo-Islamic sphere will be made to stand alongside The Thousand and One Nights, subject to the gender microscope.As the edi­ tors of, and the contributors to, Rewriting the Renaissance eloquently demonstrate, the reexamination of cherished texts from different angles, principally feminist ones, is a most enriching experience.1o After the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, Claudine Herrmann, Margaret R. Miles, and Elaine Pagels, how can one leave the Arabo-Islamic stones unturned?l1 An objection can be raised, however. Are feminist or gend - onscious appr�"p"p'ropr�to-a..no.n:_WesterD-S9�t.z�ally if femInISm origi��Are not genaerretat'inii"S" dif­ is gm�eolQ� o.DY,est course, 'rtn!yare� ferent in non-Western....§.ocieties., some'orille"; :G;nd;;:�;nscloiis' anaTyses�m-c!litIife in� �s..a..ma�zing principl org"ani­ zatlon, in mentalites, or, as is most usual, in both. Who would deny that this has been the case in the Arabo-Islamic cultural sphere, as it has been in the world of the Christian and post-Christian West? The fact that such struggles and ideologies combine with other kinds of issues in many Third World contexts, and whether one wishes to consider the resulting amal­ gams sufficiently distinct to apply neologisms like postfeminism, changes nothing in this fundamental reality.12 Consciousness of gender and argu­ ments about the roles of men and women were not brought to the Arab world by Western feminists, like serpents in the Garden of Eden.These issues have always been major and fully conscious preoccupations of Arab writers who have filled their literature with chapters and books on women, their roles, their problems, and the like. Medieval Arab critics did not consider The Thousand and One Nights serious literature. More respectable, because linguistically more sophisti­ cated, was the largely anecdotal prose genre referred to by Western schol­ ars as adab. The rich medieval adab corpus that gave birth to those de­ lightful trickster character types also begat the "woman" as character type (chapter 2). The female, defined by her gender, is made to enter the

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10 Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, Rewriting the Re­ naissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: Univer­ sity of Chicago Press, 1986). 11 Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle

Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 982) ; Claudine Herrmann, Les voleuses de langue (Paris: editions des femmes, 1 976) ; Margaret R. Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon Press, 1 989); Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books, 1 989). 12 See, for example, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 98 9) .

7

pantheon of adab character types largely through her witty manipulation of the body.Her ruse is thus close, if not identical, to that of Shahrazad. The dangers inherent in this female body are never far away, however. Ibn al-Batanunl's (ca.90011494) vision seems at the outset to vie with the more profane adab one (chapter 3) . But his misogynist recasting of sacred history can only operate because the cultural forces behind it are ex­ tremely strong. The Qur'anic phrase that serves him as an antifemale refrain centers on woman's guile and is evoked in The Thousand and One Nights. These literary worlds may seem superficially distant, but their gender dynamics are most certainly not. Perhaps the best solution to this ever-present threat in woman's body is that of the Andalusian philosopher-physician, Ibn Tufayl (d. 581/ 1185-1186) (chapter 4). His mystico-philosophical allegory, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, is one of the monuments of classical Arabo-Islamic civilization to weather the test of time. The story has the makings of a fairy tale: a young boy on a desert island is nurtured by a gazelle and grows up learn­ ing all he needs to learn, eventually turning to the mystic way of life, which he shares with another male. A disturbing negation, when not an absence, of sexuality characterizes this text. Hayy ibn Yaqzan vies with The Thousand and One Nights in popularity: modified versions of the story turn up in the contemporary Middle East in children's books, in comic-strip form, and as subjects of paintings. Ibn Tufayl sets up his ideal male world on the island of al-Waqwaq, a legendary and phantasmagoric locus where women grow on trees. Me­ dieval geographers and cosmographers will flesh this out, demonstrating that more is at stake in Ibn Tufayl's male utopian vision than simply an occultation of the female. Societies of women that propagate themselves, cities of women: these all become part of the fantasy world of the medi­ eval Arabic male narrator (chapter 5). Though Ibn Tufayl's text has one foot in geographical and cosmo­ graphical works, its other foot is just as solidly planted in the Arabo­ Islamic philosophical consciousness. Hence !!.1�gman::§.Qody_a.u�t w��n�Qrd_e.!lter a."Q!tf�!£!!Ln�,i!lgi':.ihat�,Qf.Jh�.Jlight, ,from "�e�",the femal�_��� cO�'p'?reality.Asexual philosophy and sexual geography are" but two tacets of iIiesame"phenomenon (chapter 5). From classical Arabo-Islamic prose, some of which dates to the ninth century, to contemporary Arabic prose-quite a chronological leap! And chronology is only part of the issue. How is this possible? How can such a radical analytical step be justified? True, there are essential differences between classical Arabo-Islamic prose and its modern descendant. Some twentieth-century literary forms, such as the novel and the short story, do not have classical antecedents. Their external form is influenced by the parallel developments in modern Western prose. Problems of literary clo-

8

I N T R O DUCT I O N

sure differ between classical and modern Arabic prose: the adab work, for example, is composed of a great number of independent literary units ranging from the anecdote to a verse from the Muslim holy book. The spirit of classical Arabic texts diverges from the modern counterparts with their greater emphasis on the individual. But there are essential points of convergence, areas of mental structures that link modern Arabic prose to its literary predecessors. Western cultural critics have shown the continuing influence of age-old paradigms, despite momentous social and economic changes. I shall show the same for the dominant civilization of the Middle East. Longue duree cultural perspectives must be explored, especially in areas so closely in­ tertwined at once with the most intimate of values and the most sacred of texts. Most of the medieval texts that we shall consider have their ver­ sions or their echoes in the books sold on the street corners of Arab cities today. At the present moment, when some of the most important intellec­ tuals and political organizers of the region are seeking their models in either the Islamic Middle Ages or the time of the Prophet, one cannot deny this culture its profound sense of historical continuity. But dramatic is the difference when modern texts are the responsibility of female scriptors. What Woman's Body, Woman's Word is proposing ) .,(� s not a survey of the images of women in classical and modern Arabic ( i.rAJ,�/ ( prose b t rat�tbe analytical cenfrontation of dassi�se texts by � ex��_�xJ���1��!,2!.�· Li.n]drigihe ma� scnptors a.lll-p.ro,se.�! li!Jno.de.t: '

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\ ���l���=�I�':;j��t�!���:-;;:� �:��£;l1El;�i�k� of women. Modern women wri!�rs c]J;:l,lle.ng� them-w-ith>otr,.icks..�QLtheir

\ :.. own.� . '-- the modern feminist response to the predominant classical mental structures is conditioned by two new circumstances. The first is a greater access to print for Arab women, especially in the narrative and descriptive genres hitherto closed to them. The second is the emergence of feminism itself, permitting the modern female writer to challenge the sexist and patriarchal assumptions of the Arabic literary canon. Nevertheless, she must work through this complex of inherited values, even when subvert)ng them. The woman Arab writer of the � twentiet!L�entlJt:y a,bj�s "� ' ,/her--1i.�erary voice, but she too must do so thro� body. <> �-..-- -- Modernj\"ra��"IiicraB:lre-wa'Snot Dorn m the last decade. Its ' . ' germs were already present in th� nineteen �h century. Parallel with, yet . . somewhat behmd, male ArabIC lIterature, Its development increased in I the twentieth century, accelerating even faster after the Second World War.13 In our days, "the literature of long finger nails," as one male critic �,

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For the early history of modern Arabic women's writing, see Miriam Cooke, "Telling

I N T R O DUCT I O N

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has called it,14 has become increasingly ubiquitous. Nevertheless, it is only in the last few decades that modern Arabic literature, and with it modern Arabic women's literature, has achieved a level of relative frank­ ness on questions of corporality and sexuality.1s Even now, however, nei­ ther has achieved the sexual openness that characterized virtually all of classical Arabic letters.16 Hence, it is from the women writers of our own day that we must seek responses to the challenges of the classical male scriptors. It is perhaps not coincidental that the most uncompromisingly feminist of all modern Arabic authors should be a female physician. The Egyptian Nawal al-Sa