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Discipline and DIsorder in Women's Fiction Through the Lebanese Civil War

Biglin, Brent Alexander

Abstract Details

2013, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.
The focus on both psychological disorder and total institutions in fiction written by Arab women during the Lebanese Civil War demonstrates the inherent relationship between the two in the modern nation-state. The particular case of Lebanon and its capital, Beirut, is distinct because of its history as an ethnically and religiously diverse colony. Vestiges of the discipline and order imposed by former colonizers remain in the form of institutions, although their influence is not total and all-encompassing. The Lebanese Civil War was in part a manifestation of the contradiction between Beirut as an integral part of a unifying national project and as a city composed of various ethnically and religiously motivated sects with differing political goals. Hoda Barakat, Ghada Samman, Hanan Shaykh, and Iman Yunus are four novelists who wrote through the war depicting its drama, senselessness, and brutality through its everydayness as well as the formerly imposed modern institutions, even as their authority is undermined and their domains of influence reconfigured. The discipline, order, and representation of both colonialism and institutions rely on psychological discipline and its internalization by the subject — by force and by threat of explicit violence in the colony and by the conditioning, regimentation, and surveillance inherent in modern institutions. When the organization of the modern city, as a system of institutions, is reconfigured and the legitimacy and authority of the institutions of which it is composed are contested, the result in the novels is the proliferation of psychological disorder. The choice to focus on novels written by women is strategically deliberate to combat the flattening of non-Western women into a monolithic group and as a humble attempt to live up to Mohanty’s call for “careful, historically specific generalisations responsive to complex realities” (Mohanty 1988). My aim is not to represent or speak for anyone, but to analyze their artistic works in their political and historical contexts. In fiction written by these particular Arab women the depiction of the relationship between psychological and political disorder in the context of the modern nation-state and its sectarian systems is clear and significant — it suggests a trend of intuitive connection. The historical context is Beirut’s past as a colony and the ways that it was represented and regimented by its colonizer and more importantly its modern sectarian political configuration, which is a vestige of this colonial past. The ethnic and religious differences that make up the different sects were emphasized, exaggerated, and weaponized by the colonizers to avoid collective resistance against its rule. Ironically, it is this same political configuration that undermines Beirut as a national project —the foundation of which are its institutions. The psychological factor in the experiences of the modern subject and the institutions of the modern city are directly related — social and psychological disorder reflect one another. The institutions discipline and invent the subject, which is critical to understanding the phenomena of disorder and its cause in novels written through the civil war, as well as why characters continually find themselves in and relate their experiences to the prison and the hospital as places alternately of refuge or terror.
Youssef Yacoubi, Professor (Advisor)
Nada Moumtaz, Professor (Committee Member)
Joseph Zeidan, Professor (Committee Member)
62 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Biglin, B. A. (2013). Discipline and DIsorder in Women's Fiction Through the Lebanese Civil War [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366296039

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Biglin, Brent. Discipline and DIsorder in Women's Fiction Through the Lebanese Civil War. 2013. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366296039.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Biglin, Brent. "Discipline and DIsorder in Women's Fiction Through the Lebanese Civil War." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366296039

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)