Writing Trauma

Résumé du livre

The Arab woman has been systematically colonized by Arab patriarchal notions of female sexuality and Western essentialist views of absent Arab female agency. Over the past five decades there has been a rise of Arab women who have come forward to speak out against both modes of colonization. One such activist is Nawal El Saadawi whose work as an advocate and an author effectively destabilizes presumed narratives regarding Arab women, their bodies, and their sense of agency. Among Nawal El Saadawi's creative work is Woman at Point Zero. Through a comprehensive analysis of the text, using Postcolonial and French Psychoanalytic theory, in conjunction with Material Feminism, the reader witnesses the novel's protagonist evolve from an oppressed space as an object within the Arab masculine economy to an ultimate space as the hysteric beyond the confines of the proper, where she can finally exercise liberation, but only at the expense of her life.