Writing the female body in Mosteghanemi's chaos of the senses : a counter narrative discourse

Abstract EN

By being represented in the mainstream national discourse as national symbols and their bodies as boundary markers, Arab women tend to lose their right of being significant members in their nations.

In order to empower their heroines, a number of contemporary Arab women writers appeal to their female protagonists' erotic bodies as a language to voice loud their womanhood.

In her attempt to transform the female body from a national symbol into a private erotic dominion, the Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi adopts a unique approach in writing about her heroine's body and sexuality in her second novel Fawda al-Hawas.

As such, drawing upon Hélène Cixous' theory of écriture feminine, this paper aims at shedding light on Mosteghanemi's special approach of sexual politics which saves her text from falling in the pitfalls of linguistic pornography.

The novelist astutely deploys metaphors and poetic expressions in depicting her heroine's body and sensual desires.