Resistance and revolution in four Arabic novels : a mosaic of literary representations

Abstract EN

The historical experience of revolution in its political sense of overthrowing a political regime comes as a consequence of a complex interaction between psychological factors that pertain to the human agent, as well as economic and sociopolitical factors that prevail in the community.

The transformative and creative powers of the human agent can recreate a new political identity, new national consciousness, and more importantly new structures of power relations.

In the modem history of the Middle East, movements of resistance and revolution have been tied up with Western imperialism and the oppressive colonial powers, which cannot be divorced from the East/West dichotomous world views and the idea of Orientalism.

However, the current Arab revolutions seem to reflect a newborn ideology of a new generation adamant on mapping out new power relations over interior as well as exterior spaces.

This paper argues that there is a certain historical line of development that can be traced in the interaction between the psychological factors that pertain to the human agent, and the economic and sociopolitical factors that prevail in the Arab communities.

Hence, the rise of the once-terrorist, aggressive, once-silent, inert Arab who has suddenly come to deserve the applause of the once-denouncing, now-approving, though at times apprehensive, West.

Accordingly the paper proceeds to highlight this interaction through the analysis of a number of selected scenes from a variety of literary works.

The analysis is carried out on four corresponding axes: the individual versus the collective, and the psychological versus the sociopolitical.

The selected literary works include novels written as early as 1954 like Al Ard (The Earth) by Abd el Rahman El Sharqawy to more recent ones that were said to have predicted the January Revolution in Egypt like Mohammad Salmawy's Ajnihat el Farasha (The Wings of the Butterfly).