| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this paper I argue that representations of homosexuality in modern Arabic literature have tended to isolate it and contain its threat through a conceptual strai(gh)tjacket that I term "epistemic closure." I begin by analyzing Sa?d Allah Wannus's play Tuqus al-Isharat wa-l-Tahawwulat as an essentialist paradigm of closure, where a language of interiority and essence identifies male homosexuality with passivity and femininity, subordinated a priori to a sexually and socially dominant masculinity. Then, I examine ?Ala? al-Aswani's novel ?Imarat Ya?qubyan as a constructionist example of the same closure, in which homosexuality is explained through a narrative of abnormal development that circumscribes its diffuse potential. Finally, I read Huda Barakat's Sayyidi wa-Habibi as a "queer" novel that links homosexuality to the continuum of male homosocial desire, thereby disrupting the normative distribution of center and margin and suggesting a way out of the epistemic closure imposed on homosexuality.
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