| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the association of homosexuality with madness in two contemporary novels, Hanan al-Shaykh's Innaha London ya ?Azizi (Only in London) and Hamdi Abu Golayyel's (Julayyil) Lusus Mutaqa?idun (Thieves in Retirement). Through a comparative reading of the figure of Majnun, an impassioned lover and mad rebel, I argue that literary articulations of queer desire operate as embodied resistance to social and political normativity, both in the Arab world and in the diaspora. Discussing the aesthetic transformation of the contemporary novel and drawing on the Arab-Islamic literary and philosophical tradition, I critically engage Michel Foucault's reading of sexual and epistemological developments in light of current debates about Arab homosexuality. I show how discursive models of sexuality are situated in modernity's intertwinement with other structures of power and systems of belief, crossing cultural contexts and linguistic registers.
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