Arab Diasporic Writing:
Figurations of Space and Identity

The panel entitled “Arab Diasporic Writing: Figurations of Space and
Identity” was held on Friday, February 27, at the 2004 Twentieth Century
Literature conference at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Organized

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by Carol Fadda-Conrey, the panel featured presentations by Professor Syrine
Hout and Lisa A. Weiss on two Arab diasporic writers, Rabih Alameddine
and Le ïla Sebbar, respectively. 

Syrine Hout, an associate professor of English at the American
University of Beirut, presented a paper entitled “Lebanon ‘Revisited’:
Memory, Self, and Other in Rabih Alameddine’s The Perv.” Singling out
Alameddine as an example of Anglophone novelists of the Lebanese dias-
pora, Hout’s presentation handled complex themes of memory, nostalgia,
the homeland, and relationships that generate binding ties in her analysis of
the short stories featured in The Perv. Published in July 1999, this is
Alameddine’s second work of fiction. Comprising eight short stories, The
Perv presents in-depth portrayals of characters in various states of exile and
displacement, both mental and physical, cultural and psychological. 

In her analysis, Hout presented the cogent case that Alamaddine shows,
by way of his characters, all of whom have been affected by the Lebanese
civil war, how homesickness is more of a “sickness of home,” manifested by
what Hout defines as “critical memory of the immediate past of the civil
war.” The presentation’s overriding argument, systematically upheld by
Hout, shows how the notion of “being at home,” as represented in this work,
“is not about belonging to a piece of land but about having a peace of mind
which can be enjoyed anywhere.” In her reading of the first story, “The
Perv,” and the subsequent stories, Hout arrived at an interesting conclusion:
Sammy, the title story’s main character, is actually the creator of the other
characters in the collection to such an extent that he and Alameddine become
one and the same person. Hout’s analysis of “being at home” in The Perv as
being engendered “by an emotional reality [more] than a spatial one” brings
to the forefront significant concerns in the study of diasporic literature. 

Such thematic concerns were also addressed and probed by Lisa Weiss
in her presentation entitled “‘Arab’ Paris: Reinterpreting the City-Center
through the Writings of Leïla Sebbar.” Weiss, a Ph.D. candidate in French
and Francophone literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
lived in Paris during 2003, teaching at the UC Paris Study Center and
researching “Beur” cultural production. She identifies “Beur” as a “collo-
quial identification-term from the 1980s used for second- and third-gener-
ation French citizens born in France to North African immigrant parents.” 

In her presentation, Weiss focused on the 1982 novel Shérazade: 17 ans,
brune, frisée, les yeux verts by the Algerian writer Leïla Sebbar. Delving into
a compelling analysis of how Sebbar “use[s] the urban landscape of Paris to
explore and remember episodes in the French colonization in Algeria and

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the Algerian War for independence,” Weiss represented “Franco-Algerian
history and French-Arab identity” as being the central points negotiated by
Sebbar’s remappings of urban Paris. Such negotiations, she claimed, involve
Sebbar’s reconfigurations of such monumental Parisian sites as the Musée
du Louvre, Centre Pompidou, and Les Halles, among others.

Weiss clearly delineated Sebbar’s challenge to mainstream French his-
tory and cultural productions by focusing on the novel’s eponymous pro-
tagonist, underscoring how Shérazade challenges the nineteenth-century
French paintings that she encounters at the Louvre and the Centre Pom-
pidou, with “their Orientalist depictions of Algeria.” In a literal expansion
of a French geography and perspective that prove to be too narrow for the
novel’s protagonist, Weiss delineates Shérazade’s physical and intellectu-
al passage back to Algeria in order “to gain a more accurate understanding
of Algerian history and culture.”

In this way, both Hout’s and Weiss’ presentations converge in their
analysis of the self-probing and reassessment of home and cultural repre-
sentation that their main characters undergo. Interestingly enough, however,
these characters often differ in the manner in which they pursue self-discov-
ery. In the case of The Perv, for instance, Hout points out how most of
Alameddine’s characters distance themselves from home in order to achieve
“peace of mind,” whereas Weiss’ analysis of Sebbar’s novel traces a recon-
sideration of Algerian identity that necessitates an actual return back home.
Both presentations significantly broaden the study of diasporic literature,
bringing to the forefront important discussions of the state of the Arab writer
beyond the geographical framework of his or her home country.

Carol Fadda-Conrey
Ph.D. Candidate, English Department

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

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