Re-thinking the Stereotypes and Violence Against Arabs and Arab Americans in El Guindi’s Back of the Throat and Shamieh’s The Black Eyed

Mohammad Almostafa

Abstract


This article explores two contemporary Arab American dramatists’ challenging attitudes towards the enacting dynamics of violence that have existed in either their native or host societies in the context of Shamieh’s The Black Eyed (2008) and El Guindi’s Back of the Throat (2006). Both dramatists actively engage in addressing the ways, enabling factors, and agencies through which various forms of violence operate against Arab and Muslim (Americans), and dramatize them to carve an intellectual space in the American mainstream to express their own reflections on the causes of this phenomenon and its negative consequences, the intersection between violence and injustice, and the necessity of breaking the silence of those people who suffer from colonial subjugation, imperialist hegemony, racism, invisibility, prejudice, and hostility.


Keywords


Stereotypes; Violence; Hegemonic discourse; Resistance; Self-representaion

Full Text:

PDF

References


Afridi, H. (2005). Terrorist Chic. In F. Afzail-Khan (Ed.), Shattering the stereotypes: Muslim women speak out. Northampton: Olive Branch Press.

Althusser, L. (2004). From ideology and ideological state appartuses. In A. Easthope & K. Mcowan (Eds.), A critical and cultural theory reader (pp.42-50). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World Inc..

Ashcroft, B. (2010). Representation and Liberation: From Orientalism to the Palestinian Crisis. In A. Iskandar & H. Rustom (Eds.), Edward Said: A legacy of emancipation and representation (pp.291-320). London; Berkeley: University of California Press.

Azevedo,M. S. de. (2010). Men of a single book: Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity, and modern thought. Bloomington: World Wisdom, Inc..

Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. New York: Verso, 2006.

El Guindi, Y. (2006). Back of the throat. New York: Dramatists Play Service, INC..

Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.

Galtung, J. (1996). Peace by peaceful means: Peace and conflict, development and civilization. London; New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Haddad, Y. Y. (2011). Becoming American? The foreign of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist America. Waco: Baylor University Press.

Harlow, B. (1987). Resistance literature. New York: Methuen.

Helg, A. (2001). The problem of race in Cuba and the United States. In D. Sullivan-Conzales & C. R. Wilson (Eds.), The south and the Caribbean. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi.

Hovsepian, N. (1992). Connections with Palestine. In M. Sprinker (Ed.), Edward said: A critical reader (pp.5-18). Oxford; Cambridge: Blackwell.

Ladicola, P., & Anson, S. (2003). Violence, inequality, and human freedom. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc..

Mission Statement of Forum against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR). Available at www.fairuk.org/introduction.htm. Accessed in 19/11/2014.

Rane, Halim. Islam and contemporary civilization: Evolving ideas, transforming relations. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2010.

Ripley, A. et al. (2004). The rules of investigation. Time, 17 May, 44.

Sabry, S. S. (2011). Arab-American women’s writing and performance: Orientalism, race and the idea of the Arabian nights. New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd..

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Salaita, S. (2005). Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism: Arab Americans before and after 9/11. College Literature, 32, 146-168.

Schinkel, W. (2010). Aspects of violence: A critical theory. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Serequeberhan, T. (1994). The hermeneutics of African philosophy: horizon and discourse. New York: Routledge.

Shamieh, B. (2008). The Black Eyed and architecture. New York: Broadway Play Publishing INC..

Ul-Qadri, M. T. (2010). Introduction to the fatwa on suicide bombings and terrorism (S. A. A. Dabbagh, Trans.). London: MQI Publicatioons.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c)




Share us to:   


 

Online Submissionhttp://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard


Reminder

How to do online submission to another Journal?

If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture