Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Although Nawal El Sadawi has frequently articulated the themes of her novel The Fall of the Imam both in her fictional and non-fictional works, she describes a difficult struggle with language while writing this particular novel. This paper examines El Saadawi’s discussion of language’s role as a tool for the oppression of women and a potential tool for their liberation. El Saadawi lays out the disturbing correspondence between linguistic and social apparatuses of exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination; the ramifications of exercising a monopoly on naming and labeling; and the liberating potential of reinventing systems of signification and narration strategies. Hélène Cixous’s “insurgent writing” and Julia Kristiva’s “semiotic” are concepts the paper will rely on in analyzing The Fall of the Imam as a rare example of what French feminists term “feminist writing” and a crafty utilization of postmodernist narration techniques to promote a rigorous feminist agenda. El Saadawi targets the reductionist in the postcolonial by exposing the (neo)patriarchal structures that plague the post-independence nationalist discourse in Egypt, as it questions religious, political, and social institution and Western supremacy.