Why insanity is not subversive in Hanan Al-Shaykh's short story ‘season of madness’
Dalya Abudi maintains that in many female Arab texts ‘madness serves as a metaphor for female victimisation on the one hand and for female resistance on the other’. This paper contends that the representation of women as insane in Hanan Al-Shaykh's ‘Season of Madness’ is not subversive. I draw...
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| Format: | article |
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2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10725/7750 https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2014.990776 http://libraries.lau.edu.lb/research/laur/terms-of-use/articles.php https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08164649.2014.990776 |
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| Summary: | Dalya Abudi maintains that in many female Arab texts ‘madness serves as a metaphor for female victimisation on the one hand and for female resistance on the other’. This paper contends that the representation of women as insane in Hanan Al-Shaykh's ‘Season of Madness’ is not subversive. I draw on Camineor-Santangelo's approach to feminist criticism, which argues that a madwoman cannot speak. Camineor-Santangelo explains that madness is complicit with de Lauretis’ technologies of gender because it gives the illusion of power but at the same time the mad (non)-subject is located outside any ‘sphere where power can be exerted’. I illustrate how in this story female madness is mainly represented as witchcraft and evil, stigma, a female malady, a denied subjectivity, social control, illusional power, self-sabotage and a final surrender. |
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