Images of Consciousness of the Female Body and Power/Resistance Representations: A Political Reading in some of Miral El Tahawi's Novels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v50i6.551Keywords:
Female body, lived body, gender, power and resistance, oppression, phenomenology, metaphorAbstract
Objectives: This study explores how societal perceptions of female body images influence women's lived experiences and the power/resistance representations within them. It specifically analyzes the political thought embedded in contemporary Egyptian women's novels, with a focus on works by Miral El Tahawi, a prominent writer representing the nineties generation and still active today.
Methods: Based on the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a perspective, the study used the metaphor analysis method to inference the indicating images of the consciousness about the female body through the lived body experiences of the women characters and their related power/resistance representations, in the three texts: ‘Al Khebaa’ (The Tent), ‘Al Bazenjana al zarquaa’ (The Blue Aubergine) and ‘Brooklyn Heights’.
Results: The findings highlight the objectification of the female body from early childhood in the societies depicted in three novels: The Tent, The Blue Aubergine, & Brooklyn Heights. The woman's body significantly shapes her life and relationships, with societal criteria emphasizing her value for childbearing and men's pleasure. This analysis uncovers power dynamics and gendered oppression beyond traditional man/woman relationships, encompassing interactions with oneself, other women, and society. The study also reveals varied forms of resistance, sometimes yielding positive outcomes, but occasionally reinforcing oppression and subordination.
Conclusions: This study illustrates the political dimension of human interactions by examining women's lived experiences in relation to societal perceptions of the female body. It delves into various levels of relationships beyond direct man/woman interactions, revealing the reproduction of diverse power/resistance representations.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2022-12-04
Published 2023-11-30
