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AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 7, Number 1. February 2023 Pp.301-312
Modern Languages and Communication Faculty, University Putra Malaysia,
Serdang Malaysia
This study explores woman’s agency in Alameddine’s fiction, An Unnecessary Woman (2013) concerning the normative state of agency in a communal structure that controls women’s behaviors and wishes set by suppression. The current study uses the deconstruction theory of French post-structuralists Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, taken from a feminist perspective, which undermines gender dichotomies and interrupts “the unquestionable truth” in Western philosophy. In short, Rabih Alameddine’s fiction reveals the misconceptions about – and misrepresentations of – Arab women in contemporary Arab American fiction and disrupts the binary opposition which resembles the backbone of patriarchy.
Omar, N., Alhasan, A., Zainal, Z. I., & Bahar, I. B. (2023). Subverting the Binary Oppositions concerning Female Agency in Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 7 (1). 301-312.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no1.22
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Dr. Noritah Omar is an Associate Professor of Literature and Gender Studies at the Dept. of English at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication at the University Putra Malaysia. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA in 1999. Her primary interests are postcolonial theory and literature, and gender studies. Email: nomar@upm.edu.my.
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0422-6229.
Assia Fayez Alhasan is a language instructor who works at the Institute of Languages at the University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. She has an MA degree from the University of Jordan in 2003 and doing her Ph.D. at Putra University Malaysia (UPM) in English Literature at the faculty of Modern Languages and Communication. Her primary interests focus on feminism and gender studies, and literary criticism. Email: a.alhasan@ut.edu.sa. ORCID ID: 0000-00021-1487-5620.
Dr. Zainor Izat Zainal is a senior lecturer at Putra University Malaysia (UPM). Her research field is Malaysian literature in English, postcolonial ecocriticism, and teaching English literature in ESL contexts. Email: zainor@upm.edu.my.
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5071-4181.
Dr. Ida Baizura Bahar is a senior lecturer at Putra University Malaysia (UPM). Her areas of interest are English Literature, English and Malay literary works on the Malay World, Comparative Literature, and sociology of literature. Email: idabb@upm.edu.my. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2987-1574.
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