The Beauty of the Houri

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nerina Rustomji
Keyword(s):  
French Literature ◽  
September 11 ◽  
First Century ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Gender Parity ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Twenty First Century

The fascination with the houri, the pure female of Islamic paradise, began long before September 11, 2001. The Beauty of the Houri demonstrates how the ambiguous reward of the houri, mentioned in the Qurʾan and developed in Islamic theological writings, has gained a distinctive place in English and French literature from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and in digital material in the twenty-first century. The houri had multiple functions in Islamic texts that ranged from caretaker to pure companion to entertainment. French, English, and American writers used the houri to critique Islam and Muslim societies while also adopting the houri as a model of feminine beauty. Unlike earlier texts that presented different forms of the houri or universalized the houri for all women, writings about the houri after September 11th offer contradictory messages about Islam. In the twenty-first century, the image of the houri symbolizes a reward for violence and the possibility of gender parity. As a cosmic figure that inspires enduring questions about the promise of paradise and the idealized feminine form, the houri has a singular past and potential for future interpretation.

How War Makes (and Unmakes) the Democratic State

2021 ◽  
pp. 278-295
Author(s):  
Aziz Z. Huq
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
National Culture ◽  
September 11 ◽  
First Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Marin County ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Greek Island

Focusing on the figures of the terrorist and the migrant, Huq suggests that war in the twenty-first century, in partial contrast to its precursors, may prove costly to democracy. Whereas war once served to develop bureaucratic capacity, shrink wealth gaps, and expand the franchise, it is less likely to perform these functions in a period when war is increasingly cabined to distant zones of violence, mechanized, and privatized. Huq considers a pair of novels by Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West. The former documents the transformation, and potential radicalization, of a young Pakistani professional in the wake of the September 11 attacks; the latter follows a couple from an unspecified city on the brink of civil war to the Greek island of Mykonos, then to London, and finally to Marin County, California, where their relationship dissolves. Whereas right-wing populists cast the terrorist and the migrant as racialized threats to civilization and national culture, Hamid’s protagonists instead embody a commitment to pluralism, inclusion, and democratic openness.

scholarly journals Representing the Twenty-First Century Migrant Experience: Adam and Fleutiaux’s Problematic Empathy

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Marianne Bessy ◽  
Mary Sloan Morris
Keyword(s):  
French Literature ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
First Century ◽  
White Female ◽  
Migrant Background ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Illegal Migrants ◽  
French Woman ◽  
Twenty First Century

In recent years, a trend in French literature has emerged among non-migrant French authors. In her 2018 study, The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France, Sabo describes this trend as “the emergence of French authors who write about migration” (27). Similarly, Louviot argued that “the drama of migrants dying on Europe’s doorstep has inspired many […] French writers with no postcolonial or (im)migrant background” (6). This article—which focuses on two texts, À l’abri de rien by Olivier Adam (2007) and Destiny by Pierrette Fleutiaux (2016)—examines how non-migrant French authors have attempted to give a voice to illegal migrants in their recent literary works. Each work recounts the story of a French woman who attempts to help one or several migrants as they navigate horrid living conditions (in a Calais-like city in À l’abri de rien and in Paris in Destiny), suffer mental and physical breakdowns, and face French authorities. This study demonstrates that there is an inherent ambivalence at the heart of how these two non-migrant French authors have attempted to voice the plight of today’s illegal migrants in France. While Adam and Fleutiaux’s texts aim to foster empathy toward migrants, they also feature complex altruistic motives that are far from selfless. Adam and Fleutiaux strive to humanize migrants and their trajectories by creating an empathic discourse of care. However, migrant characters are also portrayed as passive objects of fascination becoming pawn-like figures in the lives of the two white female protagonists. The article questions these characters’ altruism by analyzing how their own mental states overpower their empathic drives, thus bringing to light the questionable reasons why these two women become consumed by the need to help migrants. Ultimately, these considerations help build a critique of the problematic empathy Adam and Fleutiaux have constructed and its ethical ramifications.

“Cherchez la fiction”: Stories of Self-Realization in Anne Garréta’s Pas un jour and Leïla Slimani’s Sexe et mensonges

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177
Author(s):  
JOANNE BRUETON
Keyword(s):  
French Literature ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Female Subjectivities ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Anne Garreta

Faced with the hermetic interiority of post-structuralist narratives, twenty-first-century French literature tends to turn outwards and explore sociohistorical realities as a fertile source of fiction. In this article, I compare two contemporary writers rarely paired together—Anne Garréta and Leïla Slimani—to consider the enduring importance of discursive paradigms in realizing a sense of self. Although Garréta’s mechanised autobiographical aesthetic in Pas un Jour seems to jar with Slimani’s ethnographic journalism in Sexe et mensonges, I argue that both use heuristic narratives to conduct a survey of female desire whose reality is only legible in literature. Intersecting with narrative theories formulated by Barthes, Jameson and Cixous, this article argues that Slimani and Garréta perform their lived sexual experience through a carefully manufactured textual machine that grants them freedom. Only through the straitjacket of a fictional system can the reader glean the reality of female subjectivities so long obscured by myth.

Insurrection as history from Guy Fawkes to black blocs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Loadenthal
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
September 11 ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Cell Networks

This chapter develops the pre-modern history of insurrectionary methods, pursued through a genealogical account of history and discourse. Beginning with a discussion of the genealogical approach as presented by Michele Foucault, this is followed by an exploration of insurrectionism as a form of guerrilla warfare. After affirming that insurrectionary action is indeed within a militant tradition, the reader is led through several hundred years of history that traces the roots of those advocating direct, unmediated attacks on the state—latter termed “propaganda of the deed.” Through examples drawn largely from Europe and North America, special attention is paid to those engaged in theatrical, public attacks, as well as the networks surrounding Luigi Galleani and the Bonnot Gang. Finally, this history is brought into the twenty-first century, linking the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990 and early 2000s, to the decline of that movement following the attacks of September 11, 2001. In its conclusion, the chapter considers whether the decline of the anti-globalization, counter-summit movement emboldened the formation and internationalization of clandestine cell networks promoting insurrectionary attack.

New Priorities for Philanthropy

2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Robert L. Bach
Keyword(s):  
September 11 ◽  
First World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
First World

The events of September 11 have forced institutions to reexamine their priorities and practices. Yet the first world war of the twenty-first century has left many wondering if there truly is a war, and what, if anything, different is demanded of them. The philanthropic sector in particular has not changed significantly, and it continues to struggle with fundamental concerns about its directions. If September 11 and its aftermath are to mean anything to philanthropy other than emergency relief, it must be a recognition that now is the time to tackle the problems and tensions that were ignored before the attacks. For nearly a year, philanthropy as a sector has not rallied behind this call for longer-term reform. Philanthropy should take up these tasks, no matter how daunting they may be, for if foundations do not lead the effort, it may be left to the governments and the militaries of the world to respond on their own.

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