Sahar Amer

Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures

Given Christianitys valuation of celibacy and its persistent association of sexuality with the Fall and of women with sin, Western medieval attitudes toward the erotic could not help but be vexed. In contrast, eroticism is explicitly celebrated in a large number of theological, scientific, and literary texts of the medieval Arab Islamicate tradition, where sexuality was positioned at the very heart of religious piety. In Crossing Borders, Sahar Amer turns to the rich body of Arabic sexological writings to focus, in particular, on their open attitude toward erotic love between women. By juxtaposing these Arabic texts with French works, she reveals a medieval French literary discourse on same-sex desire and sexual practices that has gone all but unnoticed. The Arabic tradition on eroticism breaks through into French literary writings on gender and sexuality in often surprising ways, she argues, and she demonstrates how strategies of gender representation deployed in Arabic texts came to be models to imitate, contest, subvert, and at times censor in the West. Amers analysis reveals Western literary representations of gender in the Middle Ages as cross-cultural, hybrid discourses as she reexamines borders-cultural, linguistic, historical, geographic-not as elements of separation and division but as fluid spaces of cultural exchange, adaptation, and collaboration. Crossing these borders, she salvages key Arabic and French writings on alternative sexual practices from oblivion to give voice to a group that has long been silenced.

Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women

If t h e a b s e n c e o f a s p e c i f i c terminology to denote lesbianism in medieval Europe seems to have compromised the production of scholarship about same-sex love and desire among women, the existence of the label sahq and sihaqa, musahaqat al-nisa’, or sahiqa (Arabic words for “lesbianism” and “lesbian,” respectively) in medieval Arabic writings did not result in a richer critical production. In fact, if relatively little research has been conducted on female same-sex desire in medieval Europe, even less has been produced on homosexuality in the medieval Arabic literary or Islamicate tradition, and almost no research at all has been done on medieval Arab Islamicate lesbianism. 1 This state of scholarship into alternative sexual practices in the Arab Islamicate world is especially astonishing considering the survival of a noteworthy body of primary texts dealing precisely with this topic. Furthermore, if one broadens the category of medieval Arab lesbian to include women who were “lesbian-like,” as Judith Bennett has invited us to do in our construction of the history of Western female homosexuality, we uncover additional expressions of medieval Arab lesbian I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the Journal of the History of Sexuality who made countless helpful suggestions. 1

Naming to Empower: Lesbianism in the Arab Islamicate World Today

After a brief review of the proliferation of newly coined Arabic words to speak about LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and ally) identities, this article interrogates the facile imitation of Western labels and questions their usefulness in the context of Arab societies and cultures. It demonstrates that the assumptions that underlie the creation of new wordlists overlook and ultimately erase the very rich tradition on alternative sexual practices that has been prominent in the Islamicate world at least since the ninth century. Salvaging this tradition and its accompanying terminology on homosexuality challenges the claim that homosexuality is a Western importation, and renders the recourse to English categories superfluous. Moreover, uncovering the forgotten Arabic cultural material on alternative sexualities offers contemporary Arab gays and lesbians a rich and empowering indigenous heritage, as well as home-grown modes of resistance that are poised to challenge homophobic attitudes and policies in the Arab world, and the hegemony of Western sexual and cultural imperialism.

Cross-Dressing and Female Same-Sex Marriage in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures

The title of Jacqueline Murray’s essay “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible,” in Bullough and Brundage’s Handbook of Medieval Sexuality is revealing of the status of the medieval lesbian in contemporary scholarship.1 In this essay, Jacqueline Murray decries the fact that the medieval Western lesbian has been regularly elided in most literary criticism first under the rubric “homosexual” in mainstream woman history, and under the rubric “woman” in studies of medieval homosexuality which have focused almost exclusively on male homosexuality. She observes: “Of all groups within medieval society lesbians are the most marginalized and least visible” (191).

A Fox is not always a Fox! or How not to be a Renart in Marie de France's Fables

Animal literature in the Middle Ages is essentially typological in that each animal is matched with a specific virtue or vice. This type of literature must be understood in the context of the periods fascination with universal symbolism on the one hand, and the tendency to associate literature with lies on the other. In fact, in order to justify its recourse to animals, any literature which claimed to be didactic and sought to be endorsed by the medieval ecclesiastical discourse of authority had to subordinate the animal to a deeper conventional significance, usually of a theological nature. In the medieval typological discourse, perhaps best exemplified by the Bestiaries, the lion is the symbol of God or the King; the lamb that of Jesus Christ or the victim; the fox that of the Devil or evil preach-

MARIE DE FRANCE REWRITES GENESIS: THE IMAGE OF WOMAN IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S FABLES

This paper examines the representation of woman in Marie de Frances Esope. In fable 53, Marie subverts the traditional negative symbolism of woman in medieval literature by questioning the very basis of this representation, that is by re-writing the episode of the Temptation. This fable highlights, through the absence of woman in a scene strongly reminiscent of Original Sin, the arbitrariness of (male) moralistss condemnations. An examination of several other fables of the Esope further indicates that Marie describes woman in multiple, often contradictory ways, thereby defying her consistently negative and fixed depiction in much of the didactic literature of the time. Marie demonstrates that the univocal symbolism associated with woman is in fact the result of a power struggle, in which men silence women for fear of their voice, and of the polyvocality that would ensue if women were allowed to speak. By blaming woman for the Fall, male preachers thus perform a linguistic castration which upholds their own (male) voice as unique, authoritative and unchallenged. As she liberates woman from the role imputed to her in Original Sin, Marie de France also liberates her own work from potential rejection and thus marks the emergence and affirmation of the female voice.

La dimension spectrale et interculturelle du portrait chez Youssef Nabil

Les portraits photographiques de Youssef Nabil déroutent par leur singularité et leur originalité et nous invitent à repenser la culture contemporaine franco-arabe. Retouchés au pinceau, ces portraits engagent en un premier temps un dialogue avec les lieux communs de la photo hollywoodienne depuis les années 1900 et font appel à des modes de narrativisation complexes. Car en effet, ses portraits dépassent le premier effet conventionnel de la reconnaissance et prennent la forme d’un oracle qu’on interroge. Les retouches au pinceau qui accentuent les contours des visages, des yeux et des lèvres des personnages de Youssef Nabil, font allusion aux développements du médium photo photographiques, à ceux du cinéma tout autant qu’à l’éthique de l’époque postmoderne, période dans laquelle on a ravivé les photographies anciennes et les films en noir et blanc par le biais de la couleur. Ce sont précisément ces effets techniques qui donnent un sens d’étrangeté et qui mettent en scène une dimension spectrale. Clin d’œil sans doute à l’esthétique postmoderne et aux romanciers minimalistes des Editions de Minuit qui, depuis les années 1980, s’attachent à faire du neuf avec du vieux, les photographies de Youssef Nabil réveillent notre mémoire collective, tout en nous ramenant, néanmoins, dans le présent.