Rappresentazioni del corpo nel romanzo delle scrittrici siriane contemporanee

In this study, I consider the different representations of the body in a selection of Arabic novels, published by Syrian contemporary women writers: Kursī by Dīma Wannūs, Ḥurrās al-hawā’ by Rūzā Yāsīn Ḥasan, Banāt al-barārī by Mahā Ḥasan, Rāʼiḥat al-qirfa by Samar Yazbik, Imrāʼa min haḏā al-ʽaṣr by Hayfāʼ Bīṭār and Burhān al-ʽasal by Salwā al-Naʽīmī. Even if we can not talk about fundamental difference between “male writing” and “female writing”, the difference resides in women's position in the society which results from the action of several socio-symbolic pressures. Writing breaks the silence in which women have historically been relegated. Women's writing is, therefore, a twofold process of liberation from the pressures of the patriarchal system, on one hand, and from political censorship on the other. These writers deepen all the aspects of the body as a fundamental representation of the individual. The body is the place of negotiation between the individual and the collective dimensions and it becomes a metaphor of the individual as a "desiring subject" in opposition to the concept of "subdued".