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Abstract In an attempt to come to terms with the chaotic and disturbing experience of/in conflicts and conflict zones, narrating these experiences becomes crucial in understanding, documenting and processing these contexts. The urge to narrate is an impulse to seek legitimation and it fulfils a need for self-expression. Besides, giving a voice for the marginalised allows for a form of agency. Until recently, conflict zones have been regarded a male domain; however, the experience of and involvement in conflict zones are common to both men and women alike whether directly or indirectly. Hence, it is significant to examine selections of women’s life writing in conflict zones in an attempt to fill this gap. The aim of the thesis is to examine women’s memoirs in contexts of conflict from non-military perspectives, which were not widely studied, using the relevant critical concepts and approaches from life writing studies, women studies and trauma studies. It is hoped that the contribution of the thesis would be in filling a gap in women’s life writing studies with a focus on the notions of genre, gender, and trauma in women’s narratives of conflict/ war experience. The perceived gap is the scarcity of studies examining women’s memoirs of conflict from different positionalities comparatively. Women’s life writing in/of contexts of conflict allows for examining how this form of writing gives these women agency over these chaotic and traumatic experiences, and shares in being a part of an alternative collective archive of these conflicts in addition to helping these women reach a better understating of their world and self. The texts embody a performative act that offers a resilience response to the trauma of living the war. Through examining these works, as exemplary works of women’s life writing, the agency provided to these women within the debilitating contexts of conflicts can be examined. Thus, the study of these texts of the individual experience of women involved in different conflict zones gives room for examining the more often absent or marginalized accounts of experiencing conflicts from the “othered” perspectives of women, highlighting the similarities and differences of rendering the unique experience of each of these women in conflict zones. The thesis examines three texts by women writers from different backgrounds covering three main different positionalities and conflict zones that each was involved in. The texts that the study examines are, chronologically: Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya (2000) by the French journalist and writer Anne Nivat about her experience of the second war in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000; Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq (2005) by the Iraqi young woman who takes the pseudonym Riverbend as she blogs about the first year of the coalition occupation of Iraq in 2003 led by the American forces; and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria (2015) by the Syrian journalist and writer Samar Yazbek narrating her experience of the War in Syria during the years 2012 and 2013. The rationale for choosing the texts is that, though the three memoir texts are considered eyewitness accounts, they represent three different positions of women engaged in conflicts: the external observer “reporting” the conflict, the insider, the one moving back and forth through the conflict. It is believed to be significant to examine how the position and situatedness, in relation to the context of conflict affect the perception and narration of the situation. The thesis is divided into an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. Each of the three chapters examines an aspect of women’s memoirs of conflict. The introduction deals with providing an overview of the thesis, its aim and the perceived gap. It includes introducing the writers and contextualizing the selected texts in their sociopolitical contexts. Chapter One entitled “Women’s memoirs of conflict: intersectional subgenre” examines the position of memoir in the spectrum of life writing genres and the reasons the texts under study fit within it and how it is an intersectional subgenre accommodating several types of life writing. The chapter traces some of the key features of autobiographical acts in the texts, namely storytelling, the notion of the coaxer, space, place and sites of narration. Through the chapter, it is argued that the memoir form fits the female gender, the postmodern age with it blurring of boundaries between the private and the public. Chapter Two “Gender identity and conflict/war contexts” investigates how the gender aspects is represented in the narratives and how the gender identity affects the experience and subjectivity of the writers and their interactions with others. Through their narratives and their interactions within the community during the experience, the women writers of the memoirs under study counter the silencing and the marginalization imposed on female and non-military experience of war/conflict. The gender aspect is examined through investigating the elements of experience, positionality, subjectivity, performativity, relationality and the ethical role that each believes to have, as the chapter elaborates. Chapter Three is entitled “Trauma and Memory in conflict memoirs”. It examines how the texts represented the multiple types of trauma that living the conflicts involve. It also highlights how the texts presented a trauma response that deviates from the typical PTSD response and how memory plays a major role in that process. The role of narrative in the communication of the trauma of living the conflict and fighting the crisis of knowledge that trauma represents is emphasized. This proves the engagement of these narrative with the real world both individually and relationally as a form of positive action in addition to offering the trauma survivors a chance to work through it. The examination of women’s memoirs of conflict experience proves that it is crucial to voice the counternarrative and to strive for its dissemination, for this is one major way for the marginalised not to be utterly silenced and overpowered either by the conflict, the injustice that it breeds, or the weight of the trauma it involves. The marginalised category involves both the women writers whose authority over the conflict/war narrative is challenged as well as the community |