الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 165 |  |  |
| | | from | 165 | | |
Abstract
This thesis is informed by a postpositivist realist approach, with special reference to Stuart Hall’s concept of identity making, Judith Butler’s performativity, and Bakhtin’s dialogism, in order to analyze the “making” of Arab-African cultural identity in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s A Palace in the Old Village (written in French in 2009 and translated into English in 2011), Idrīs ʻAlī’s Dongola: A Novel of Nubia (written in Arabic 1998 and translated into English in 2006), and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley (written in English in 2010). In a comparative manner, this thesis tackles these three Arab-African novels that exhibit the experiences and struggles experienced by the modern Arab-African individual to explore his/her cultural identity in relation to the MENA geopolitical position. Between fragmentation and integration, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) citizen goes through different experiences that leaves him/her with either a fragmented—and sometimes distorted—self or a self that is capable of embracing the different—and seemingly contradictory—cultural landscapes in an integrated and a balanced manner which is applicable to the three selected novels where three different special cases of the MENA citizen are represented: Dongola and A Palace in the Old Village present fragmented protagonists who lose sense of who they are and are torn between their Arab and African heritage, while Lyrics Alley presents more than one character who come into good terms with his/her integrated Arab-African cultural identity. Consequently, since the main focus is investigating the Arab-African cultural identity, Arabism and Afropolitanism are inspected in relation to each other, which leads to the conclusion that Afropolitanism can be an application of postpositivist realism.