2025/05/27 by Inas LAHEG
#FOS: Languages and literature
paper · doi:10.48734/akofena.n016.vol.2.14.2025
Abstract: The present paper examines the dynamics of ‘the discourse of representation’ in Anglophone diaspora literature by shedding light on Leila Aboulela’s debut novel, The Translator (1999). Focal to this study is Aboulela’s appropriation of religious acts as a mechanism for Anglo-Arab immigrants to shield their personhood from internalizing Western distorted personifications of Muslims. Henceforth, this study, through tracking the protagonist’s encounters, unmasks the role of prevalent visual images of Muslims within the British mainstream as a centric system of representation. This analysis draws on the theoretical frame of Stuart Hall’s reasoning implied in his book, Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices (1997). Herein, it will be argued that Muslims in the UK have become passive agents of the social media unilateral process of representation. This article further partakes Jacques Derrida’s insinuation of acts of religion as a form of agency. Hence, it is concluded that Aboulela inserts religious referents, which are culturally and spiritually laden with the Muslim immigrants’ ethnic heritage, as a safeguard against a hegemonic discourse, disruptive of the exiled subjects’ sense of self. The author seeks to engender a re-definition of Anglophone diaspora women’s identity based on a discourse that grants an agency and subjectivity to the de-individualized marginality. Keywords: Acts of religion, Anglophone diaspora, De-individualization, Discourse of representation, Stereotypes.