Feminism and Postmodernism in Kuwaiti Women’s Fiction: Four Novels by Fawziyya S. al-Sālim

Abstract

This article comparatively examines the first four novels of Fawziyya Shuwaysh al-Sālim (b. 1949): al-Shams madhbūḥa wa-l-layl maḥbūs (1997), al-Nuwākhidha (1998), Muzūn (2000), Ḥajar ʿalā ḥajar (2003). I argue that these novels reflect not only the stages of the author’s career as a novelist but also of the transition of Kuwaiti women’s fiction from the conventional to the postmodern narrative technique and discourse. Al-Sālim’s first and second novels typically reproduce-albeit subversively-the dominant literary discourse and employ conventional narrative techniques. On the other hand, her millennial-third and fourth-novels signal the inception of the feminist-postmodernist novel in Kuwait; in varying degrees, both texts utilise present-day, globalised linguistic vulgarism and fragmented narrative techniques to explore feminist discourses bordering on female transcendence and self-determination.

Keywords

• kuwaiti feminism
• postmodernist fiction
• slavery and gendered violence
• culture and sexuality