Appropriating through Crippling: A Study of Intersubjective Modes of Production in Naguib Mahfouz’ Midaq Alley

Abstract

The uncertain modes of production in a colonially disturbed society result into toxic anxieties, far-reaching frustrations, and consequential transgressions. Irrespective of local cultural values, the western imperialism has cultivated its ends by politically prioritizing the western modes of production as the avant-garde alternatives for the people of traditional economic conditions. It is also through a high-yielding relationship between seduction and appropriation that the imperial powers make the modern market inevitable and indispensable for the subjugated public at large. Correspondingly, the neophytes—the subjects of modern markets—too accept the contractually transfiguring enterprises publicized through newly established discursive practices. This metamorphosing but a culturally vital process has been intimated by an Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz in his novel Midaq Alley published in 1947. The characters of this novel experience certain paradoxes of appropriation and transfiguration for the colonially syllabized market fetishes. Above all, the metaphor of crippling in this fiction signifies the repercussions of (atrophying) modernity in Cairo. The research, therefore, critically evaluates the intersubjective modes of production in Midaq Alley which (tend to) cripple and appropriate the masses in accordance with the norms of modernity in market.

Keywords

• Modes of Production, Transfigure, Appropriation, Intersubjective modes of Production, Crippling