Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations

The geographic focus of the study project switchescontinually between what we have become accustomed to call theArab-Islamic world and the American West. However the specificperspective of the analysis searches beyond these imaginedgeographies, seeking to track down completely different(interstice) spaces: theoretical spaces of transmigrantcriticism, artistic-media spheres of resistive performance, and the literary non-places of narrative identifications. Forthis purpose I analyze selected cultural productions of Arab-American transmigrants, which are scarcely fixable within thebinary Orientalist-Occidentalist matrix of ethnicity andcultural identity. This particular de-centering quality willbe elaborated by exploring the critical interventions,literary texts and audio-visual works of intellectuals whosebiographies and works are decisively influenced by constantphysical and topological-discursive movements between theMiddle East and the US.