Narrative and antinarrative: resisting oppression in selected works of Toni Morrison and Salwa Bakr

Abstract

The thesis aims at exploring the relationship between narratology and psychology through discussing literary works that belong to African American and Egyptian literatures. The two different worlds of Toni Morrison and Salwa Bakr share some social features including the formation of what is antinarratable which comes as a result of social constraints on what is â appropriateâ to narrate. Those constraints are defined by a hegemonic discourse that gives itself the right to construct the grand narrative as the only â trueâ story and the other narratives as antinarratable. The antinarratable area becomes larger, as far as women are concerned, in patriarchal societies. Some of those women resist such repression either through resorting to fantasy, hysterical narrative, or a healing narrative. This latter needs a support of an understanding group that would piece together the fragmented traumatic narrative and contribute to make the act of narrating a trauma a healing process. Both Toni Morrison and Salwa Bakr take a common trajectory towards revealing the antinarratable in their respective works. They both resist the rigidity of the social conditions forced upon women in their societies and simultaneously deconstruct the fixity of the classic literary traditions through creating and recreating new literary mediums free of prejudices.