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Papers by LEKFIFI IMANE

Sophia Rose Arjana's Muslims in the Western Imagination is an exclusive study of Muslim monsters ... more Sophia Rose Arjana's Muslims in the Western Imagination is an exclusive study of Muslim monsters which exist in the Western imagination. It is an attempt to interpret the Western phobia, bias and hatred towards Muslims (juxtaposed at times with Jews), as documented in the genres and sub-genres of Western art and literature. This exposition takes her to sail comprehensively through the stages of history; Medieval to Renaissance to Modern literature, art and cinema. This book speaks about the teratology of Islam, artistic sarcasm and development of Muslims as subjects (Orientalism) " transmogrified " on the walls and paintings of Western art, the result of which are expressed in the Abu Ghraib and GTMO torture cells engineered by the haunted ghost of the West. When placed against the backdrop of the long standing controversy between Islam and the West, the book is not the first of its kind. However, as a genealogical and anthropological study of the dehumanisation of Muslims, Arjana's exploration through the lenses of art, literature and film offers us a fresh perspective about how Muslims and their identities have been discursively constructed within the Western imagination.

This paper attempts an exploration of the literary theory of postcolonialism, which traces Europe... more This paper attempts an exploration of the literary theory of postcolonialism, which traces European colonialism of many regions all over the world, its effects on various aspects of the lives of the colonized people and its manifestations in the Western literary and philosophical heritage. Shedding light on the impact of this theory in the field of literary criticism, the paper focuses on Edward Said's views for the simple reason that he is considered the one who laid the cornerstone of this theory, despite the undeniable role of other leading figures. This theory is mainly based on what Said considers the false image of the Orient fabricated by Western thinkers as the primitive "other" in contrast with the civilized West. He believes that the consequences of colonialism are still persisting in the form of chaos, coups, corruption, civil wars, and bloodshed, which permeates many ex-colonies. The powerful colonizer has imposed a language and a culture, whereas those of the Oriental peoples have been ignored or distorted. Referring to some works of colonial and postcolonial novelists, the paper shows how being free from the repression of imperialism, the natives could, eventually, produce their own culture of opposition, build their own image, and write their history outside the frame they have for long been put into. With such writers, Conrad's Heart of Darkness can never be read the same after Achebe's criticism, nor can Bronte's Jane Eyre after Jean Rhys's postcolonial parallel novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Introduction This paper attempts an exploration of postcolonialism, a literary theory, which traces European colonialism of many regions all over the world, its effects on various aspects of the lives of the colonized people in general, and its manifestations in Western literary and philosophical heritage in particular throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, in addition to the emergence of the literature of opposition and resistance in the ex-colonies. The purpose of this study is to shed light on this theory and the remarkable impact it has left in the field of literary criticism. The paper will focus on Edward Said's views and ideas by exploring his most important books and articles, for the simple reason that Said is considered the one who laid the cornerstone of this theory, despite the importance of other leading figures such as Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha in this respect. Edward Said, the Palestinian American, and the notable academic and lecturer, had been the professor of comparative literature at Colombia University for a long time until his death of leukemia in 2003. Said's name came to light when his book Orientalism was published in 1978 and laid the ground for the theory of postcolonialism, sparking a storm of controversy, which didn't die with Said's decease.

Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice was hoarse, but he sang... more Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice was hoarse, but he sang well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something between Clementine and La Cucaracha. The words ran: Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken to my joyful tidings Of the golden future time. Soon or late the day is coming, Tyrant Man shall be o'erthrown, And the fruitful fields of England George ORWELL Animal Farm -6 -Shall be trod by beasts alone.

Traditionally, mass-communications research has conceptualized the process of communication in te... more Traditionally, mass-communications research has conceptualized the process of communication in terms of a circulation circuit or loop. This model has been criticized for its linearity -sender/message/receiver -for its concentration on the level of message exchange and for the absence of a structured conception of the different moments as a complex structure of relations. But it is also possible (and useful) to think of this process in terms of a structure produced and sustained through the articulation of linked but distinctive moments -production, circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction. This would be to think of the process as a 'complex structure in dominance', sustained through the articulation of connected practices, each of which, however, retains its distinctiveness and has its own specific modality, its own forms and conditions of existence. This second approach, homologous to that which forms the skeleton of commodity production offered in Marx's Grundrisse and in Capital, has the added advantage of bringing out more sharply how a continuous circuit -production-distribution-productioncan be sustained through a 'passage of forms'. It also highlights the specificity of the forms in which the product of the process 'appears' in each moment, and thus what distinguishes discursive 'production' from other types of production in our society and in modern media systems. The 'object' of these practices is meanings and messages in the form of sign-vehicles of a specific kind organized, like any form of communication or language, through the operation of codes within the syntagmatic chain of a discourse. The apparatuses, relations and practices of production thus issue, at a certain moment (the moment of 'production/circulation') in the form of symbolic vehicles constituted within the rules of 'language'. It is in this discursive form that the circulation of the 'product' takes place. The process thus requires, at the production end, its material instruments -its 'means' -as well as its own sets of social (production) relations -the organization and combination of practices within media apparatuses. But it is in the discursive form that the circulation of the product takes place, as well as its distribution to different audiences. Once accomplished, the discourse must then be translated -transformed, again -into social practice s if the circuit is to be both completed and effective. If no 'meaning' is taken, there can be no 'consumption'. If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect. The value of this approach is that while each of the moments, in articulation, is necessary to the circuit as a whole, no one moment can fully guarantee the next moment with which it is articulated. Since each has its specific modality and conditions of existence, each can constitute its own break or interruption of the 'passage of forms' on whose continuity the flow of effective production (that is, 'reproduction') depends. Thus while in no way wanting to limit research to 'following only those leads which emerge from content analysis' , we must recognize that the discursive form of the message has a privileged position in the communicative exchange (from the viewpoint of circulation), and that the moments of 'encoding' and 'decoding', though only 'relatively autonomous' in relation to the communicative process as a whole, are determinate moments. A 'raw' historical event cannot, in that form, be transmitted by, say, a television newscast. Events can only be signified within the aural-visual forms of the televisual discourse. In the moment when a historical event passes under the sign of discourse, it is subject to all the complex formal 'rules' by which language signifies. To put it paradoxically, the event must become a 'story' before it can become a communicative event. In that moment the formal sub-rules of discourse are 'in dominance', without, of course, subordinating out of existence the historical event so signified, the social relations in which the rules are set to work or the social and political consequences of the event having been signified in this way. The 'message form' is the necessary 'form of appearance' of the event in its passage from source to receiver. Thus the transposition into and out of the 'message form' (or the mode of symbolic exchange) is not a random 'moment', which we can take up or ignore at our convenience. The 'message form' is a determinate moment; though, at another level, it comprises the surface movements of the communications system only and requires, at another stage, to be integrated into the social relations of the communication process as a whole, of which it forms only a part. From this general perspective, we may crudely characterize the television communicative process as follows. The institutional structures of broadcasting, with their practices and networks of production, their organized relations and technical infrastructures, are required to produce a program. Using the analogy of Capital, this is the 'labor process' in the discursive mode. Production, here, constructs the message. In one sense, then, the circuit begins here. Of course, the