Articles

Women, Creativity and Politics

Nawal El Saadawi
Cairo-January 2001

1-       Double Standards

At the time when I was writing this paper a violent controversy was going on between the different political groups that occupy leading positions on the cultural scene in Egypt.

The controversy which has reached the proportions of a real crisis exploded last year when one of the administrations in charge of what are called the House of Culture published a novel entitled “Walimat A’ashab Al Bahr” (The Feast of the sea weeds) written by a Syrian named “Heidar Heidar”. Conservative religious political movements accused the author of having written a novel that underminded the teachings of Islam and its morals. They organized a campaign through the newspaper: Al Shaab” and provoked demonstrations in Al-Azhar University that demanded banning of the book and that disciplinary measures be taken against the Minster of Culture and the officials responsible for the publication of the book.

The government refused to yield tot he demands of the demonstrators. The political parties in the opposition both right and left wing, and the vast majority of intellectuals and writers took a similar stand against any infringement on freedom of expression, writing and speech. They insisted that in the absence of such freedoms there was no future for creative endeavour in society, noway for imagination to express itself. A number of critics wrote articles maintaining that the novel in question had not in any way infringed on the teachings of Islam and its moral principles.

I read the novel carefully and wrote an article in “al hayat” an Arab Daily published in London. The article in “Al Hayat” an Arab Daily published in London. The article appeared in the newspaper on the 11^th of July 2000 after the Egyptian newspaper and magazines to which I had sent it refused to publish it. The title of my article was “Male Imagination in Contemporary Arab Literature remains a Dwarf (Al Khayal Al thoukouri Al mabtour fil Adab Al Sha’i).in my article I said that the freedom to create was essential, and that literary works are judged by readers and by critics, that political, legal, religious or other authorities should never be given the right to ban writings or to take disciplinary measures against their authors. Then I followed this introduction with my own critique of the novel from the standpoint of a women since name of the critics, whether male or female, favorable to the novel or unfavorable to it had dealt with it from this angle. In it I said that the imagination of the author as reflected in his novel was dwarfed. It was an “amputated” imagination. Women in it are just females, with legs that look like smooth marble, irrespective of whether they are mistresses to be despised or sweethearts to be worshiped. The hero in the novel, right from his earliest childhood is filled with the desire to hunt, and to kill birds and animals. This desire is not limited to animals but extends to include women, and yet he is portrayed as a militant socialist who believes in justice for all people. Nevertheless neither the author nor the critics who commented on his novel considered women t be anything else than beings created to satisfy the desires of the men, of the heroes who had fled from oppression and torture in their own country and had found refuge in Algeria. For them only men belonged to the category of human beings.

In the novel, these men, these heroes indulge in multiple sexual relations in the name of a biological masculine nature, or under the cover of religion. They are sarcastic, bitterly sarcastic of the political and religious contradictions which characterize their relationships with women. They are incapable of conceiving a just and democratic life with women. For them justice and democracy have only to do with political parties, elections and parliaments.

The bedrooms of these men, their ordinary everyday lives are steeped in authoritarianism, in unilateral prejudiced ways of thinking, in violence an in a dichotomy between the public and the private in a whole range of dichotomies handed down by traditional culture and religion, but which can also be witnessed everywhere else in the world since the establishment of patriarchal, class society.

The hero struggled against political tyranny, but practiced a similar tyranny against the women in his life, against the angelic loved ones, or the mistress prostitute she devils.

None of the male or female critics rose up in anger or protested against the debase0ment imposed on women in the novel. They were only concerned with the conversations between the heroes on matters related directly or indirectly to religion.

However the struggle that went on during the month of January 2001 led to a radical change in positions. The Minister of Culture decided to fire three writers who occupied responsible positions in the Administration of the Houses of Culture and were in charge of literary publications. They had allowed the publication of three novels said to contain material of an immoral and irreligious nature. In addition the Minister said that they the literary standard of the novel was poor pornographic in nature and offensive to good literary taste.

There was an outcry amongst political and intellectual groups against these measures. The criticisms leveled against the Minister and the subsequent struggle involved political and cultural circles which ranged from the Marxist left, to Socialists, centrists and liberals. It was waged in the name of “freedom for creative expression” and the Minister who earlier had stood up to the fundamentalists during the conflict over Heidar Heidar’s novel was now accused of changing his stand, and trying to curry favour with the politics religious movement. But it was clear that many of the people who entered the fray had done so to settle old scores, or because they belonged to rival groups or to help further there own interests in one way or another to replace the minister and those who had been fired, or win favour with fundamentalists whose influence has started to expand again as a result of the economic and social crisis facing people, the corruption and inefficiency of the government and the increasing fragmentation in the ranks of the progressive and democratic forces in the counrty. Thus the struggle between politico-cultural groups where the important issues are lost in a vulgar exchange of accusations and the “true voices” are submerged.

2. Amputating the Imagination

To amputtae the imagination is no less dangerous than amputating the limbs of the human body, or circumcision of the clitori in young girls.

But people rarely talk about “amputation” of the imagination in creative works, perhaps because the imagination does not bleed or suffer from physical pain. Yet a human body with an amputated imagination is no less incapacitated than a body with no limbs.

Freedom for creative expression, the health and wholeness of the imagination are essential if we re to struggle effectively against religious violence, or political tyranny exercised by the state or within the family. A free wholesome imagination is our protection against double standards and dichotomies in society inherited from the slave society, against prejudices arising from religion class, gender, race or colour.

Children are born with an irrepressible imagination capable of breaking through the barriers which limit reality, the barriers of place and time, or those created by socio-political and religious values. Their imagination is natural, spontaneous inborn and gives them the ability to realize and feel the injustice in the world.

When I was seven years old I realized that my father was unjust because he treated my brother better then me although I was very bright in school whereas he kept failing. I was made to help my mother in the kitchen, to wash plates, clean floors and feast on days received double the pocket money I was given just because he was a boy and I was a girl. But my father used to support what he did with words from books of Allah which he said were sacred.

So when I was still a small child I relized the injustice imposed on me by God because I was born a girl. My imagination was whole and sensitive to this injustice and I was not able to accept it. I was searching for justice, longing for it and at night I used to close my eyes and dream of a world in which God was just and in which fathers were just. But as the years went by this wholesome imagination began to diminish and shrink, to retreat with my growing fear of God, and of my father, and a growing feeling of wrong doing and guilt instilled in me with the thought that I could be sent to burn in hell-fire after death.

My upbringing at home and my educatation in school both played an important role in these developments and little by little my imagination kept shrinking until it almost disappeared and the day came when my rebellion against injustice was no more, when I even believed that injustice was the normal state of things, that what I had seen as being unjust was in fact the essence of justice. Thus it was that my imagination and my sensitivity was corrupted and failed me in many situations.

In early years of my youth I began to feel that my imagination had been buried, that the creative abilities that were mine as a child had been imprisoned behind walls and could no longer be freed.

Perhaps this imprisonment of the imagination was even more cruel than the imprisonment of my body imposed on me many years later by the President because I had dared to oppose what he did.

The worst of prisons for a creative person whether woman or man are the moments when she or he is unable to do something creative, is the terrible frustration which arises when the imagination falls short of what is required, when it seems to shrink and become helpless, when the capacity to feel injustice is lost and the capacity to fight for freedom, and equality and love is gone.

In the early days of my youth political, social and religious pressures on my life became very heavy. I went through a period of sterility, was unable to create. I used to be seized with an overwhelming desire to let my imagination free, but to no avail. It was as though my imagination had become a part of my body, and that this part had been cut off from me with a razor by my upbringing at home and my education in school, by continuous submission to God and my father, to my teacher, my bosses and later my husband.

Much later I realized that a women whose imagination has been amputated is like a women whose clitoris has been cut off with a razor, who has been circumcised though I feel that circumcision of the imagination is much more harmful, much more cruel than physical circumcision, because then a women is deprived of the ability to feel, and see the corruption of her self and others, of the ability to create and to experience the pleasure more acute, more wonderful, than that of food or sex, or anything else.