Abstract:
There weren’t any social-economic, political or historical factors
in the Arab World causing postmodernism. Like other esthetic trends
before, it was “brought from the West”. But it wasn’t established in the
Arabic environment mechanically. Arab Postmodernism had its native
context. It’s true that after the epoch of modernism Europe lost the
function of the “etalon”. And yet even in postmodern times Arabs had
to catch up with the West.
Western postmodern works of art mostly were free of social or
political engagements, but Arab culture in the condition of authoritarian
regimes couldn’t free from these issues. If freedom of the expression doesn’t exist in society, the protest must be expressed by intellectuals.
Since the beginning of the 60s* new Arab generation protested against
modernist trends dominated in 50s, and there appeared a new wave of
modernization and westernization as well.
In Arabic culture, as in the quite different space from the Western
world, the invariant of postmodernism was created. Arab postmodern
literary pieces contained characteristics of postmodern texts as mixture
of different genres, using of traditional forms and signs (but not in an
ironic context), anarchical structure, intertextuality, reminiscences,
skepticism, hyperspace with ruined borders of time etc., and at the same
time they contained some characteristics of national literature caused
by native environment. The war, trauma, displacement, destroying of the
Arab society gave birth to such themes as memory, identity, looseness
in time and space, mixture of languages and cultures etc.
If in the 60s-90s engaged literature was outdated in the West,
Arab postmodern literature was represented by Emigrant, Prison,
Women Writings, Memoirs or Autobiography… These texts were not only
depicting the reality, but also contained concrete massages towards
Arabic and/ or Western societies.
In the Arabic culture of this epoch they also didn’t care for the
canons of genre. But as pure postmodern examples (by their form and
plot) of art are not frequent, it would be better if we speak about signs
of postmodernism in the concrete works.
