Occidentalist Mapping: Arab Spring and Self-Subversive Representation of the Other

This chapter addresses Occidentalism, not only as a means of deconstructing Orientalist misconceptions about the East or even of writing back to the empire but also within the process of regaining self-validation and self-assertion or retrieving an autonomous agency that allows for proper and independent construction anddevelopmentofEastern,Arabidentity.Nowondertherearemultiplethreadsorun-dertones within the current of Occidentalism, or rather Occidentalisms. 1 The chapter thus addresses the subversive tone in selected Arabic literary material that, en-lightened by the dis-illusionary moment of the Arab Spring, reworks the narrative of identity construction, free from any sense of inferiority or impotence that might have been instilled through the common thread of the Orientalist discourse. In its request for conscious self-representation, this native and –indirectly –Occidentalistnarrative both decentralizes and/or displaces the largely hegemonic West as a mere variable in the process of local identity construction and underscores a subversive sense of agency, where the West is at times ignored and at others appropriated or even misconceived and/or misrepresented.