Poetica del trauma e riscrittura della storia in due romanzi di Mahā Ḥasan (Siria)

Over the twentieth century and up to the present day, women novelists in the Arab world have moved from the margins to the center of the literary field. This shift is reflected in the languages and style of their writing, which has moved from a focus on the intimate universe and personal experience –where “the personal was political” – to the collective and public dimension. The history of Arab women’s marginalization at the heart of patriarchal societies affects their view of the world and their writing, which gives pride of place to the representation of various forms of trauma that often pass through the body. Based on some reflections about the relationship between women’s writing, bodies and trauma, and the rewriting of history, I wish to turn attention to the work of Syro-Kurdish novelist Mahā Ḥasan, through a comparative analysis of two of her latest novels about the Syrian revolution. In Ṭubūl al-ḥubb (The Drums of Love, 2013) and Mītrū Ḥalab (A Subway to Aleppo, 2016), Mahā Ḥasan focuses on two different phases of the upheaval of the political context in Syria after 2011, from the point of view of a Syrian woman, exiled in Paris. Exile and war intersect and are expressed through a “poetics of trauma” that aims to actively involve the reader in the Syrian context. My contribution will aim to highlight the narrative, stylistic and linguistic choices that Mahā Ḥasan puts in place, in these two novels, to elaborate her own “poetics of trauma” by placing them in dialogue with her positioning as a woman writer in exile.