A geografia de poder e a literatura como ponte para o reconhecimento da linha divisória entre o Ocidente e o Oriente: os dois mundos de Ahdaf Soueif em The Map of Love (1999) e In the Eye of the Sun (1992)

Abstract

In this work, we analyze the literature produced by the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif in the works of The Map of Love (1999) and In the Eye of the Sun (1992). In both books the author creates in her narratives a journey story that allows her protagonist characters an exchange between East and West / West and East. Subalterns of their own experience, the characters seek the responses to the productions of meaning culturally experienced by the subjects of these geographic poles reconfiguring, thus, their local histories and a hegemony of Western knowledge. The decolonization of thought judges the coloniality of power and criticism of the knowledge of European discourse. In rebuilding the paradigms the subaltern develops the liminal thinking, points around the varied meanings of meaning, theorizing about the impacts and the various meanings in the subject's life. This is what allows Soueif (2004) an elaboration of the concept "mezzaterra" (a common place). The characters undergo an embodiment of the senses, which Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (2010) calls production of presence. The education of the leading characters allows - as well as a postcolonial colony to the outside - the recognition of the influence of imperialism and an action of the reactionary classes on the outside. Knowledge and experience, however, expose the proximity between the East and the West through the articulations between cultures, assimilations and reformulations: the process of transculturation.