Journeys to the Middle: An Analysis of Liminality within 20th Century Middle Eastern Literature and Scholarship

In 1978, Edward Said published Orientalism, a postcolonial critique of Western representations of the “Orient,” or the Middle East. Since then, literary and cultural scholars have considered new ways of approaching the field of Middle Eastern studies. Some of this scholarship addresses the precarious nature of the Middle East as an identifiable, cross-continental region, yet few have attempted to connect the themes of fractured identity within Middle Eastern literature to the ambiguous nature of the Middle East as a geographical region and focus of scholarship. In my analysis, I explore the ways in which Middle Eastern literature is postcolonial, in addition to how the fragmented or liminal identities of Middle Eastern characters can highlight the imagined realities and representations of the Middle East. Through literary critiques of Season of Migration to the North, written in 1966 by Tayeb Salih and Snow, written in 2004 by Orhan Pamuk, I argue that select Middle Eastern novels, despite their differences in national origins, underscore common themes found in postcolonial scholarship. These novels present issues that reinforce the multiregional nature of postcolonial themes, as well as the way in which the regional category of the Middle East is problematic for those inhabiting the region, and geopolitically strategic for those living outside of it. In this way, I demonstrate how modern and contemporary literature can reflect, complicate, and reshape representations of the Middle East