The Representation of Subaltern Identity in the New Arabic Novel: The Case of the Novel Chicago

Cultural identity might be revealed in group features of human beings sharing many relationships like common history, social and religious descriptions. All cultures represent their identity through different tools and means. It is the representation that gives to any group a picture of itself and others. This process is so important that there a term associated with it, "narrative identity". In this respect, the postcolonial literature portrays the continuous relationship between the colonialist and the colonialized a relation based on submission and subjugation. This situation requires the removal and suppression of the identity, intentionally or unintentionally. The Arab writers who suffered this period creatively and aesthetically reacted to it. They tried through writing, thinking and imagination, to portray different faces of this experience in all its cruelty. These pictures have sought to separate the present identities from the past and be involved in a global race based on cultural competitions beyond, say, military and economic competitions. The novel Chicago by Ala al Aswani employs the phenomena of exile and diaspora, which the characters of the novel have lived or observed, as the embodiment of many of the postcolonial experiences. This novel narrate the moral contrasts between the western and eastern identities. That is, it describes the process through which the slave-master relationship takes shape—how an independent agent becomes a passive entity.