Preserve the Perverse: Naughty Words in the Nahdah

Abstract

In this thesis, I closely analyze Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s use of enumeration in al-Saq ‘ala al-Saq (1855). Al-Shidyaq uses enumerations and lists throughout al-Saq to thwart power structures spanning religious, political, colonial, literary, and sectarian domains in mid-nineteenth-century Syro-Lebanon. The Arabic language’s capacity to render new subjectivities, power dynamics, and capitalist relations legible made it a charged site of debate and reform in the nineteenth century because of its centrality to questions of Arab identity. While al-Shidyaq’s al-Saq powerfully demonstrates this in several ways, my focus is on the critical role of lists and enumerations, which are especially valuable and revelatory for several reasons, including (1) their interruptive and “excessive” operations and profane content that aims to neutralize and resist authoritative order, particularly religious authorities seeking to sanction taboos as themselves “excessive”; (3) their sonic engagement with the carnal characteristic of al-Saq; (4) their testament to the emergence of print technologies which effected a new macrotypography and forms of textual presentation in Arabic books. I examine al-Shidyaq’s use of lists and enumerations within the broader Nahdawi context to unpack their polemical functions and underlying mechanisms as critiques of dominant power structures. To provide a theoretical framework for this analysis, I employ monster theory and Bakhtinian theory (the carnivalesque, grotesque, heteroglossia, and polyphony) to argue that al-Saq is a disruptive and subversive text that challenges the orthodoxies of language and society alike.