Espace, déplacement et identité dans le roman Amīrkā (2009) de Rabīʿ Ǧābir

Abstract

In the novel Amīrkā (2009), the Lebanese novelist Rabīʿ Ǧābir narrates the story of Martha Ḥaddād, a young woman who, in 1913, leaves her village in Mount Lebanon to go to the United States of America. She is in search of her husband who left Lebanon before. The path of Martha is a physical and symbolic displacement from the village of her origins – poor and conservative – to the United States, the “New World” where a new life, rich and prosperous, seems possible. This article focuses on the role of space in shaping individual and collective identities through Martha’s paths of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization”. Her experience of displacement in migration is the standpoint for deconstruction and reconstruction of her individual identity which becomes the symbol of the collective search for a Lebanese national identity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.