Published Paper Details:

This article will study the memoir, 'A Border Passage' (1999) by the eminent academic Leila Ahmed, the Harvard professor of Egyptian descent. Implementing Homi Bhabha's concepts of 'Third Space' and 'hybridity', it will be investigated how the memoirist, positioned in the conflict-torn interstitial space or what Bhabha calls the Third Space, between the cultures of her homeland and host land, productively used this border-zone to develop an empowering hybridized identity. In the light of Miriam Cooke's theory of 'multiple critique', it will also be argued that from the Third Space she conducted a multifaceted critique of the different issues like Western racism against the Arabs and their tradition, the authoritarian regime in her homeland, the misogyny and sexism in official Islam, Western imperialism in the Middle East, white imperial feminism and Islamophobia; issues that affected her struggle for acquiring agency. Finally, it will be shown how her hybrid identity enabled her to rise above cultural dualism in the diaspora. But at the same time it will also be demonstrated how she resisted the pressure from her host society to give up her indigenous culture and thus to assimilate; her hybrid identity made it possible for her to be at ease with her diasporic identity and also to affirm her cultural heritage as an Arab Muslim.