Commodifying the Subaltern

Literary Space of the Orient in Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

Abstract

This paper analyzes If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga through the lenses of Orientalism by Edward Said and On Decoloniality by Walter Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh. By applying Robert T. Tally, Jr.’s spacio-cultural theory and Henri Lefebvre’s notion of the production of space, the author shows how Naga constructs Cairo as a literary space where power, identity, and cultural misunderstanding intersect through the characters of the “American girl,” the first-generation Egyptian American finding her roots, and the “boy from Shobrakheit,” a former Arab-Spring photographer from rural Egypt. The novel’s experimental structure culminates in a meta-fictional map of how Western epistemologies colonize and commodify the Egyptian subaltern. The structure of the text preys upon the reader’s own privilege and lack of knowledge of Egypt, breaking the fourth wall of the novel. The question implied by the novel’s title, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, reveals the violence in translation. By inserting herself in the narrative as the “American girl,” Naga confronts both author and reader as consumers of authenticity.