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يتناول هذا البحث كيفية توظيف ألف ليلة وليلة كسرد مضاد في ديواني "الليالي العربية" لجاك مارشال و"رسائل الكترونية من شهرزاد" لمهجة قحف وكلاهما شاعران أمريكيان من أصل عربي. تعمد الدراسة إلى تقديم قراءة مقارنة في إطار المصطلحات النقدية لديلور وجوتاري وجيرتز، حيث توضح بجلاء الثراء الثقافي ذا المستويات المتعددة، دائمة التطور فيما يعرف بأدب الأقليات.
This study offers a comparative reading of two postmodern Arab American poetry collections: Jack Marshall’s The Arabian Nights (1986) and Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad (2003), as examples of postmodern Arab American poetry collections, where Scheherazade’s story-telling techniques act as the voice of minority discourse. This reading is informed by Guttari and Deleuze’s term the ‘Rhizome’, in conjunction with other terms used by them to explain their minority literature theory such as, ‘deterritorialization’, ‘assemblage’, ‘body without organs’, ‘smooth space’, ‘nomad’, ‘state’, ‘war machine’, etc. The “rhizome” is explained by Deleuze and Guttari as an image of thought that apprehends multiplicities not binaries (TP 233) hence all these rudimentary and equal confluences in Marshall and Kahf, Arab, American, Iraqi, Syrian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc. The dictionary meaning of the rhizome is that it is a prostrate or subterranean root-like stem emitting roots and producing leaves at its apex: a rootstock. Indeed, this is exactly the case in the two researched poetry collections. As a non- hierarchical model of culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure, where there is hierarchy and a pyramidal array of cultures؛ here, there is no original source or genesis. The rhizome has no beginning or end؛ therefore, culture spreads like the surface of water, seeking equilibrium and establishing “smooth space”, which is inliabited by nomos against polis (TP 375). This space is one of “affects” and “distances”, created by eroding water and disorganized luatter, in other words, there is no planned trajectory or hegemony of authority to channel culture in a specific way. The “state”, therefore, must be “nomadic” (TP 74) and subject itself to nomadic waves and flows of “deterritorialization” (TP 74, 30). This again means a disruption of regular hierarchical Organization, which systematically works to vanquish nomadism, control and migrations. Furthemore, the state’s system originally intends to capture traversing flows, movement as well as circulation and to partition space. In Marshall and Kahf, the inbetween area inliabited by the nomad is particularly tile liminal third space, where the body without organs swims and constantly moves in flux or in the intermezzo. “A rhizome has no beginning or end؛ it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance” (TP 46). The aim of Marshall and Kahf, like the nomad in this theory is to keep moving outside the hegemonic circles and the organizational state, thus constantly unsettling the state’s boundaries, heading in their own direction and enjoying their own autonomy. This is clear in the way Marshall describes the Rabbi like a Muslim cleric or where Kahf assumes control over her body and her hair and elevates both as an area that should not be desecrated as a battleground.
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