'I cried power': The (Im)Possibility of Female 'Freedom' in Le Jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter (Darina Al-Joundi). Issue 1 (March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vassallo, Helen
• Is Part Of: Nottingham French studies. Volume 53:Issue 1(2014)
• Page Start: 63
• Page End: 75
• Publication Date: 2014-03
• Subjects: French literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 840
• DOI: 10.3366/nfs.2014.0073
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0029-4586

Abstract

<abstract xml:lang="en"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p> <italic>Le Jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter</italic> narrates Darina Al-Joundi's experiences of the Lebanese civil war, and a restriction that is personal, social, gendered and religious. It represents a resistance through performance, via appropriation of a combative persona and of secular lyrics by Nina Simone which Al-Joundi uses to 'cry power' by collapsing boundaries between self and other, East and West, thought and experience. This article analyses the tension between imposed restrictions and a desired 'freedom', setting established theories of exile (Said) in dialogue with more specific discussions of Lebanon and its social restriction of women. This interrogates the ways in which a putative 'freedom' is constructed or diagnosed as 'madness', concluding that the only possibility for negotiating any measure of real 'freedom' is in crossing borders and developing a new model of female 'freedom' contingent on the fragile and ever-shifting boundaries between representations of East and West.</p> </abstract>