ABSTRACT

This article re-investigates the conventional understanding of the female body and voice in ‘Let’s Play Doctor’, a short story written by the Egyptian Nura Amin in 2005. In traditional representations of women in literary discourses, female bodies have mostly been viewed as complex entities and unsettled fields for scientific practices that enhance and sustain the image of, in particular, male doctors as superior and authoritative. The male monopoly over scientific knowledge produces forms of social regulation within which female bodies are generally represented as passively and morally inferior. In the history of the medical profession, these bodies are registered as having the potential to enact aberrant, erotic, self-indulgence and fantasy, an act which makes them liable to shame and hence constant pathological examination. Amin’s characters, however, offer a potent renunciation of the long established place/image of the female body in medical literary discourses through the irony of a simple children’s game. By creating a community of young female actors who play a traditional game of doctor and patients, these young characters redirect our attention to the hidden power of female knowledge which is suppressed by social medical prejudices carried out on women in a highly gendered Arab society (Egypt).

摘要

本文重新探讨了埃及努拉·阿敏于2005年撰写的短篇小说《让我们扮演医生》中对女性身体和声音的传统理解。在文学话语中对女性的传统表征中，女性身体大多被视为复杂的科学实践的实体和不稳定领域，以增强和维持尤其是男性医生的优越和权威形象。男性对科学知识的垄断产生了社会监管形式，在这种形式中，女性身体通常被表现为消极和道德低劣。在医学界的历史上，这些身体被登记为具有产生异常、色情、自我放纵和幻想的潜力，这种行为使他们容易感到羞耻，因此需要经常进行病理检查。阿明的角色，然而，通过一个简单的儿童游戏的讽刺，有力地放弃了医学文学话语中长期确立的女性身体地位/形象。通过创建一个扮演传统医生和患者游戏的年轻女性演员社区，这些年轻角色将我们的注意力转移到女性知识的隐藏力量上，这种力量在高度性别化的阿拉伯社会（埃及）中被社会医学偏见所压制。 ）。