Written by: Amin Pakparvar – September 2024

In the realm of feminist cinema, articulation and misarticulation serve as central modes of resistance against dominant structures of power. The filmmakers discussed in this essay, engage with language—both its presence and absence—to challenge and critique the oppressive systems of colonialism and patriarchy. The program An Arab Woman’s Place Is in the Struggle, curated by Giovanni Vimercati and Mania Akbari, foregrounds this resistance by showcasing films by and about Arab women who have fought for liberation. These films exemplify the tension between articulation, or the clear expression of meaning, and misarticulation, a purposeful disruption or refusal of coherent language. In exploring this tension, it is critical to contextualize it within philosophical debates surrounding language, voice, and the limits of logos, as articulated by Jacques Derrida and further discussed by Pooja Rangan’s book Immediations.1

In An Arab Woman’s Place Is in the Struggle, the films resist the Western tendency to portray Arab women as silent, passive figures. They instead offer examples of women as active participants in their own liberation. However, the language of the liberation is not always articulated in traditional forms of speech or narrative. Some of these filmmakers employ what might be called “misarticulation” as a deliberate strategy, refusing the conventions of logocentric communication—the structured, rational, and coherent language that has historically dominated patriarchal, colonial, and Abrahamic religious discourses.

Amin Pakparvar

While all the films in the program offer critical perspectives on the experiences of Middle Eastern women, I will focus on three specific examples that illustrate the key issues I want to emphasize. Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75 (1975) stands out for its use of language as a form of articulation, where narrative and voice serve to clearly express a collective feminine identity in a style that can be called “auto-ethnography”, a documentary form discussed by Catherine Russel in her book Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video2. In contrast, Nina Menkes’ The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983) and Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want to Say (1983) utilize forms of misarticulation, employing fragmented language, disjointed narratives, and silence to resist traditional modes of expression and challenge the limitations of patriarchal and colonial discourse. Through these films, I will explore how articulation and misarticulation function as strategies of resistance and critique.

Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75: Articulating Identity Through Autoethnography

Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75 (1975) exemplifies the articulation of a collective and personal feminine identity within a post-colonial context. The film is a feminist essay that uses the character of Fatma, a university student, to narrate the histories of Tunisian women during and after the colonial period. By juxtaposing documentary elements with reenactments and historical analysis, Baccar constructs a narrative that challenges the viewer to consider the ways in which women’s voices have been systematically excluded from national histories.

Baccar’s use of voice-over narration in FATMA 75 can be understood through Catherine Russell’s theory of autoethnography. Russell defines autoethnography as a mode of filmmaking that merges personal history with cultural critique, positioning the filmmaker as both subject and analyst. In this light, Baccar’s use of the first-person voice-over reflects what Russell describes as a “subjective” and “unambiguously subjective” narrative, a feature common to autoethnographic works. While Baccar herself is not transparently present in the film, the character of Fatma serves as a metaphor for the filmmaker—someone deeply engaged with the feminist history of Tunisia. Fatma becomes a stand-in for Baccar, guiding the viewer through a personal and collective narrative of feminist resistance.

Moreover, Russell emphasizes how autoethnography often deals with “split, insecure, and plural” identities, articulating these fragmented selves through the experiences of memory and travel. In FATMA 75, the character Fatma becomes a conduit for these themes. Her personal journey, both literal and metaphorical, reflects the fractured identity of Tunisian women as they navigate between traditional roles, the effects of colonial history, and the push for feminist liberation. Baccar’s narrative places this identity “at one remove,” to borrow Russell’s words, as something “to remember, to see, but not quite to experience,” mirroring how the film positions both historical memory and cultural identity in a state of tension between the past and the present.

In FATMA 75, the voice acts as both a vehicle for meaning and a site of resistance. While the voice-over serves to narrate the film’s historical and political content, it also reveals the limitations of speech in fully capturing the complexity of women’s experiences. The film’s fragmented structure, which moves between different temporal and spatial settings, mirrors the fragmentation of women’s identities under colonial and patriarchal oppression. By framing FATMA 75 through the lens of autoethnography, Baccar creates a space where Tunisian women can articulate their own history, reclaiming their voices from the silence imposed by colonialism and patriarchy.

Nina Menkes’ The Great Sadness of Zohara: Speaking Nearby the Subject

Nina Menkes’ The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983) engages directly with the concept of misarticulation, using fragmented language and disjointed narrative structures to explore themes of exile and spiritual dislocation. The film follows a Jewish woman, Zohara, on a mystical journey through Arab lands, but rather than offering a coherent narrative, Menkes presents a series of fragmented images and whispered voices. The whispers, drawn from the Book of Job, reflect Zohara’s inner turmoil, but they also resist clear interpretation, leaving the viewer with a sense of disorientation and ambiguity.

Menkes’ film embodies Jacques Derrida’s critique of logocentrism, the philosophical idea that speech is privileged over writing and that language offers a transparent path to meaning.3 Derrida argues that the Western philosophical tradition has been marked by a phonocentric bias, in which the voice is considered the most direct route to expressing an individual’s interiority. This bias, according to Derrida, creates the illusion of self-presence, where speech is perceived as offering unmediated access to one’s thoughts, emotions, and consciousness. In this framework, the voice is believed to transcend the limits of the written word, establishing speech as the more authentic form of communication.

However, Derrida dismantles this idea, showing that even speech is mediated by signs and systems of representation, and thus cannot offer direct access to self-presence. In The Great Sadness of Zohara, Menkes visually and aurally demonstrates this tension, using the whispers as fragmented attempts at articulation that ultimately reveal the limits of voice and language. The film’s refusal to offer clear answers or coherent narrative closure reinforces its critique of patriarchal and colonial systems structured by logocentric modes of communication. By resisting conventional forms of articulation, The Great Sadness of Zohara opens space for alternative modes of expression, allowing Zohara’s fragmented voice to emerge in defiance of the dominant logocentric doctrines that have historically silenced women.

Here, it is crucial to understand Menkes’ use of voice and language through Pooja Rangan’s concept of “speaking nearby,” as operationalized by feminist filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha. In her film Reassemblage (1982)4, Trinh employs a whispered, accented voice-over that reflects the impossibility of encapsulating the complexity of the African continent into a singular narrative or soundbyte. Rather than speaking directly for the subject, this technique acknowledges the impossibility of fully representing another’s experience, while still engaging with it. Menkes, in The Great Sadness of Zohara, similarly avoids claiming mastery over Zohara’s experience through language. Instead, the film speaks “nearby,” not “about” the subject, using fragmented whispers that evoke a presence without seizing it, allowing Zohara’s experience of dislocation to remain open and undefined.

This method aligns with Amanda Baggs’ critique, as discussed by Rangan, of the conflation of voice with conventional speech. In Baggs’ In My Language (2007)5, an autistic voice challenges the assumption that voice equals speech, arguing that communication exists beyond spoken words. Menkes’ use of whispers and fragmented dialogue disrupts the conventional expectation that clarity and narrative coherence are necessary for understanding, allowing Zohara’s voice to exist in an ambiguous, liminal space that speaks volumes through its very absence of obvious meaning. As Baggs points out, “Not everyone has words but everyone has a voice,” and in Menkes’ film, Zohara’s voice—though fragmented and disjointed—finds expression beyond conventional logocentric forms.

Thus, Menkes’ The Great Sadness of Zohara stands as a powerful example of how feminist filmmaking can resist the patriarchal structures that seek to contain and define the voices of everyone, including all genders, races, bodies, and ages. By embracing misarticulation and utilizing strategies like “speaking nearby,” the film creates a space for Zohara’s voice to exist and wander without being fully defined or constrained by the limitations of language, opening new possibilities for self-expression.

Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want to Say: The Silence of Articulation

Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want to Say (1983) pushes the boundaries of misarticulation even further, utilizing silence and the repeated gagging of a woman to comment on the suppression of women’s voices. The film presents a series of still images in which a woman’s face is repeatedly gagged by male hands. Over these images, a female voice repeatedly utters the phrase, “so much I want to say.” The tension between the woman’s silenced image and the repetitive voice highlights the ways in which patriarchal systems have historically silenced women, preventing them from fully articulating their experiences.

Hatoum’s work can also be examined through Derrida’s critique of logocentrism. The film reveals the limitations of patriarchal language systems, suggesting that there are forms of feminine experience that cannot be expressed through conventional speech. Furthermore, the repetition of the phrase “so much I want to say” functions as a form of resistance, drawing attention to the very impossibility of articulating these experiences within the confines of logocentric discourse.

Hatoum’s use of silence and repetition in So Much I Want to Say also aligns with Derrida’s broader critique of metaphysical presence. In refusing to offer a clear narrative or resolution, the film resists the idea that meaning can be fully articulated or understood. Instead, Hatoum embraces misarticulation as a way of expressing what cannot be said, using the silences and repetitions to challenge the viewer to reconsider the role of language in constructing meaning.

Conclusion

The films curated in An Arab Woman’s Place Is in the Struggle exemplify how Arab women filmmakers engage with the concepts of articulation and misarticulation to resist patriarchal and colonial oppression. Through their use of fragmented narratives, silences, and disrupted voices, these filmmakers challenge the logocentric systems that have historically privileged speech as the primary means of expressing consciousness. By rejecting these systems, they open up new possibilities for feminine expression, offering a powerful critique of the structures that have sought to silence them.

Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75 articulates a collective feminine identity through autoethnography, using the voice-over as both a narrative tool and a site of resistance. Nina Menkes’ The Great Sadness of Zohara embraces misarticulation, using fragmented whispers and disjointed narrative structures to explore the limits of language in expressing exile and dislocation. Finally, Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want to Say uses silence and repetition to comment on the suppression of women’s voices, revealing how misarticulation in a cinematic language can serve as a form of feminist resistance. Together, these films highlight the importance of reclaiming misarticulation as a valid and powerful form of expression, challenging the boundaries of logos and offering new ways of thinking about voice and agency.

References

• 1. Rangan, Pooja. Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
• 2. Russell, Catherine. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
• 3. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
• 4. Trinh T. Minh-ha. Reassemblage. 1982. 
• 5. Amanda Baggs, In My Language. 2007.