Initially, the categorization is simple. Achmed, as a girl born in Egypt, can be seen as an "insider" in her youth. Later, she begins her schooling in Britain and ultimately finds residence in the U.S. as a professor, reaching a point of "outsider" to her first home. Yet, it is through a scholar's eye that she returns to childhood memories, and does not just recreate them for the reader, but instead re-interprets them, finds new importance to them, and re-imagines them. Many times she uses phrases such as (to paraphrase) "if I had known then..." or "looking back now, I see this was actually all about this..." It appears that Achmed uses the status of "outsider" to better understand herself as an "insider." But if that is the case, of the current and former Ahmed's, who is the real "outsider" and who is the real "insider"? Everyone knows the phrase, "inside scoop," so is it possible for Ahmed to deliver better insider information than an insider?
Plus, there is this tension between British colonizers and Egyptians. Once again, one could easily say Brits: outsiders, Egyptians: insiders. But here enters in Ahmed again to confuse us. As a woman who received her formal education in large part from British institutions and British teachers, is she, as well as other Egyptians in similar situations, not an outsider here too? Though she may not sympathize directly with British politics in Egypt (wait a second, thats an older, "outsider" Ahmed who has that opinion) is she not an individual in large part shaped by their force? Additionally, Ahmed acknowleges her father to have in some part internalized colonialism in his efforts to emulate the British. The "colonial internalization" is apparently a sympton of many colonized peoples. Once over, this is a western concept that Ahmed has learned to diagnose. Britain has infiltrated. Even more uncomfortably, is it possible that the roles can be reversed in this outsider/insider relationship between Britain and Egypt? Since Britain has called the shots in Egypt for basically for seventy-years of emperialism, perhaps it is they, the administrators and foreign authority, that are the real insiders here. The colonizers are calling the shots, they become the insiders to thier own game while the colonized are the outsiders learning the rules. As already evidenced in the above paragraph, can't outsiders make better insiders than insiders?
Lastly, in the book, there seems to be a sense of insiders and outsiders even within the Egyptian citizenry. Ahmed, aware in some degree of her "outsider" status, seems to envy other Egyptians for being more Egyptian then her. But as my TA pointed out in an email once "is there one true face to Islam?" this question has broader implications: the whole notion of "Egyptian" can't fall to one person as a model for everyone else. Ahmed expresses the ambiguities of people's identity within Egypt in the first place, and how the term Egyptian may not fully encapsulate a person. Well, for that matter, no term fully encapsulates anyone, so where are these insider groups to be found? If we accept the lesson there there is no "essence" of a person, we can extend this to say, there is no "essence" of cultural identity. I think Zizek said somewhere in his book, Violence, that a "body of people" or "nation" is actually a idea that no one fully sees: it is physically impossible. Yet we attribute characteristics to it, and assume that out there are people, Others, who exemplify all these ideals associated with the nation. In this way, we are all outsiders to some percieved ideal.
So where does this consideration of insider v. outsider go? It is a false diachotomy of sorts. They are most helpful as words to be manipulated... as tools to craft identity in relation to whoever is weilding them. It would be interesting to trace this insider/outsider duo to other historical situations.
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