Abstract :
This essay considers the intersection between the construction of self and the acquisition
of literacy in the three autobiographical novels of the Moroccan writer Muhammad
Shukr¯ı (1935–2003), who became literate in his 20s. The article examines not only how
Shukr¯ı’s texts reveal the relationship between literacy and the experience and textual
construction of self, but also how the power associated with literacy is circumscribed by
both the inability to achieve stable, unmediated expression and notions of legitimate
Arabic literary discourse. The three works present different senses of self, yet each of
them is tied to distinct aspects of literacy and literariness, and in each of them
legitimation, or a lack thereof, either shores up or, more often than not, wears away at the
sense of self of the autobiographical ‘I’. Furthermore, Shukr¯ı’s three autobiographical
texts all attempt to counter delegitimation through the expression of an explicit,
corporeal masculinity.
