The Egyptian Nubian Archival Discourse: Identity Politics in Yehia Mokhtar’s "Indo Mando" (Here and there) and "Giddu Kāb"

This chapter argues that a number of Egyptian Nubian writers and activists have adamantly endeavored to compile their own archive as an empowering strategy geared toward preserving Nubian oral history, culture, identity, and rights. The archival narrative is therefore an important cultural production that appropriates the archival discourse as a rite of passage from the margin to the center. Scrutinizing two works by the Nubian writer Yehia Mokhtar (1936–), mainly, the 2009 collection of short stories Indo Mando and the 2015 biographical novel Giddu Kāb, the study contends that Mokhtar represents the archival writer par excellence.

This chapter explores Mokhtar’s discourse on identity, nationalism, and the image and cultural positionality of the Egyptian Nubian, holding him in contrast to other Egyptian Nubian writers through his Sufist perspective and journalistic national discourse. His attempt at appropriating the archival discourse as a space of intervention and empowerment in the selected archival narratives, shaped by historical and political changes, is a major objective of this study. Hence, the chapter questions the ideological perspective of his archival discourse and the credibility of the meticulously selected archive as “a politicized space” of resistance and intervention. Jacques Derrida’s concept of the archive and his spatial definition of the archive as “house” and Marco Codebo’s definition of the archival novel as a hybrid literary genre, besides a bird’s eye view on the cultural/political scene are taken as points of departure.