Unmasking Patriarchies: Paradigms of Violation and the Future Praxis in Nawal El Saadawi's God Dies by the Nile.

A critical review of Nawal El Saadawi's novels indicate the centrality of the feminine experience—foregrounding the extent to which women's oppression and exploitation are legitimized by race, class, religion, and the patriarchal system in Africa, how her novels attempt a socialist restructuring of the society, and the extent to which she undermines patriarchal power in heterosexual practices. While these remain symptomatic of El Saadawi's novels, it is important to reconsider the role of her male characters and the ways in which their representations speak to futurity. This is important because although various scholars expose the rot in the world of El Saadawi's novels—stressing the male chauvinism factor—there is also the need to unearth the anticipatory impulses that are realized through masculine representations and spatial dynamics. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival, the objective of this paper is to examine how El Saadawi reimagines the future nation through masculine representations, spatiality, and futurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]