Looks of Otherness and Extraneousness in 1970 Libya: Identity Claims and Ideological Frontiers in a Short-Story by Mansūr Būshanāf,

From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, the encounter between the Arabs and the other – the West – has been characterized by an attraction/rejection relationship: on the one hand, the Arabs considered contact with Europe fundamental for enhancing Arab progress after the long lethargy experienced under the Ottoman Empire, on the other, they began to fear the consequences of slavishly adopting reforms and innovations imported from abroad. This contradic- tory attitude towards the other culture and its models, present mostly in the nahdah cradle countries such as Egypt, did not concern Libya. For historical-political reasons, in Libya the otherness has been largely modulated on the basis of the antithetical roles of colonizing-colonized binomial, even after independence, when the Italian community that had remained in Libya went from being a rul- ing élite to a foreign minority. With Qadhdhafi’s rise to power, the concept of alterity incorporated new elements, such as not belonging to the “tribal homeland”. This paper investigates how the issue of otherness and extraneousness in 1970 Libya became more complex and contradictory, by analyzing a short-story by the dissident playwright and writer Mansūr Būshanāf, Klāwdiyū bin