This thesis consists of an exegesis, 'White Fantasies and Black Fictions', and a creative work, 'The Lebs'. Together they analyse current representations of Arab- Australian Muslim male identity in Western Sydney, and offer alternatives through the medium of autobiographical fiction. 'White Fantasies and Black Fictions' explores Arab-Australian Muslim male identity as a strategic hybrid formation unique to Australia that emerged from a climate of Islamophobic and xenophobic marginalisation. The 'Leb' constructed himself, and was constructed by, the dominant White Australian culture, in relation to local, national and international events, including a series of drive-by shootings and gang affiliations in the late 90s, a series of gang rapes in the year 2000, the September 11 attacks on New York City in 2001, and the Cronulla Riots in 2005. In particular, the exegesis focuses on media, fiction and film representations, which informed public perceptions and self-perceptions of the 'Leb'. I argue that what is constructed and imagined as a foreign presence and menace within the dominant White Australian consciousness is a uniquely Australian identity which draws on elements of 'Lebanese-ness', 'Arab-ness', 'Muslim-ness', and notions of 'African-Americanness' popularised and glamourised to young Arab-Australian Muslim men through the global media - as well as on forms of masculinity common among Australian men of a particular socio-economic condition regardless of their cultural and/or religious backgrounds. This approach is supported by a series of close readings of relevant texts, including Ghassan Hage's White Nation (1998), which theorises the White Australian context in which the 'Leb' identity emerged, and Collins, Noble, Poynting and Tabar's Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime (2000), which investigates the Australian media's presentations and politically motivated racial stereotyping of youth crime in Sydney to the year 2000. To connect these local and national representations to a global imperialist and orientalist Western discourse, this exegesis investigates the depiction of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood cinema, based on the research of Jack G. Shaheen in Reel Bad Arabs (2009). In consideration of the African-American influence on the Australian 'Leb' character, this exegesis also examines bell hooks' We Real Cool (2004), which contrasts popular culture representations to the lived experiences of Black men in the United States. This discussion culminates in an extended analysis of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (X & Haley 1992). Given Malcolm X's African-American male identity and his confrontation with White power structures, as well as his unique relationship to, and adoption of, Islam and the Arab World, the exegesis argues that The Autobiography offers Arab-Australian Muslim male writers a new insight into autobiographical writing and a model for producing autobiography. The work of autobiographical fiction, 'The Lebs', comprises three novellas. They are set, in chronological order, in the years 2001, 2003 and 2006. It is told from the double perspectives of an adolescent, Bani Adam, and his grown-up counterpart looking back over the past. It is a sequel to my first work of fiction, The Tribe (Ahmad 2014), which portrayed a large Arab-Australian Muslim Shi'ite family from the perspective of Bani at the ages of seven, nine and eleven. In 'The Lebs' Bani Adam is a student at the infamous Punchbowl Boys High School in Western Sydney, which regularly appears in the media and is surrounded by barbed wire fences and cameras. In response to the demonisation of young Arab-Australian Muslim men because of the Skaf gang rapes in 2000 and the September 11 attacks on New York City in 2001, the high school students, who call themselves 'Lebs', react to their marginalisation, low socio-economic status and poor education with racist, sexist, homophobic and violent attitudes and behaviour towards each other, their teachers and the general public. While Bani observes and comments on the behaviour of his peers, and often participates in it, he is keen to distance himself from what he perceives to be the inferior and flawed cultural group that is his own. When Bani leaves school, however, and seeks to develop his interest in theatre by taking part in a workshop with a collective of White middle class artists from Sydney's inner west, he discovers that the public, political and media stereotypes which have shaped his identity as a Leb are part of a larger network of conflicting cultures, faiths, genders, sexualities and classes within contemporary multicultural society. ACCESS RESTRICTED INDEFINITELY TO EXEGESIS ONLY.
| Date of Award | 2016 |
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| Original language | English |
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