Writing Queer Desire in the Language of the “Other”

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2014

Since the attainment of independence by Maghrebian nations (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia), there has been animated discussion of the use of either Arabic or French as the language of expression. A liminal linguistic spectacle has emerged between the two languages in such a way that there is a dialogic intertwining and resonance occurring between them. This paper focuses on how in spite of the “cultural recognition of a wide array of sexual practices and roles spelled out meticulously in the linguistic variants attributed to them” (Al-Samman 272), the terms “homosexual” and “homosexuality” (in the Western sense of the words) do not exist in dialectal Arabic. This paper thus explores the stakes surrounding the use of French in explicitly broaching “marginal” sexuality in the novels of two openly gay Moroccan writers, Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa. It is herein posited that the “transliteration” of experiences encountered in Arab-Muslim milieu through the use of the French language allows for an opening up of a discursive domain that had hitherto remained shrouded in silence and regarded as taboo and unutterable.

This paper sets out to examine the social implications and functions of the contemporary body of gay Moroccan literature against Maria Pia Lara's readings of the creation and reception of literary works in the public sphere. Through a (re)reading of novels by Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa, it is argued that these novels offer a privileged space that is not simply a metalinguistic and autonomous edifice, but also a means through which individual, societal and cultural self-assessment and comprehension can be affected in the domain of quotidian life. Ultimately, and possibly more importantly, this paper asserts that gay literary narratives reveal the heterogeneity of lived experiences, thereby producing innovative ways of considering sexuality which cannot be simply overlooked or invalidated. These narratives thus propose an alternative public-sphere which challenges hegemonic Moroccan norms and value systems.

Journal of Homosexuality, 2019

A burgeoning canon of Maghrebian writers in self-imposed exiled in France has in the last decade begun to openly broach the subject of homosexuality in Arab-Muslim communities of the Maghreb. Novels of writers like Abdellah Taïa, Rachid O. and Eyet- Chékib Djaziri reflect a fascinating trans-Mediterranean construction of homosexual identity. Drawing on Svetlana Boym’s critical work, particularly her observation that nostalgia “charts an affective geography of the native land that often mirrors the melancholic landscapes” of the exiled, this paper analyzes the construction of homosexuality against the notions of exile, nostalgia, and marginality. The novels of these Maghrebian writers highlight nostalgia as both cathartic and paralyzing for “gay” migrant protagonists who find themselves trapped in the subtle seam between a cherished Maghreb that is framed as homophobic in the sexual clash of civilizations and a more liberal yet inauspicious France. The nostalgic contemplation of the constitution of a homosexual subjectivity is read as a critical performance and mainstreaming of hitherto marginalized voices that now subvert and fight back against normalizing discourses of ethnicity, sexual and gender identity as well as nationality

Journal of Arabic Literature, 2008

Although a great deal of research and criticism has been done on homoerotic desire in Arabomedieval adab literature, very little has been written on its representation in modern Arabic literature. In order to address this scholarly gap, my study poses the following questions: why is there an increase of homosexual and lesbian characters, at this contemporary juncture, in Arabic fiction? And what are the effects of such an exposure on the status of Arab gay rights? I argue that depictions of male homosexuality in contemporary texts draw on power dialectics of master/ slave, active/passive and local/colonial, and as such reflect a sense of overall powerlessness, inferiority and alienation from the political process, while underscoring the Arab male's loss of manhood and of self. In contrast, female homosexuality remains locked into traditional, heterocentric discourse which claims that lesbianism exists only as a prelude to, or as a temporary replacement of "normative" heterosexuality, thus undermining the validity of lesbian body politics. Contrary to the medieval tradition which allowed more fluidity in the depiction of same-sex definitions and practices, and acknowledged the variants of homoerotic desire and action, contemporary Arab cultural and literary engagements of the topic overlook the biological aspect of this desire. Furthermore, they project gay encounters as a symptom of the social deterioration caused by political and economic oppression of the Arab citizen. I conclude that more attention must be given to the biological essence of sexual differentiation, to the body politics rather than gender politics, if the emergence of a recognized, outspoken Arab homosexual or lesbian identity is ever to be realized.

Comparative Literature Studies, 2014

This essay examines the sexualization of post-colonial relations at the level of literature, paying special attention to how post-colonial resentment is portrayed via the figure of the “Arab boy,” transplanted from an exploited status in colonial settings to an un-assimilated status in contemporary France. The difficulties of communication that occur, when certain French writers aim to depict this Arab figure, are then sourced to problems of cultural translation in a variety of instances. Gay-identified Moroccan authors like Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa, who write in French from France, have responded to calls for sexual disclosure as "native informants," while simultaneously supplying disturbing and destabilizing answers in stories often featuring sexualized Arab youth. These writers first reify and then challenge a tradition of sexualized literary collaboration that has existed ever since the writer and translator Paul Bowles fostered the emergence of Moroccan voices for a Western audience. Contemporary writers like Renaud Camus and Frédéric Mitterrand have themselves pursued forms of collaboration with North African cultural actors that recall the collaborative precedent. Between the era of Tangiers as a haven for gay writers and now, however, their young Arab interlocutors have gone from being available and servile, to "difficult" and resentful.

This article analyses the role of literature in creating knowledge and an archive of “marginal” sexuality in the Maghreb. Cultural and religious discourses have functioned in a manner that has not only marginalised non-normative sexuality but, more importantly, rendered them invisible. The bourgeoning body of literary works that have dared to break the silence on such sexuality has played a pivotal role in establishing a significant archive of the marginalised lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals in Arab-Muslim Maghreb. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s postulations on the archive, this article contends that the construction of an archive of “marginal” sexuality involves a questioning and challenging of the existing hegemonic heteronormative archive of sexuality in the Maghreb. This heteronormative archive has of course deliberately omitted non-normative sexualities which have been rendered taboo and unsayable. This article will show that in the quest to remember these marginalised sexualities; the project to construct an archive and knowledge of “marginal” sexualities relies greatly on the French archive of nonnormative sexualities. This reliance is however imbued with agency considering how the selected corpus of literary texts also destabilise the orientalist gaze which has constructed Maghrebian sexualities as exotic and “other”.

In recent years, a set of novels published in the Arab world have a homosexual (gay or lesbian) as their main character. Studies on homosexuality and literature in the Arab world recently published tend to analyze the subject in a dichotomist way, i.e., they tend to be based only on a historical perspective and offer a monolithic image of homosexuality and Islam and its literary expression. In this paper, I will read some of these novels to underline how the female homosexual character is still bound to a binary structure of society, thus preventing these novel from being LGTB ones in full, but setting the basis for new developments, the growth of a new aesthetic form, and a rethinking of the literary canon. * Jolanda Guardi is research fellow at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. Her research focuses on feminist research methodology, contemporary Arab fiction, gender studies and critical discourse analysis. [email protected] 1 Several papers and essays have in fact been published, and sources edited too on male homosexuality.

This PhD thesis is preoccupied with an investigation of Moroccan author and cineaste Abdellah Taïa’s creative writing and public performances as expressions of both political commitment and aesthetic innovation. Since Taïa came out publicly in 2006, he has achieved almost iconic status as the “first” Moroccan with the courage to defy the anti-homosexuality laws and lay claim to his homosexuality in public. This status has, on the one hand, opened up a space for him to write about “marginal sexualities” and push for the recognition of LGBT rights. But on the other, it has tended to elevate him to the position of being “exceptional,” thus neglecting to account for how his coming-out interview relates to the public debate and LGBT activism in Morocco, or how his creative writing relates to a larger postcolonial tradition of committed writing. Moreover, confronted with the risk of becoming a “token Arab homosexual,” Taïa has been forced to navigate through a minefield of stereotypes—whether stereotypical conceptions of “authentic Arab sexuality,” stereotypical readings of autobiographical literature as ethnographic material, or stereotypical conceptions of French as a language of civilizational and sexual emancipation. I this respect, I argue that Taïa’s narrations of the “self-absorbed” as a site of queer commitment function as significant sites of aesthetic innovation and as multilayered sites of subversion. In choosing a multidisciplinary and comparative approach the purpose of this research project has been to investigate how texts are brought to articulate meaning in particular discursive spaces. Thus by tracing the changes in Moroccan literature from the so-called ethnographic novel and the so-called novel of acculturation of the 1950s, through the literary avant-gardism of the 1960s–1980s, to a “naive realist literature of dissent” since the 1990s, this PhD thesis investigates how Taïa writes in dialogue with earlier and contemporary literary, linguistic, cultural, social and political practices. Whereas transgression of heteronormativity is the most obvious theme in Taïa’s novels, a comparative and multidisciplinary approach may reveal that his literary works are palimpsestuous layers of commitment—whether to dismantling the dichotomy between “authentic” culture and “universal” rights, to subverting the relation between fiction and fact, to deconstructing the language of the rich through the language of the “poor,” or to new efforts at rewriting Moroccan history in order to include the stories of those who have not been considered part of national recovery.

Queer Maghrebi French, 2018

The introduction situates this project within the broader scholarship in French and Francophone Studies, post-colonial, diaspora and migration studies, gender and women’s studies, LGBT studies and queer theory, and language and sexuality. I divide the Introduction into three parts wherein each one addresses a different driving thread -- language, temporalities and filiations -- of the overarching argument of the book.