Synopses & Reviews
The Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) has been inhabited for millennia by a heterogeneous populace. However, in the wake of World War II, when independence movements began to gain momentum in these French colonies, the dominant national discourses attempted to define national identities by exclusion. One rallying cry from the 1930s was "Islam is my religion, Arabic is my language, Algeria is my fatherland."
In this incisive postcolonial study, Jarrod Hayes uses literary analysis to examine how Francophone novelists from the Maghreb engaged in a diametric nation-building project. Their works imagined a diverse nation peopled by those who were excluded by the dominant political discourses, especially those who did not conform to traditional sexual norms. By incorporating representations of marginal sexualities, sexual dissidence, and gender insubordination, Maghrebian novelists imagined an anticolonial struggle that would result in sexual liberation and envisioned nations that could be defined and developed inclusively.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-297) and index.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
A Note on Translations
Introduction
Part One: ALLEGORIES OF READING THE MAGHREB
1. Reading and Tourism: Sexual Approaches to the Maghreb
2. Moha the Theory Machine
Part Two SEX AND REVOLUTION
3. Homosexuality (Un)veiled
4. Skeletons in the Closet: Tahar Djaouts Betrayal of National Secrets
5. In the Nations Closet: Sexual Marginality and the Itinerary of National Identity
6. Sex on Fire: Mohammed Dib and the Algerian Revolution
7. The Haunted House of the Nation: Kateb Yacines Nedjma
Part Three THE FEMINIST MENACE
8. Becoming a Woman: Ben Jellouns Allegory of Gender
9. Personalizing the Political, Politicizing the Personal: Assia Djebars Feminist Rewriting of History
10. Women Come Out into the Nation: Djebars Allegory of Marriage
11. Escaping the Identity Police
Part Four ALLEGORIES OF THE QUEER NATION
12. The Joy of Castration: Childhood Narratives and the Demise of Masculinity
13. Allegories of the Queer Nation
Works Cited
Index