Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb / Edition 1

by Jarrod Hayes

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226321066
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/01/2000
Edition description:	1
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

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 Djaout’s Betrayal of National Secrets
5. In the Nation’s 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 Yacine’s Nedjma
Part Three THE FEMINIST MENACE
8. Becoming a Woman: Ben Jelloun’s Allegory of Gender
9. Personalizing the Political, Politicizing the Personal: Assia Djebar’s Feminist Rewriting of History
10. Women Come Out into the Nation: Djebar’s 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