Something queer about the nation: Sexual subversions of national identity in Maghrebian literature of French expression.
Item
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Title
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Something queer about the nation: Sexual subversions of national identity in Maghrebian literature of French expression.
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Identifier
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AAI9618074
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identifier
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9618074
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Creator
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Hayes, Jarrod Landin.
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Contributor
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Advisers: Nancy K. Miller | Francesca Canade Sautman
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Modern | Literature, African | Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the function of marginal sexualities, sexual dissidence, and gender insubordination in the articulation of national identity in Maghrebian novels written in French. Especially in post-independence novels, the unveiling of sexualities that should remain secret plays the political role of contradicting official discourses of Nation, nationalism, and national identity that attempt to deny the existence of these marginalized sexualities. The examination of the role of sexuality in post-independence literature makes it possible to reread novels more traditionally classified as combat novels and to understand how sexuality has always played a role (albeit more subtle) in these earlier novels. Finally, a rereading of even earlier novels, often classified as "ethnographic" (a pejorative label in the context of a certain brand of nationalist literary criticism), creates the possibility of finding anti-colonialist struggle in novels sometimes criticized for pandering to the exoticizing gaze of Western readers. It is through sexual allegories of the political that this rereading can be articulated.;If there has been such an effort to exclude the queer from the Nation (queer in both narrow and larger senses), to show she is an outsider trying to invade or get inside, the queer must always be inside already; in some ways the Nation is always already queer. When Maghrebian authors formulate representations of marginal sexualities, they are not just challenging sexual taboos, sexual normativity, or patriarchy (which they do); they are also pointing out the queerness of the Nation and articulating a heterogeneous Nation that is impossible to grasp for those who would use the Nation as a weapon against its own citizens; they are "queering" the Nation. Many North African novels, while expressing the necessity to consolidate national identity, first in mobilizing opposition to colonialism, later in constructing a independent nation, nevertheless recognize that any model of identity is impossible to fully embody. They attempt, therefore, without rejecting identity altogether, to articulate a national identity that is heterogeneous in relation to languages, ethnicities, sexualities, and religions, and that questions any totalizing binary opposition to the former colonizer.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
