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The relationships between trauma, melancholy and artistic creation, in the autofiction Une Mélancolie Arabe(2008), by Abdellah Taïa, are the background for the cinematographic and literary initiation of the protagonist, Abdellah, a Moroccan living in Paris. The purpose of this article is to show that this narrator-character, from a peripheral country, when experiencing the mourning of his origin and the cultural idealization of the host country, problematizes a relevant issue for comparative literature, debating, during return trips to countries Arabs, the idealization of the French capital as a reference for intellectual training. The hypothesis put forward is that, when experiencing initiatory rituals, in which artistic work and social and erotic interactions intertwine, the narrator finds himself confronted with the imaginary frustration embodied by the body and language of the other, ending up reinventing his place as a francophone writer. The theoretical-methodological contribution consists of the concepts of melancholy, by Sigmund Freud; não-lugar da literatura, by Eneida Souza; différance, by Jacques Derrida; ethical violence, by Judith Butler; and minor language, by Deleuze and Guattari.

This article discusses the work of Abdellah Taïa, the first openly gay Moroccan novelist to write his queerness, as a major contribution to an emergent queer African Islamic discourse. Bringing Taïa's work into conversation with diverse literary texts from elsewhere on the continent, the article makes two major interventions in the field of queer African studies. First, it centres Islam as a resource for queer agency, creativity and subjectivity in contemporary Africa. This addresses Western conceptions of queer politics and queer rights that operate on a largely secular, if not anti-religious and specifically anti-Islamic basis. Second, it renegotiates the marginality of North Africa, and especially the Maghreb, in queer African studies. This addresses problematic historic divisions between North and sub-Saharan Africa, and acknowledges the political, cultural and intellectual unity of the continent. The article demonstrates that literary works make visible queer lived experiences on the continent. Drawing on Michelle Caswell's ideas of the 'archiving of the unspeakable' and Achille Mbembe's concept of the 'unarchivable', this article adopts a 'scavenger methodology' to argue that literary works are important in creating an emergent queer African Islamic discourse as well as an alternative archive of African queer lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the Identity Discourse Transgressive? Case of the Literary Discourse of Abdellah Taïa ABSTRACT: This work questions in terms of analysis the topos of identity in the literary discourse of the writer Abdellah Taïa. We proceed to an enunciative approach of the linguistic strategies carried out by the subject-writer "I" by arousing new readings about the transgression of taboos anchored by the readership. Indeed, the writer Abdellah Taïa have stated unprecedented events, namely the evocation of the naked body, excess of language, transgression of norms and violation of codes through the presentation of identity claims. RÉSUMÉ: Ce travail interroge en matière d’analyse le topos de l’identité dans le discours littéraire de l’écrivain Abdellah Taïa. Nous procédons à une analyse énonciative des stratégies langagières menées par le sujet-écrivain « Je » en suscitant des lectures inédites à propos de la transgression des tabous ancrés par le lectorat. En effet, l’écrivain Abdellah Taïa met en scène des événements inédits à savoir l’évocation du corps nu, excès du langage, transgression des normes et violation des codes à travers la mise en discours des revendications identitaires.

In this article, I examine the relationship between transculturation in French and the heteroglossic dimension of the discourse on sexuality in Le Rouge du Tarbouche and Celui qui est digne d'être aimé by Abdellah Taïa. I focus on the storytelling corsair's metaphor as a metalinguistic allegory of the author's cross-cultural literature. By coining the term corsair writing, I hope to show strategies for a narrative writing that, in dialogue with the works of Jean Genet and André Gide, questions the status of narrators and subaltern characters' voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the first North African Francophone authors to announce and fully assume his minoritised sexuality, Abdellah Taïa has often examined questions of shame with regard to sexuality in his writing. This article seeks to better understand the affective potential of this shame, as well as its relation to emotion and the body, in Taïa's 2017 Celui qui est digne d'être aimé [He Who is Worthy of Being Loved]. Recent cultural and theoretical work on shame elucidates the paper's analysis of the materiality, constitution, expression, and circulation of queer shame throughout the novel. Shame, it is argued, becomes a constitutive element in countering Maghrebian and European systems of normalisation, namely heteronormativity and homonormativity. The protagonist's refusal and eventual deployment of shame, especially against his former homonormative and Orientalist European lovers, and his ostensibly homophobic mother, engender a critique of the extant asymmetrical relationships in his life, as well as the normalising regimes of both France and Morocco. Ultimately, this paper interrogates the inextricable link between affect, the body, and (neo)colonial French occupation found in the novel, making it arguably Taïa's most political work to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is interested in the relationship of contemporary Moroccan writing to the French literary tradition, concentrating in particular on the texts of Abdelkebir Khatibi and Abdellah Taïa. It focuses on how the culturally composite prose of Abdellah Taïa seeks to transform the neo-colonial assumptions about Franco-Maghrebi relations, in which any trace of a metropolitan French author is presumed to be no more than the result of an imperial education. From Flaubert to Genet, from Les Lettres portugaises to L’Immoraliste, Taïa and Khatibi often resurrect metropolitan French authors in their writing. Yet, rather than parroting French stories in a colonial act of self-effacement, Taïa’s texts rehouse French narratives on the Moroccan page to produce a shared space of intergenerational and transnational memory. Cet article a pour but de s’interroger sur les relations littéraires entre les auteurs canoniques français et la littérature marocaine contemporaine. J’évoque la façon dont l’hybridité linguistique et littéraire de l'écriture marocaine, et d’Abdelkebir Khatibi et d’Abdallah Taïa en particulier, cherche à transformer les hypothèses néocoloniales des relations franco-maghrébines qui imputent toute trace d'un auteur métropolitain français à une éducation impériale. De Flaubert à Genet, des Lettres portugaises à L’Immoraliste, les œuvres de Taïa ressuscitent souvent des auteurs français métropolitains. Plutôt que de raconter des histoires françaises dans un acte colonial d'effacement, j’avance que leurs textes relogent les récits français sur la page marocaine pour produire un espace partagé de mémoire intergénérationnelle et transnationale.

Cette contribution étudie la figure de la prostituée dans Un Pays pour mourir d’Abdellah Taïa (2015) et La Vérité sort de la bouche du cheval de Meryem Alaoui (2018). À la rencontre de diverses traditions, la subversion de ce type littéraire par l’exploration de « déviances » sexuelles (agentivité féminine, homosexualité, transidentité, etc.) articule une critique des rapports de genre dans la société marocaine, mais aussi du stigmate colonial, au cœur de la métropole. La narration à la première personne permet à la prostituée elle-même – comme projection de l’écrivain – de donner voix à cette critique, devenant à la fois juge et victime de la réalité postcoloniale. This article explores the literary archetype of the prostitute in two novels: Abdellah Taïa’s Un Pays pour mourir (2015) and Meryem Alaoui’s La Vérité sort de la bouche du cheval (2018). At the encounter of various cultural traditions, the subversion of this archetype combined with the depiction of sexual « deviancy » (female agency, homosexuality, transidentity, etc.) offer both a critique of gender relations in Moroccan society and a commentary on France’s colonial history. The first-person narrative allows the prostitute herself – a projection of the writer – to give voice to this critique, becoming simultaneously judge and victim of postcolonial reality.

This article analyzes the final letter in Abdellah Taïa's epistolary novel, Celui qui est digne d'être aimé (2017). First, I examine the relationship of chosen brotherhood between two queer characters, Ahmed and Lahbib, as well as Lahbib's explicit definition of the brotherly bond between them. Subsequently, I turn to Lahbib's account of his transnational sexual exploitation, in which he nuances his initial definition of chosen brotherhood to include a protective element. I then show how the transnational sexual encounter, which reveals the residue of the colonial era, causes the boys to look after one another differently. When readers learn that Lahbib will take his own life, the epistolary nature of the text changes and a reading in which the text serves as a cautionary tale emerges. To conclude, I focus on the concept of worth, present in the letter and the novel's title to argue that chosen brotherhood both serves as a refuge from exploitation and provides the foundational discourse necessary to establish worth among the queer marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the literary representation of masculinities in the context of border crossings in the Mediterranean area and specifically the relationship between multilingualism and gender identity. The discussion is based on comparative close-readings of two auto-fictional novels which embody border crossings in the form of migration, globalization and (de)colonization: L'armée du salut (2006) by Abdellah Taïa and Princesa (1994) by Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque. The article argues that the novels' representations of multilingualism and complex gender identities can be fruitfully understood in terms of Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, and that both gender and linguistic practices shift as they are recontextualized socially and geographically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clandestine migration across the Mediterranean is often discussed for its agitating effects on Europe’s racial anxieties; less acknowledged is the growth of intra-African racism in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Officials in these countries have increasingly demonised sub-Saharan Africans who arrive in the Maghreb en route to Europe, and now even black North Africans describe a climate of heightened racial tension. This article analyses the ways in which black Africans are represented in the contemporary Maghreb. Specifically, I look at print and on-line journalism, novels and films that foreground questions of race to argue that Maghrebi journalists, social media activists, authors and filmmakers are critiquing racism and exposing its neo-colonial underpinnings. Their work is calling for a disciplinary realignment in North African cultural studies that focuses the field as much on ‘Africa’ as it does on ‘North’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abdellah Taïa is the first Moroccan writer to assume his homosexuality publicly. Born in Rabat in 1973, he spent his childhood and early youth in the small coastal Moroccan town of Salé, which features in many of his works. He has lived in France since around the turn of the 21st century, where he has written two books of short fiction and six novels in French. His autofictional novelsSalvation ArmyandAn Arab Melancholiawere published by American publisher Semiotext(e) in 2009 and 2012; the same publishing house has recently combinedMon Maroc(My Morocco) andLe rouge du tarbouche(The red of the fez) into a single volume, entitledAnother Morocco:Selected Stories, in 2017. His fictional novelLe jour du roi(The day of the king) was awarded the Prix de Flore in 2010, and his novelInfidelswas published by New York publisher Seven Stories in 2016. His latest novels areUn pays pour mourir(A country to die in; 2016) andCelui qui est digne d’être aimé(He who is worthy to be loved; 2017). Taïa has also written and directed a film,Salvation Army(2013), inspired by his early life in Morocco and his migration to Switzerland. Taïa explores issues of non-normative sexuality, gender, class and postcolonialism, and his is one of the most important current voices in the francophone Arab world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore how a textual analysis of the representational strategies in a literary work and its paratext can inform our conception of ‘resistance narratives’ in ways that sociology of literature cannot. With specific focus on Abdellah Taïa’s autobiographical novel,L’Armée du salut(2006), this article intends to demonstrate how the self-absorbed and the socially engaged can interrelate when ‘writing the self’. Moreover, a literary analysis of this interrelation points towards a reading ofL’Armée du salutas a multi-layered voice of resistance: the novel is not only transgressing heteronormativity, it is also expanding the boundaries of so-called homosexual desires as well as displacing Orientalist conceptions of ‘Oriental sex’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both born in the early 1970s, Rachid O. (1970) and Abdellah Taïa (1973) construct their entire literary work around autobiographical accounts of their lives, from their early years in Morocco to when they move to Europe in their early twenties. This article offers a reading of their work in the light of the concept ofhomosociality, redefined by Eve Sedgwick in 1985 as a culturally and diachronically determined continuum that spans both sexual and non-sexual relations between men. From this perspective, many of the male characters in the novels under discussion are the (un)aware objects of an unspoken desire that is, as such, the desire of a simple presence, of a voice, of a look, of a body. In this sense, Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa's novels allow us to rethink masculinity and gender in contemporary Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the sexualization of postcolonial relations at the level of literature, paying special attention to how postcolonial resentment is portrayed via the figure of the "Arab boy," transplanted from an exploited status in colonial settings to an unassimilated 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, the key to access to oneself was given through traditional morality: this is what still happens even in non-Western cultures, where remains a social fabric in which each individual is a mesh in a net designed to keep on and integrate somehow faulty meshes. It is in this context, what we can evaluate through a cultural approach and ethics the fate of a character-narrator (and writer) who "becomes himself" (is "subjectivized") following a path on which he takes advantages of the cultural milieu in which he was born (1), he refuses, partly, because he is refusing to turn around (2) and exiles himself where he can become himself again, where his intellectual and emotional choices are recognized (3). He loses, along the way, a "nature" seen as traditional and cultural environment and wins in return, his own emotional "nature," result of an emotional addiction that nothing and no one forced him to reject more. It is therefore more of a dialectic of the mind, but the "nature." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although homosexuality is palpably present in Arab-Muslim societies of the Maghreb, there is nonetheless intolerance of their open discussion. Even on a purely discursive level, taboo remains an insurmountable hurdle. The present study attempts to contribute to growing debate and interest in various aspects and potential common points between literary production and 'marginal' sexuality in Francophone North Africa. This article problematizes homosexuality in Arab-Muslim societies before examining its depiction in the autofictional novels of two openly gay Moroccan writers: Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa. Of particular interest in this literary analysis is the manner in which the protagonists of the two novelists grapple in reconciling their (homo)sexuality and their religious beliefs. This article concludes by scrutinizing the transgressiveness of these pioneering contemporary novels in their candid and open representation homosexuality. Bien que l'homosexualité soit manifestement présente dans les sociétés arabo-musulmanes du Maghreb, sa discussion ouverte demeure intolérable. Même sur un plan purement discursif, le tabou reste un obstacle insurmontable. La présente étude vise à contribuer au débat et à l'intérêt croissants par rapport aux divers aspects et aux points communs potentiels entre la production littéraire et la sexualité 'marginale' dans les milieux francophones de l'Afrique du Nord. Cet article problématise initialement l'homosexualité dans les sociétés arabo-musulmanes avant d'examiner sa représentation dans les romans autofictionnels de deux écrivains marocains qui sont ouvertement gay: Rachid O. et Abdellah Taïa. L'intérêt particulier de cette analyse littéraire sera la manière dont les protagonistes des deux romanciers se négocient la difficulté de concilier leur (homo)sexualité et leurs croyances religieuses. Cet article examine, en guise de conclusion, la nature transgressive de ces romans contemporains pionniers dans leur représentation franche et ouverte de l'homosexualité. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]