Bringing out Abdellah Taïa: sexuality, social mobility, and the discursive contexts of reading

Abstract

The ideas and discourse associated with homosexuality and queerness provide a useful and relevant critical framework for understanding Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa’s works. My essay expands this existing frame of reference by discussing the portrayal of poverty and social mobility, which I argue is an equally meaningful yet neglected aspect of Taïa’s writings. I develop this argument by showing that shame is linked not only to sexuality but also to social class. For a comparative perspective, I examine texts by Didier Éribon and Édouard Louis, who, like Taïa, are queer writers from a working-class background. Despite these shared characteristics, there is a significant difference in the framing and critical reception of Taïa’s writings, on the one hand, and those of Éribon and Louis, on the other. This essay investigates the reasons for this difference by exploring the phenomenon of the transfuge de classe and the crucial role played by the absent dimensions of race and coloniality. Situating narratives of queerness and poverty in relation to each other suggests a dialectical mode of reading attentive to different discursive contexts.