{"title":"Bringing out Abdellah Taïa: sexuality, social mobility, and the discursive contexts of reading","authors":"Bishupal Limbu","doi":"10.3828/cfc.2024.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.9","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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\u0000 transfuge de classe\u0000 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.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53563,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary French Civilization","volume":"8 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141684728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"L’émancipation décoloniale en toutes lettres d’Abdellah Taïa","authors":"Thomas Muzart","doi":"10.3828/cfc.2024.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.10","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Dans la continuité des études sur Abdellah Taïa et le genre épistolaire, cet article analyse comment l’aspect relationnel de la lettre permet à l’auteur de combiner introspection personnelle, critique socio-politique et dialogue transnational. Si cette affinité littéraire et formelle s’illustre depuis le début de la carrière de Taïa avec des textes tels que “L’homosexualité expliquée à ma mère” et\u0000 Lettres à un jeune marocain\u0000 , l’étude de sept lettres écrites après 2016 démontre comment ce medium relève désormais d’une\u0000 praxis\u0000 décoloniale revendiquée par l’auteur depuis son entretien “‘Sortir de la peur.’ Construire une identité homosexuelle arabe dans un monde postcolonial” avec Antoine Idier. Du roman épistolaire\u0000 Celui qui est digne d’être aimé\u0000 aux lettres écrites pour l’émission de la RTBF\u0000 Dans quel monde on vit\u0000 , l’émancipation de Taïa passe par ce que Walter Mignolo et Catherine Walsh appellent un processus de ré-existence, le menant à un rapprochement avec sa culture d’origine et à un engagement politique queer et intersectionnel.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53563,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary French Civilization","volume":"9 31","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141684122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Filming sex, language, and alienation in Morocco: the lens of Nabil Ayouch","authors":"Salim Ayoub","doi":"10.3828/cfc.2024.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.11","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Nabil Ayouch’s cinematic corpus has always been subject to vivid debates as his works target the sexual and linguistic status quo in Morocco, among other ideological patterns. The filmmaker’s distrust towards the hegemonic order is palpable in his corpus, as illustrated by\u0000 Much Loved\u0000 (2015) and\u0000 Razzia\u0000 (2017). Ayouch’s films offer an opaque questioning of the structural intersections between sex, socioeconomics, language, religion, and alienation. It could be argued that, in terms of opacity,\u0000 Much Loved\u0000 blurs the lines of identity and intimacy instead of simply pushing and widening cultural/ideological barriers. A few years later, Ayouch released\u0000 Razzia\u0000 , which not only escaped censorship, but was also a great success. However, the film fits well in the lineage of Ayouch’s productions as the director continued his momentum of subtle artistic subversion questioning of the foundations of morality in Morocco.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53563,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary French Civilization","volume":"155 10‐12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141686704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between diaspora and region: Tony Gatlif and Mehdi Ben Attia","authors":"Peter Tarjanyi","doi":"10.3828/cfc.2024.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.8","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article investigates the creative tensions between diaspora and region as they appear in queer Maghrebi francophone visual culture. By examining two important films from Maghrebi-French cinema – Tony Gatlif’s\u0000 Exils\u0000 (2004) and Mehdi Ben Attia’s\u0000 Le fil\u0000 (2009) – the article theorizes an affective understanding of diaspora and regionality wherein ephemeral aesthetic objects constitute regional archives of feeling and assemblages that reveal the messy complexities of identity, space, and belonging in a Maghrebi postcolonial setting. In so doing, the article also aims to ascertain how regional constellations of queer diasporic aesthetics may lead to new forms of kinship and community for minority ethnic and sexual subjects.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53563,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary French Civilization","volume":"7 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141686393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An aesthetics of\u0000 intranquillité\u0000 : fear and anxiety in\u0000 Le fil\u0000 and\u0000 L’intranquille","authors":"Ryan K. Schroth","doi":"10.3828/cfc.2024.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.7","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article locates an aesthetics of\u0000 intranquillité\u0000 in contemporary queer francophone cultural production by examining the dynamic combination of fear and anxiety in Mehdi Ben Attia’s Franco-Tunisian film,\u0000 Le fil\u0000 (2010), and Joseph Kai’s Franco-Lebanese graphic novel,\u0000 L’intranquille\u0000 (2021). Here, I examine the spatiotemporal dynamics, or what I call the affective orientations, of\u0000 intranquillité\u0000 . I argue that this aesthetics gives rise to an anxious eroticism that is itself represented textually through a series of narrative tools found in these texts: first, the challenge to normative narration; second, the use of inertial or propulsive imagery; and third, either a melancholic tie to the past or an anxious futurity. These tools textually reproduce the “feeling” of fear and anxiety for the viewer of these works. In an attempt to quell\u0000 intranquillité\u0000 , the creative and generative act of drawing is introduced in both narratives, ultimately producing new affective configurations of queer belonging and desire.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53563,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary French Civilization","volume":"54 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141687607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}