Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Publication Title
Comparative Literature Studies
Abstract
This essay examines the sexualization of post-colonial relations at the level of literature, paying special attention to how post-colonial resentment is portrayed via the figure of the “Arab boy,” transplanted from an exploited status in colonial settings to an un-assimilated 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.
Keywords
North Africa, homosexuality, collaboration, Bowles, Morocco, Taïa, sex tourism, Renaud Camus, Frédéric Mitterrand
Volume
51
Issue
2
First Page
321
Last Page
343
DOI
10.5325/complitstudies.51.2.0321
ISSN
0010-4132
Rights
Copyright © 2014. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Recommended Citation
Mack, Mehammed, "Untranslatable Desire: Inter-Ethnic Relationships in Franco-Arab Literature" (2014). French Studies: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/frn_facpubs/3
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.