Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: Sidi Jenih – Saint Genet: An Example of Queer Maghrebi French
- Introduction: Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations
- 1 2Fik's Coming out à l'orientale and “Coming out” of France
- 2 Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed's Universal Performance of French Citizenship and Muslim Brotherhood
- 3 Abdellah Taia's Queer Moroccan Family and Transmission of Baraka
- 4 Mehdi Ben Attia's Family Ties, Temporalities, and Revolutionary Figures
- 5 Nacir, Tahar, and Farid: Identification, Disidentification, and Impossible Citizenship
- Epilogue: Queer Maghrebi French: Flexible Language and Activism
- Bibliography
- Index
Epilogue: Queer Maghrebi French: Flexible Language and Activism
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: Sidi Jenih – Saint Genet: An Example of Queer Maghrebi French
- Introduction: Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations
- 1 2Fik's Coming out à l'orientale and “Coming out” of France
- 2 Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed's Universal Performance of French Citizenship and Muslim Brotherhood
- 3 Abdellah Taia's Queer Moroccan Family and Transmission of Baraka
- 4 Mehdi Ben Attia's Family Ties, Temporalities, and Revolutionary Figures
- 5 Nacir, Tahar, and Farid: Identification, Disidentification, and Impossible Citizenship
- Epilogue: Queer Maghrebi French: Flexible Language and Activism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
the performative encounter cannot be equated with the discovery of a brand new language. Instead, it is that moment that enables us to become aware that a language was already being spoken where we heard only noise or misunderstood vibrations. Where we saw only mysterious and incoherent traces, a text existed whose historical depth was already changing the meaning of our present-day conversations. (Rosello, France and the Maghreb 190)
Throughout Queer Maghrebi French we have discovered multiple paths to queer diasporic subjecthood in France and how speakers have varying access to flexible language and transfilial scripts in multiple time–space configurations. No monolithic queer diasporic experience exists and each speaker's voice is unique. Moreover, while an individual's education level or social class can affect orality, literacy, imagination, and even a speaker's mode of story-telling, this does not automatically predict how authors, artists, and everyday speakers shape their stories or how audiences hear and respond to them. Other factors such as age, gender, transexuality, and (dis)ability will remain fruitful investigative terrain for future research.
As I conclude this book, I would like to take a moment to think through the implications of queer Maghrebi French language within a context of human rights. I draw the reader's attention to the quiet communion of two male figures, as we saw in the Prologue of this volume. In Taia's Le Rouge du tarbouche (2004), cousins Abdellah and Ali sat up against each other in silent communication at Genet's tomb in the Christian cemetery in Morocco's coastal town of Larache. If we exit the world of fiction, photography, performance, and cinema, for a moment, we meet two real-life Moroccan men, Lahcen and Mohsine, who visit the city of Rabat in June 2015. During their daytime flânerie and sightseeing in Rabat, they stop for a moment at the Tour Hassan and stand side-byside as they take a picture of the local monument. After a quiet exchange of a kiss in public space, the police suddenly arrive and arrest them for “lack of decency.” The transgressive speech acts and transfilial cultural representations of the queer Maghrebi French speakers in France and beyond we have seen throughout this book now give way to the hard realities of a contemporary Morocco where homosexuality remains illegal and where Lahcen and Mohsine were condemned to four months of prison.
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- Information
- Queer Maghrebi FrenchLanguage, Temporalities, Transfiliations, pp. 283 - 291Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017