Writing Queer Identities in Morocco

Tina Dransfeldt Christensen holds an MA in Islamic Studies from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a PhD in Cultural Encounters from Roskilde University, Denmark. She is currently an external lecturer at Roskilde University. She has published in peer reviewed journals and collections including Expressions maghrébines, International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of North African Studies and Islamic Studies Journal.

Writing Queer Identities in Morocco tackles very significant aspects of Moroccan literature and society. Taïa's writing is suggestively related to crucial moments and authors since colonial times, such as Chraïbi and Khatibi, or to prison testimonies of the Years of Lead. In writing the self as an act of (queer) commitment and questioning any readily established identity categories, Taïa becomes one of the key voices, literally and politically, of the future of Morocco, that necessarily has to be queer.

• Acknowledgements Notes on Transcriptions and TranslationsIntroduction1. Writing the self as a site of (queer) commitmentFrom “national allegory” to multidirectionality as a strategy of subversionThe dual function of self-narrationQueering the nation2. Abdellah Taïa as author and activistBreaking the silenceLa génération du “je”Homosexuality “à la marocaine”3. Subverting “ethnographic” reading strategies“Generation 54”: Beyond ethnography and acculturationNobody sees anybody: Driss Chraïbi's Le Passé simpleSimply living a life of “deviance”: Abdellah Taïa's L'Armée du salut4. Writing transidentity in the language of the “other”“Third Worldism” and French as language of resistance: The Souffles-Anfa¯s movementToward an ethics of bilingualism: Abdelkébir Khatibi's Amour bilingue“Poor” French as a strategy of resistance: Abdellah Taïa's Un Pays pour mourir5. Shame, silence and nation buildingGendered memories of political violence during the Years of LeadDialogue of suffering: Fatna El Bouih's ?adith al-'atmahTaking revenge through love: Abdellah Taïa's InfidèlesConclusionNotesBibliography