Contested Borders (Hardcover)

William J. Spurlin

ISBN 10: 1786600811 / ISBN 13: 9781786600813

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London, 2022

About this Item

Hardcover. Contested Borders broadens understandings of dissident sexualities in Africa through examining new representations of same-sex desire emerging in recent francophone autofictional writing from the Maghreb, where long-established traditions pertaining to gender and sexuality are brought into contact with new forms of gender and sexual dissidence, resulting from the inflection of globally circulating discourses and embodiments of queerness in North Africa, and from the experience of emigration and settlement by the writers concerned in France. The book analyses specifically how Franco-Maghrebi writers Rachid O., Abdellah Taia, Eyet-Chekib Djaziri, and Nina Bouraoui foreground translation and narrative reflexivity around incommensurable spaces of queerness in order to index their crossings and negotiations of multiple languages, histories and cultures. By writing in French, Spurlin demonstrates that the writers are not merely mimicking the language of their former coloniser but inflecting a European language with discursive turns of phrase indigenous to North Africa, thus creating new possibilities of meaning and expression to name their lived experiences of gender and sexual alteritya form of (queer) translational praxis that destabilises received gender/sexual categories both within the Maghreb and in Europe. Contested Borders broadens understandings of dissident sexualities in Africa through focusing specifically on the Maghreb. It examines new representations of same-sex desire emerging in new francophone life writing, memoir, and literature from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781786600813

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Contested Borders (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786600811
• ISBN 13: 9781786600813
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Contested Borders broadens understandings of dissident sexualities in Africa through examining new representations of same-sex desire emerging in recent francophone autofictional writing from the Maghreb, where long-established traditions pertaining to gender and sexuality are brought into contact with new forms of gender and sexual dissidence, resulting from the inflection of globally circulating discourses and embodiments of queerness in North Africa, and from the experience of emigration and settlement by the writers concerned in France. The book analyses specifically how Franco-Maghrebi writers Rachid O., Abdellah Taïa, Eyet-Chékib Djaziri, and Nina Bouraoui foreground translation and narrative reflexivity around incommensurable spaces of queerness in order to index their crossings and negotiations of multiple languages, histories and cultures. By writing in French, Spurlin demonstrates that the writers are not merely mimicking the language of their former coloniser but inflecting a European language with discursive turns of phrase indigenous to North Africa, thus creating new possibilities of meaning and expression to name their lived experiences of gender and sexual alterity―a form of (queer) translational praxis that destabilises received gender/sexual categories both within the Maghreb and in Europe.

About the Author

William J. Spurlin is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brunel University of London, UK.