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Writing resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film

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Writing resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film

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Content Copyright 2021 Keziah M. Poole
WRITING RESISTANCE:
SEX, LOVE AND FEMININE PROTEST IN MOROCCAN LITERATURE AND FILM
by
Keziah M. Poole
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
(COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)
August 2021

ii

If you dare listen to women, you will find resistance.
– Fatema Mernissi

Our revolution will be a farandole, a dance, a message of peace
and love.
– Soufiane H.

iii

For Beth, whose resistance was love incarnate.

iv
Acknowledgements

I will be forever grateful to my mentors at the University of Southern California, Dr. Olivia
C. Harrison, Dr. Panivong Norindr, and Dr. Sherry Velasco, whose kindness, inspiration and
support has been invaluable to me throughout this process. Many thanks also to Dr. Natania
Meeker, Dr. Edwin Hill and Dr. Karina Eileraas Karakus for their feedback and encouragement
as I developed Writing Resistance, and to my fellow graduate students in USC’s Comparative
Studies in Literature and Culture Program for their incredible comradery and intellectual support.
I would like to thank the American Institute of Maghrib Studies, whose annual Dissertation
Workshops contributed immensely to my writing process; and scholars of English and Gender
Studies at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, whose guidance greatly shaped the
trajectory of my research. I am particularly grateful Dr. Fatima Sadiqi, Dr. Souad Slaoui and Dr.
Kebir Sandy for their hospitality and insight as I carried out research in Morocco, and to
organisers of the annual Amazigh Festival, which was a fantastic resource and inspiration to me
in the early stages of this project. Many thanks to teachers and staff at the American Language
Center in Fez and to Kenza Sefrioui at En toutes lettres in Casablanca for their help conducting
this research. I am also indebted to Dr. Ananya Jahanara Kabir (formerly at the University of
Leeds), without whom it never would have occurred to me to pursue such a project.
I could not have written Writing Resistance without the support and encouragement of my
family and friends. I love you, and I am profoundly grateful to be so well-loved by you. A
gargantuan thank you to my father, the first Dr. Poole, and to my brother, Jamie, whose
fearlessness and unfailing confidence paved the way for me to travel far. To Vicky and Rachel,
my sisters in body and soul: what incredible women to have by my side! Your love, strength and
ceaseless faith in my abilities are what made sure the fire stayed lit in me. To my partner, Jon:

v
throughout this journey, you have remained my biggest champion. I am forever grateful for your
patience and your belief in me. And a big thank you to my beloved dog, Charlie, whose role in
this process cannot be underestimated.
Finally, Writing Resistance is dedicated to my mother, whose boundless love and incredible
lust for life never ceases to push me towards new horizons. You may have lost the fight, but this
dissertation is your victory. Thanks to you, I dared to listen, and I found resistance everywhere.

vi
Table of Contents

Epigraph………………………………………………………………………………………….. ii

Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….. iii

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………… iv

Abstract………………….................…………………………………………………………… vii

Introduction: (Re)writing Resistance……………….……….…………………………………… 1

Chapter 1: ‘Strange Memory’ – strategies toward a feminine archive in the work of Fatema
Mernissi………………………..…………………………………………………… 30

Chapter 2: Sex Work and ‘Free’ Women in Moroccan Cinema…………………….………….. 85

Chapter 3: Moroccan Women Writers in the Quest for Unmarked Authorship…………………..……. 138

Chapter 4: If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to be Moroccan – towards a new national
romance…………………………………………………………………………… 181

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….............. 231

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………...... 239

vii
Abstract

As Foucault reminds us, sexuality often functions as a privileged site of discursive control,
yet it seems narratives of Muslim and Maghrebi sexual misery bear particular currency in
France, where women and sexual minorities from North Africa are frequently asked to speak on
the socio-sexual freedoms afforded by secular society. In Morocco, meanwhile, gender issues
feature prominently in official narratives of national ‘progress,’ yet feminists who have fought
since Independence to renegotiate women’s legal and social status still struggle to garner public
support – thanks, in part, to the movement’s association with French colonisation and ‘imported’
values. Investigating the complex intersections between sex, love and revolution in an
international culture industry that champions Muslim women’s rebellion, Writing Resistance:
sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film asks what it is that permits certain
acts of feminine protest to be absorbed into French and Moroccan national narratives while
rendering others inaudible. Here, I draw on Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine: a
writing that is feminine insofar as it disrupts phallocratic regimes of producing theory, history
and culture; but, perhaps more crucially, one that needn’t be an act of writing in the traditional
sense at all. Tracing narratives of sexual rebellion across a range of creative and cultural
performances, the dissertation explores the myriad strategies used by women and LGBTQ+
artists and activists to resist being written into national/ist discourse.

1
Introduction: (Re)writing Resistance

Si la femme a toujours fonctionné "dans" le discours de l’homme, signifiant toujours
renvoyé à l’adverse signifiant qui en annihile l’énergie spécifique, en rabat ou étouffe
les sons si différents, il est temps qu’elle disloque ce "dans," qu’elle ; l’explose, le
retourne et s’en saisisse qu’elle le fasse sien, le comprenant, le prenant dans sa bouche
à elle, que de ses dents à elle elle lui morde la langue, qu’elle s’invente une langue
pour lui rentrer dedans.
– Hélène Cixous, “Le rire de la Méduse”
1

Writing Resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film reflects
on the im/possibility of writing about and as resistance amid myriad discourses competing to
define Muslim and Moroccan queer and feminine experience. As philosopher Michel Foucault
reminds us, sexuality often functions as a privileged site of discursive control, yet it seems
narratives of Muslim and Maghrebi sexual misery bear particular currency in France, where
women and sexual minorities from North Africa are frequently asked to speak on the sociosexual
freedoms afforded by secular society. In Morocco, meanwhile, gender issues feature prominently
in official narratives of national ‘progress,’ yet feminists who have fought since Independence to
renegotiate women’s legal and social status still struggle to garner public support – thanks, in
part, to the movement’s continued association with French colonisation and ‘imported’ Western
values. Investigating the complex intersections between sex, love and revolution in an
international culture industry that champions Muslim women’s and LGBTQ+ rebellion, Writing
Resistance asks what it is that permits certain acts of feminine protest to be absorbed into French

1
Hélène Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies (Paris: Galilée, 2010), 57 [From the article ‘Le rire de la
Méduse,’ originally published in L’Arc in 1975]; ‘If woman has always functioned “within” the discourse of man, a
signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes
or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this “within,” to explode it, turn it around, and seize
it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it into her own mouth, biting that tongue [langue] with her very own teeth to
invent for herself a language [langue] to get inside of.’ Official translation found in Hélène Cixous, ‘The Laugh of
the Medusa’, trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs 1, no. 4 (1976): 887.

2
and Moroccan national narratives while rendering others inaudible. Here, I draw on philosopher
Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine:
2
a writing that is ‘feminine’ insofar as it disrupts
phallocratic regimes of producing theory, history and culture; but perhaps more crucially, one
that needn’t be an act of writing in the traditional sense at all. Tracing narratives of sexual
rebellion across a range of creative and cultural performances in contemporary Morocco and
France, I examine the myriad strategies used by Franco-/Moroccan women and LGBTQ+ artists
and activists to resist being written into national/ist
3
discourse.
A literature of resistance
According to the Moroccan writer and critic Albdelkabir Khatibi, literature from the
Maghreb has long been a literature of resistance. From the inception of the North African novel
during the region’s various struggles for Independence
4
to the early literary achievements of
diasporic authors such as Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar and Driss Chraïbi; Khatibi maintains that
the work of Maghrebi writers has been fundamental to the anticolonial project and instrumental
in the “reconstruction culturelle”
5
of North Africa’s postcolonial nations. Moreover, this
revolutionary lineage has resulted in a regional literature that is “violemment politisée”
6
–
regardless of the sociopolitical message presented by each author. In bringing international
attention to a political struggle (as well as the daily the experiences and desires) of a people
hitherto defined by its figuration in Orientalist and colonial discourse, even “[l]’œuvre la plus

2
‘Feminine writing.’ See Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’.
3
According to Sara Ahmed, nationalist discourse cannot be made distinct from the generic language of nation-
building. I thus use the split formation, ‘national/ist,’ throughout the dissertation in reference to her work. See Sara
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Second edition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
4
Morocco and Tunisia, which had been French protectorates since 1912 and 1881 respectively, were granted
independence via treaty in March 1956. Algeria, which had been a French colony since 1830, became independent
in March 1962 after a prolonged and violent struggle (the Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of
Independence) lasting nearly 8 years.
5
Abdelkabir Khatibi, Le Roman Maghrébin, Kindle edition (Paris: François Maspero, 2017), loc. 246.
6
‘Maghrebi literature has been violently politicised.’ Khatibi, loc. 468.

3
désengagée…entretient des relations infiniment complexes avec la société”
7
in the Maghreb,
reminding us that “la littérature est elle-même du contenu.”
8
The conditions in which this
revolutionary writing was first produced and continues to be circulated beyond the Maghreb’s
borders, however, present a fundamental paradox to the development of postcolonial national
literatures. According to Khatibi, while literature has been a vital tool in the decolonial struggle
of North African nations like Morocco and Algeria, allowing them to sever ties with the former
colony in pursuit of new political collaborations, due to its cultural and material origins the
region’s French colonial infrastructure,
9
the success of Maghrebi writers has always been
contingent on their ability to appeal to metropolitan markets.
10
As Khatibi writes (and scholars
such as Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey have also amply explored
11
), “L’infrastructure
nécessaire à la vie d’une littérature nationale et les lois économiques régissant la production et la
consommation de la culture conditionnent la circulation des idées et des sentiments,” leaving
anticolonial writers still heavily reliant on “le circuit culturel de la métropole.”
12

Although Khatibi first alluded to this “problématique”
13
very early into the development of
Morocco’s national literature, as we will see in the coming chapters, it is a paradox that still very
much haunts literary production in the Maghreb and the Franco-/Maghrebi diaspora. This is
particularly true of writing by women and LGBTQ+ authors, whose narratives of sociosexual

7
‘the least [politically] engaged work...bears an infinitely complex relationship with society,’ Khatibi, loc. 140 (my
translation).
8
‘literature is itself content’ Khatibi, loc. 152 (my translation).
9
The language in which the majority of internationally-circulated Maghrebi literature is written, as well as popular
literary forms such as the novel, were of course introduced by the former coloniser, and French readers remain the
principal consumers of Moroccan and Maghrebi literature.
10
Khatibi, Le Roman Maghrébin, 188.
11
See Étienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, ‘On Literature as Ideological Form’, in Untying the Text: A Post-
Structuralist Reader, ed. Robert Young (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 79–99.
12
‘[t]he infrastructure necessary for the life of national literature and the economic laws governing the production
and consumption of culture condition the circulation of ideas and feelings’ /"the cultural circuit of the metropole"
Khatibi, Le Roman Maghrébin, loc 188.
13
Khatibi, loc 188.

4
resistance pointing to the ‘backwards’ treatment of women and sexual minorities in France’s
former colonies have gained immense popularity among metropolitan audiences. In Morocco, as
elsewhere in the Maghreb, women have played a particularly complicated role in the history and
(re)writing of national resistance. The campaign for women’s legal and political rights was an
important (and widely supported) component of Morocco’s nationalist movement, and during the
anticolonial struggle, both Lalla Aisha
14
and the Akhawaat al-Safaa
15
strongly emphasised the
need to promote Moroccan women’s education. Literacy, they argued, would not only free
Moroccan women “from the darkness of ignorance,” but would allow them to participate actively
in bringing about the nation’s “great rebirth.”
16
In the wake of Independence, however, feminists
were left bitterly disillusioned by the State’s failure to transpose the rights for which they so
vehemently advocated (with the apparent support of their brothers) into Moroccan law. Despite
women’s active participation in anticolonial politics, the new mudawana (family code) – which
had been, and remained for decades, a central focus for Moroccan feminists – left women largely
dependent on their families and restricted to their duties in the home.
17
As a result, literary
representations of women in Morocco remained woefully deficient throughout the early decades

14
Daughter of Mohamed V, the then-sultan and first King of independent Morocco. Also the older sister of
Mohamed V’s much more conservative heir, Hassan II, whose reign had drastic consequences for the Moroccan
feminist movement.
15
Sisters of Purity, the women’s division of Morocco’s Independence Party, Al-Istiqlal.
16
Taken from Sisters of Purity President Habiba Guessousa’s inaugural speech in 1947, nine years before Moroccan
independence. Fatima Sadiqi et al., eds., Women Writing Africa. The Northern Region, The Women Writing Africa
Project, v. 4 (New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 2009), 174 Translated from the
Arabic by Fatima Boubdelli.
17
To be discussed in detail in Chapter One. See, for example Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female
Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, Rev. ed., 1st Midland Book ed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1987); Fatima Sadiqi, ed., Women’s Movements in Post-"Arab Spring" North Africa, Comparative Feminist Studies
Series (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges, eds., Women and
Knowledge in the Mediterranean (Africa World Press, 2016); Asma Lamrabet, Qur’an and Women: A Narration of
Liberation. (Place of publication not identified: Kube Pub Ltd, 2016).

5
of Moroccan independence, although ‘woman’ continued to figure strongly in Moroccan
national/ist discourse.
18

Writing in 1968, Khatibi asserts that “[l]e thème futur de la littérature féminine au
Maghreb sera très probablement celui de la révolte et de l’affirmation de soi,”
19
which, looking
at the more recent work of women writers such as Fatema Mernissi (Chapter 1), Loubna Abidar
(Chapter 2) and Meryem Alaoui (Chapter 3), proves an accurate prediction for Morocco. As with
Morocco’s early anticolonial writers, however, Moroccan women’s (and, more recently,
LGBTQ+) revolutionary writing remains vastly dependent on the material support and political
interests of (primarily French) metropolitan audiences. As Moroccan sociologist Abdessamad
Dialmy asserts in his writing on Féminisme, Islamisme et Soufisme (1997), while women have
long found themselves at the centre of colonial and national/ist writing about the Maghreb, “[à]
part quelques exceptions, la femme a été exclue de la littérature ‘noble,’ pour être confinée dans
les formes de l’écriture au sens anthropologique, orale et sauvage.”
20
Feminists critics such as
Fatema Mernissi, Fatima Sadiqi and Hélène Cixous have amply theorised the cultural
significance of these other, apparently less-than-noble, “formes de l’écriture.”
21
Nonetheless, as
we will see in Chapter One of Writing Resistance, Muslim and Maghrebi women writers are left

18
It should be noted that this situation was not unique to women’s movements in the Maghreb. According to the
Algerian ex-militant Djamila Amrane, under the increasingly fundamentalist Islamic governance of independent
Algeria, which female activists had helped to secure, women were chiefly tasked with nurturing the emerging state:
“Évoquées uniquement par leurs liens avec les hommes, ‘mères, soeurs, épouses,’ les femmes sont cantonnées au
rôle, certes glorifié, mais limité, de procréatrices et d’éducatrices…” [Evoked only by their links with men,
‘mothers, sisters, wives,’ women are reduced to the role, certainly glorified, but limited, of procreators and
educators…] Djamila Amrane, Les Femmes Algériennes Dans La Guerre. (Paris: Plon, 1991), 33 (my translation).
19
‘The future theme of feminine literature in the Maghreb will most likely be that of revolt and self-affirmation.’
Khatibi, Le Roman Maghrébin, loc 1031 (my translation).
20
‘With a few exceptions, women have been excluded from “noble” literature, to be confined to the forms of writing
in the anthropological, oral and savage sense.’ Abdessamad Dialmy, Féminisme, Islamisme, Soufisme, Collection
‘Espaces Méditerranéens’ (Paris: Publisud, 1997), loc 436 (my translation).
21
See Fatima Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory (Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Zed Books, 1996); Fatima
Sadiqi, ‘Berber Women’s Oral Knowledge’, in Women and Knowledge in the Mediterranean, ed. Fatima Sadiqi
(Place of publication not identified: ROUTLEDGE, 2017), 108–24; Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies.

6
with very little means of resisting their figuration in dominant (religious, national/ist, colonial
and Orientalist) discourse. Moreover, as we will see in Chapters Two and Three, diasporic
writers’ resistance to Moroccan national/ist discourse often draws on Orientalist imaginings of
Arab/Muslim femininity, and in an international political climate intensely oriented around
questions of Muslim integration and Islamic terrorism, the sexual rebellion of women in
Islamicate society has become intricately tied to neo-imperialist discourses of sexual freedom
and democracy. In recent years, this discourse has been vastly supplemented by narratives of
sexual asylum coming out of North Africa’s LGBTQ+ community, propelling an international
literary interest in queer Muslims authors such as Abdellah Taïa (Chapter Four). Moroccan
literature thus remains intricately bound to questions of resistance: embraced as method of revolt
against a cultural and political force that now fuels the international consumption of Moroccan
narratives of sexual-political rebellion, the writing of Moroccan authors, artists and activists (for
it is not just that ‘noble’ writing that I take into consideration in this study) is radically engaged
on all fronts (even where, as the works discussed in Chapter 3 will demonstrate, it doesn’t want
to be).
The market for Muslim rebellion
According to Graham Huggan, this “entanglement of…ostensibly anti-imperial ideologies
within a global economy that often manipulates them to neoimperial ends” is the “constitutive
split” at the heart of the postcolonial,
22
whereby marginal narratives circulate as “cultural
capital” within a complex symbolic economy. While ‘postcolonial’ isn’t necessarily a term that
the authors and artists I study in Writing Resistance would use to categorise their work, the

22
Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2002), ix,
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203420102.

7
marginal status of the works they produce functions similarly as both “an index of resistance”
and “a sales tag in the context of today’s globalised commodity culture.”
23
The question for
Huggan, as it should be for us, is not how to escape or evade commodity culture, ”
24
but how to
“contend with neo-colonial market forces, negotiating the realpolitik of metropolitan economic
dominance.”
25
Huggan asserts that the “production, transmission and consumption of
postcolonial literary/cultural texts” is inextricable from commodity fetishism and “exoticist
spectacle.”
26
The “urge to identify”
27
with marginalised voices, he argues, results in a
“technology of representation”
28
that necessarily “capitalises both on the widespread circulation
of ideas about cultural otherness and on the worldwide trafficking of culturally ‘othered’
goods.”
29
But while there may be no working against these global market forces, Huggan
contends that it is possible to subvert “exoticist codes of representation”
30
by working,
strategically, within them.
This in mind, it will be important to identify the broader discourses (or “codes of
representation”) that Moroccan women and LGBTQ+ writers on the metropolitan market are
being written into before we are able to broach theorisations of writing as resistance. While
Khatibi suggests that there is a certain utility in reading Maghrebi literature as a reflection of the
region’s social/political ‘reality,’
31
as we will see in Chapter Three of this dissertation, the
pressure to produce ‘authentic’ texts about the Franco-/Maghrebi experience is one that many

23
Huggan, ix.
24
As Huggan writes, “to see commodity culture as necessarily compromising and/or imperialistic would be as
absurd as to see all postcolonial writers/thinkers as heroic agents of liberation." Huggan, 7.
25
Huggan, viii.
26
Huggan, 20.
27
Huggan, 15.
28
Huggan, 14.
29
Huggan, 28.
30
Huggan, 32.
31
‘the least [politically] engaged work...bears an infinitely complex relationship with society,’ Khatibi, Le Roman
Maghrébin, loc. 140 (my translation).

8
contemporary writers are keen to evade. As Huggan notes, however, the value placed on
marginal writers in the metropolitan market hangs heavily on their “capacity to operate, not just
as representers of culture but as bona fide cultural representatives.”
32
Furthermore, according to
Jodi Melamed, “…racialized women’s writing” is especially vulnerable to “presumptions of
authenticity and truth telling.”
33
The work of Moroccan women and LGTBQ+ authors is thus
subjected to a very particular kind of scrutiny, the political implications of which we are bound
to explore before entering our textual analysis.
Thanks to the autobiographies of ‘secular’ Muslims like Fadela Amara, Chadortt Djavann
and Loubna Méliane
34
– founders of Ni Putes Ni Soumises
35
(NPNS), the feminist organisation
responsible for coining the popular political slogan, “ni voilée, ni violée,”
36
at the height of the
French veil debate – sexual testimony written by French Muslim women has come to constitute
its own literary genre; one whose enduring popularity (and political utility) is attested to in the
attention received by the narratives of Muslim sexual dysfunction discussed in Chapters Two and
Three of Writing Resistance. Published in the mid-2000s amid intense discussion about
immigration, each of these women’s autobiographies recounted the author’s ascension from
Islamic oppression to secular emancipation, their personal narratives of gender violence in the
Muslim community – Amara and Méliane amidst the spiralling ‘machismo’ of the French
banlieue; Djavann in Khomeiny’s Iran, where “it was the veil or death”
37
– earning them an

32
Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic, 26.
33
Jodi Melamed, ‘Reading Tehran in Lolita: Making Racialized and Gendered Difference Work for Neoliberal
Multiculturalism’, in Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization, ed. Grace
Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson, Perverse Modernities (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2011),
91.
34
Fadela Amara, Ni Putes Ni Soumises, ed. Sylvia Zappi, Cahiers Libres (Paris: Découverte, 2003); Chahdortt
Djavann, Bas les voiles! (Paris: Gallimard, 2007); Loubna Méliane, Vivre libre, ed. Marie-Thérèse Cuny (Paris:
Pocket, 2004).
35
Neither whores nor submissives
36
Neither veiled nor raped.
37
Djavann, Bas les voiles! (see cover).

9
authoritative status on the “Muslim problem” in France. Paving the way for more recent secular
Muslim authors such as Henda Ayari (who accused the renowned Muslim scholar Tariq
Ramadan of sexual assault in her book
38
) and Loubna Abidar (who was attacked after starring in
Nabil Ayouch’s controversial film about Moroccan prostitution, Much Loved
39
), these women
also claimed to speak for all their Muslim sisters.
40
Their narratives of victimhood and survival
thus took on political dimensions much larger than their individual struggles with sexual trauma,
both in the way the authors framed their testimonies and in the way their narratives were
mobilised by politicians at the time.
Despite positioning itself firmly as an anti-racist, as well as feminist, organisation, Ni putes
ni soumises situated the problem of gender violence in distinctly racialized spaces. The
movement, which began with the 2002 “Marche des femmes contre les ghettos et pour
l’égalité,”
41
was fuelled by stories of sexual violence from “les filles des quartiers” – notably
Sohane Benziane, who was burnt to death by a male acquaintance in 2002, and Samira Bellil,

38
Ayari first recounted the episode, though Ramadan remained nameless, in J’ai choisi d’être libre, ed. Florence
Bouquillat, 2016, http://banq.pretnumerique.ca/accueil/isbn/9782081389663; After publicly accusing him of sexual
assault (subsequently prompting several other women to do so) during France’s #balancetonporc movement (the
equivalent of #metoo), she released another témoignage:: Plus jamais voilée, plus jamais violée (Paris: Editions de
l’Observatoire, 2018).
39
See Loubna Abidar and Marion Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, 2016,
http://res.banq.qc.ca/login?url=http://www.biblioaccess.com/31/Catalog/Book/665483 discussed in Chapter 2.
40
On the cover of Amara’s book, for example, is written : “Au-delà de son récit singulier, ce sont les voix de
milliers de jeunes femmes qui se font entendre, exprimant leurs interrogations et leur révolte: pourquoi cette
recrudescence des violences à l’égard des filles et cette régression du statut des femmes dans les cités ?" [“Beyond
her individual story, it is the voices of thousands of young women who are heard, expressing their questions and
their revolt: why this upsurge in violence against girls and this regression in the status of women in the banlieue?”]
Amara, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (my translation).
41
An interesting formulation if we think to Sara Ahmed and her work on orientations (especially since the march
originated in the peripheries and progressed toward the capital) – Amara’s early writing on the structural
disenfranchisement of the banlieue (Ni putes ni soumises) would suggest that the march was conceived as a protest
against (the effects of) ghettoization, rather than against the ghetto itself, as the locus (or source) of particularised
violence, but the wording is ambiguous. The ghetto appears in this formulation as égalité’s antithesis, which again
speaks to the ghetto as a product of structural inequality, yet given égalité’s connotations of sexual freedom and
agency established in the work of Wallach Scott and Fernando, the ghetto appears as a space of sexual unfreedom
and the suppression of agency, rather than a space whose inhabitants are deprived of equal care by the State. Great
analysis – why not include it in the text? The title also directly echoes the 1983 Marche pour l’égalité et contre le
racisme (Marche des Beurs)

10
whose high-profile autobiography highlighted the (intensely racialized
42
) problem of gang rape
in the banlieue
43
– whose bravery they worked hard to inscribe within a very French history of
revolution.
44
According to Joan Wallach Scott, the “égalité” that NPNS propounded was also
very particular to French republican understandings of sexual equality, which played heavily into
the mounting discourse against French Muslim girls’ use of the veil: “…in the heat of the
headscarf controversy” writes Scott, “equality became synonymous with sexual emancipation,
which in turn was equated with the visibility of the female body.”
45
In opposition to the veil,
which castrates the male gaze and precludes the “exchange of desirous looks”
46
Scott claims is
crucial to French gender dynamics, the sexualisation of the female body to which earlier French
feminists had vehemently objected was proffered by NPNS as an expression of conscious
feminist embodiment: “Dans les cités,” writes Fadela Amara, “il y a beaucoup de filles pour qui
le maquillage est devenu une peinture de guerre, un signe de résistance. C’est leur façon à elles
de lutter. …Dieu m’a donné un corps que j’assume et que je mets en valeur."
47
As anthropologist
Mayanthi Fernando notes, NPNS’s insistence on the freedom to sport short skirts and low-cut
tops as their “right to femininity” worked to align the concept of sexual emancipation with the

42
According to Myriam Ticktin, gang rape (les tournantes) was heavily associated with immigrant and racial
minorities by the French media and politicians at the time. Films like Chimo’s Lila dit ça and films like Fabrice
Genestal’s La Squale demonstrate a broader cultural fascination with the phenomenon. Miriam Ticktin, ‘Sexual
Violence as the Language of Border Control: Where French Feminist and Anti‐immigrant Rhetoric Meet’, Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 4 (June 2008): 863–89, https://doi.org/10.1086/528851; Chimo,
Lila dit ça, Pocket 10221 (Paris: Plon, 1997); Fabrice Genestal, La Squale (Fox France, 2000); See also Susan
Ireland, ‘Textualizing Trauma in Samira Bellil’s Dans l’enfer Des Tournantes and Fabrice Génestal’s La Squale’,
Dalhousie French Studies 81 (2007): 131–41.
43
Benziane’s family members and Bellil herself later distanced themselves from the movement, alarmed by the anti-
immigration rhetoric it quickly became associated with under Sarkozy’s government.
44
In 2003, another five-week march organised by NPNS culminated in an exhibition at Paris’s Palais Bourbon,
where Bellil’s face adorned the building alongside thirteen other “Mariannes d’aujourd’hui” (Mariannes of today)
in celebration of Bastille Day (July 14
th
).
45
Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil, 8. printing and 1. paperback printing, The Public Square Book Series
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2010), 156.
46
Scott, 159.
47
‘In the projects, there are many girls for whom make-up has become a kind of war-paint, a sign of resistance. It’s
their way of fighting...God gave me a body which I’m taking control of and which I’m putting out there.’ Amara, Ni
Putes Ni Soumises, 50 (my translation).

11
embodiment of a sexual difference very particular to secular models of feminine sexuality, all the
while erasing its particularity.
48
Not only this, but their rhetoric newly associated expressions of
secular femininity – despite a long history of French feminist critique pointing to the same
expressions as the product of capitalist and hetero-patriarchal domination – with expressions of
autonomy and agency, and it is ultimately this rhetoric (according to both Fernando and Scott)
that enabled the veil to be conceived as an assault on French national subjectivity. Sexual
discourse thus emerges in the NPNS era as a key site of cultural and political negotiation and the
ideological reinforcement of the secular state, hence Scott’s coining of the term “sexularism.”
The political reach of NPNS’s discourse cannot be underestimated. Amara and Djavann
were both invited to testify in front of the 2002 Stasi Commission that would result in a law
banning all “ostentatious” displays of religion in schools in 2004, and all three NPNS
frontwomen remained vocal proponents of the 2010 ban on facial covering in public space. That
Amara and Djavann were both awarded the Prix de la laïcité in 2003 and Amara’s témoignage
won the 2004 Political Book Prize further attests to the State’s investment in their cause. Despite
this sudden and overwhelming interest in female victims of Muslim violence, however, the
voices of practicing Muslim women remained conspicuously absent from public debate, and the
State failed to translate its public concern for Muslim women effectively into law. While
‘secular’ Muslims like NPNS (non-religious women from majority Muslim communities, or
women who have denounced Islam) were frequently invited to speak on the 2004 veil ban, very
little airtime was granted to those still wearing the veil
49
; and despite the ban being justified in
the terms of Muslim women’s emancipation, Islamic family laws that singularly impact Muslim

48
See Mayanthi L Fernando, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism, 2014,
http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1767230.
49
See Pierre Tevanian, Le Voile Médiatique: Un Faux Débat, l’affaire Du Foulard Islamique (Paris: Raisons d’agir,
2005).

12
women, such as a husband’s right to repudiation, continued to be recognised in French courts
thanks to the upholding of international bilateral accords.
50
For Scott, the State’s (purportedly
secular) interest in the protection of Muslim women is unconvincing for two reasons: firstly, if
the State truly deemed the veil an unequivocal sign of gender discrimination, she argues, the ban
should have applied to private as well as public space; and secondly, while secularism “is taken
to be an idea, either timeless or evolving, that signifies a universal project of human
emancipation specifically including women,”
51
historically speaking, gender equality was never
theorized as a secular concern. According to Scott, women’s emancipation first entered secularist
discourse exclusively “in association with imperialist adventures,” whereby the treatment of
women in colonized cultures was mobilised as “an index of ‘civilisation,’”
52
and it only became
a defining feature of laïcité “in the context of heated debates about the place of North African
immigrants in French society.”
53
Thus, far from serving as a goal or a guiding principle of
laïcité, the mythos surrounding sexual emancipation as the “fruit of secularism” works a-
historically to establish Western approaches to gender and sexuality as a “template for
modernity”
54
– a template divested of its cultural specificity while feeding a continuing rhetoric
of French cultural superiority.
Mehammed Mack similarly alludes to the role that narratives of Muslim sexual deviance
have played in defining the French political landscape. Though he roots contemporary discourses
on Arab sexuality in post-war fantasies of the nation’s ‘rape’ by immigrants,
55
Mack, too,

50
Ticktin, ‘Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control’; Scott, The Politics of the Veil.
51
Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Sexularism’, in Ursula Hirschmann Annual Lecture on Gender and Europe (RSCAS
Distinguished Lectures, European University Institute, 2009), 1.
52
Scott, 9.
53
Scott, 7.
54
Scott, 6.
55
Mack asserts that immigration is always conceived as masculine, reminding us that the very word ‘diaspora’
comes from the ‘spreading of seed.’

13
identifies a key shift in sexular discourse during the early 2000s – due in no small part to the rise
of NPNS. Just when civic status and linguistic ability could no longer be relied upon as clear
markers of difference, he argues, attitudes towards gender and sexuality became, for second-and
third-generation immigrant communities, the new measure of their assimilability. Sexual
vocabularies thus became “the best platform…to symbolically strip those who had already
become French of their ‘Frenchness,’”
56
transforming the “Hexagon” (France is so called
because of its six distinct sides) into what Mack terms the “Sexagon.” Furthermore, as Mack and
other scholars such as Murat Aydemir, working in the Dutch immigration context, assert, the
paternalist rhetoric surrounding Muslim women in Europe now readily extends to queer Muslim
immigrants, who, due to their feminized status in European nations’ sexual national/ist discourse,
are deemed “ideal targets for assimilation.”
57
This analysis echoes that of anthropologist Miriam
Ticktin, who argues that, in a society that is ostensibly indifferent to racial/cultural difference,
sexual violence (and, increasingly, homophobia
58
) has quickly become “the discourse of French
border control.” According to Ticktin, narratives of sexual alterity are crucial to the language of
contemporary nation-building because they make possible a “colonially-derived racist discourse
that erases the role of race.”
59
In other words, while the language of racial difference used to
justify colonial violence has shifted, the essentialising logic it supported persists under a different
name, allowing narratives of sexual violence to “define the parameters of the French nation-state
as well as who is included and who excluded, culturally, racially, and legally.”
60

56
Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2017), 10.
57
Mack, 2; See also Murat Aydemir, Indiscretions: At the Intersection of Queer and Postcolonial Theory, 2011.
58
See Aydemir, Indiscretions; Houria Bouteldja, ‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’,
Indigènes de la République (blog), 12 February 2013, http://indigenes-republique.fr/universalisme-gay-
homoracialisme-et-mariage-pour-tous-2/; Joseph Andoni Massad, ed., Desiring Arabs, Paperback ed (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008).
59
Ticktin, ‘Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control’, 865.
60
Ticktin, 864.

14
We should be wary, then, of the ways in which personal stories of sexual violence are
“codified as larger narratives”
61
of irreconcilable cultural difference. It is clear from the rhetoric
employed by NPNS in support of French secular/universalist ideology that colonial fantasies
about Arab men’s hypersexuality and pathological violence have yet to be purged from the
national imaginary.
62
The market interest in these secular Muslims’ ‘tell-all’ autobiographies,
furthermore, speaks to a continuing fascination with what happens behind the closed doors of the
harem (and now the banlieue).
63
But what is the function of this discourse, and how is it that the
State comes to rely on Muslim women for its production? For Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, the
stereotype of the voileur-violeur,
64
authenticated by “neo-colonial auxiliaries”
65
like NPNS,
permits the State to espouse “a virtuous racism that had until recently been censored,”
66
shifting
the blame for the structural disenfranchisement of immigrant communities onto the
“uncivilisable” garçon arabe, who “may slip from delinquency to terrorism and thus threatens
national integrity and security”
67
(in addition to the bodily integrity of the filles des quartiers).
68

Under this model, secular Muslim women are “recruited” to produce discourses that political

61
Ticktin, 880.
62
See Frantz Fanon, L’ an V de la révolution algérienne (Paris: La Découverte, Poche, 2011); Tahar Ben Jelloun, La
plus Haute Des Solitudes: Misère Sexuelle d’émigrés Nord-Africains, Combats (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1977);
Todd Shepard, Sex, France and Arab Men, 1962-1979. (Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2017).
63
See, for example Fatima Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems (La Vergne: s.
n., 2010); and Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, 1. paperback print (Reading, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley Pub. Co, 1995); Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem, Theory and History of Literature, v. 21 (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Fanon, L’ an V de la révolution algérienne; Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st
Vintage Books ed (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); For a fuller discussion of how this fascination is transposed
onto supposedly ‘clandestine’ sexual practices the banlieue, see also Bouteldja, ‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme
et « mariage pour tous »’; Mack, Sexagon.
64
veiler-rapist
65
Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, ‘The Other French Exception: Virtuous Racism and the War of the Sexes in
Postcolonial France’, French Politics, Culture & Society 24, no. 3 (2006): 38.
66
Guénif-Souilamas, 39.
67
Guénif-Souilamas, 25.
68
According to Aydemir, ‘Moroccan boys’ (deemed violently intolerant of sexual minorities, and therefore
incompatible with Holland’s democratic values) serves as an important rhetorical counterpart to the Muslim
homosexual asylum seeker in Dutch anti-immigration discourse. Aydemir, Indiscretions.

15
figures “would rather not voice.”
69
For Mayanthi Fernando, however, there is more to the
political fetishisation of Muslim women than the disguising of racist rhetoric. Within a national
logic that places the nation under the perpetual threat of Muslim violence, France’s political
anxieties are projected onto the Muslim female body, which becomes a metonymy for the
‘feminized’ State: “When the embattled Muslim woman stands in for the embattled republic, its
emancipation of her serves to reassert the republic’s own sovereignty and restore its waning
authority. By saving Muslim women, the republic ostensibly saves itself.”
70
This process has a
dual function: by repeatedly conjuring and eradicating the threat of Muslim violence through the
valorisation and assimilation of its victims in France, the State addresses its citizens’ anxieties
about a loss of control over the nation’s borders under globalisation and Europeanization, while
simultaneously aligning itself with a “narrative of impotence”
71
that works to “disavow” the
“responsibility of elites for their role in that loss.”
72
Through their demands for more punitive
measures to curb the violence of “delinquents” in the banlieue, furthermore, NPNS became
instrumental in justifying the expansion of the penal state.
73

As Joseph Massad explores in his critique of the Gay International,
74
the universalisation
of Western gay rights discourse plays a similar role in justifying Euro-American intervention
into Muslim communities:
…the very same discourse that calls for the “liberation” of Arabs from dictators and “defends” them against
human rights violations is what allows both imperial ventures and human rights activism. Even the data on
the Arabs necessary for imperial conquest and human rights activism derives from the same anthropological

69
Guénif-Souilamas, ‘The Other French Exception’, 38.
70
Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 205.
71
Fernando, 206.
72
Fernando, 207.
73
Fernando additionally argues that, by mystifying the government’s complicity in the social and economic
instability produced by participation in the market economy, “[t]he discourse of sexual victimhood exemplified by
NPNS has played a key role in the political theatre of neoliberalism.” Fernando, 206.
74
Massad uses this term to refer to Western-dominated gay rights organisations whose insistence on ‘rescuing’
sexual minorities from persecution in non-Western countries, he argues, "assumes prediscursively [and erroneously]
that homosexuals, gays, and lesbians are a universal category " Massad, Desiring Arabs, 163.

16
and Orientalist sources. The epistemic collusion is total, even though the political implications are articulated
differently.
75

According to Massad, Westernised middle class “native informants” who testify to the
sexual intolerance of the Islamicate societies they come from play an crucial role in bolstering
neo-imperialistic discourses of Muslim inferiority, placing queer Muslim writers like Abdellah
Taïa (whose work I discuss in Chapter Four) in a very similar position to the women writers
discussed in Writing Resistance. But even if, as will shall see, it is not often always possible for
Arab/Muslim authors to resist their implication in these narratives, it can be productive to look at
the ways their voices are not just incorporated into, but become constitutive of, articulations of
‘universalist’ subjectivity. According to Fernando, French universalism first met its limits upon
the discovery of “incommensurably different Arabs”
76
during colonial expansion, and the State
subsequently sought to reaffirm universalism’s transformative potential through the assimilation
of a few évolués: select black and Arab men who “proved their exceptionality, their potential to
be abstracted from their race or religion, through their attitudes toward native women.”
77
As we
have seen, for secular Muslim women like NPNS – Fernando dubs them France’s new évoluées –
this “exceptionality” resides in the embodiment of a certain kind of sexual difference: their
transcendence over their communal origins as evidenced by their “embrace” of French gender
norms “reaffirms secularity…as the site of the universal.”
78
But this transcendence does not
necessarily divest French Muslim women of their “Muslim immigrant difference.”
79
In fact, it
necessarily does not: “…paradoxically, the universal citizenship that [secular Muslim women]
represent depends on the concurrent production, erasure, and reproduction of commensurable

75
Massad, 47.
76
Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, XX.
77
Fernando, 216.
78
Fernando, 216–17.
79
Fernando, 217.

17
forms of difference, since it is precisely the existence of such a difference that makes its erasure
meaningful.”
80
These women’s position in nationalist discourse – and in the nation – is thus
precarious, since their ascension to full citizenship is contingent on the reiteration of a difference
that could just as easily work to exclude them, and on the maintenance of a relation to an origin
outside of the State’s ideological parameters. Nonetheless, as will be seen across the works
discussed in Writing Resistance, this paradoxical dynamic, while situating Muslim women and
sexual minorities at the limits of French national subjectivity, also warrants them a uniquely
subversive relationship to national/ist discourse, for the difference “required for [French
Republicanism’s] assertion of universality, is at the same time the difference that destabilizes and
renders contingent those very claims.”
81
This opens up radical possibilities for the Moroccan
woman or LGBTQ+ author inscribed in the (highly marketable) margins of French national and
literary culture. As Homi Bhabha (whose notion of colonial ‘mimicry’ Fernando engages with
heavily in her work) notes in The Location of Culture, it is in “the ambivalent world of the ‘not
quite/not white,’ on the margins of metropolitan desire,” that “the body and the book lose their
representational authority.
82
The question that remains is how to effectively, or strategically,
(re)write resistance from this space of ambiguity.
Writing as resistance
Given the French literary market’s appetite for ‘native informant’ literature and
Moroccan writers’ continuing reliance on metropolitan audiences, it would appear virtually
impossible for Moroccan and Maghrebi writers to attest to the ‘realities’ faced by women and
sexual minorities in their community without it being absorbed into narratives of Muslim sexual

80
Fernando, 218 (my italics).
81
Fernando, 218.
82
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London ; New York: Routledge, 1994), 92.

18
dysfunction and cultural inferiority. Even those who, like Meryem Alaoui and Leïla Slimani
(Chapter Three), refuse to enter into such dialogues by asserting their right to fictionality
struggle to resist being written into France’s sexual national/ist narrative. How then, might we
conceive of writing as a tool of resistance? In the face of such intense discursive
predetermination, how might these writers find a way to speak to power ? Michel Foucault’s
analysis in The History of Sexuality: Volume One is helpful here, not least because of his
insistence upon gender and sexuality as privileged sites of discursive (and coercive) control. For
Foucault, power is “not an institution, and not a structure,”
83
though it can certainly manifest
itself in either one. “Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything but because it
comes from everywhere.”
84
Neither the State nor the legislator is able to produce power, because
discourses of power precede the law. Institutional power, therefore, may be nothing without
discourse – or discourse, at least, is every bit the conduit of power as the institution, whence
power can never originate. Discourse, on the other hand, “transmits and produces power; it
reinforces it, but it also undermines it and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to
thwart it.”
85
But while discourse may present us with a possible source of resistance to power, it
is important to note that it does not always oppose what it claims to oppose:
There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it.
Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different
and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without
changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing, strategy.
86

Even rebellious discourses, then, risk assimilation into the discourses of power.
Similarly to Foucault, Edward Said asserts that Orientalist discourse “is not in direct,
corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather produced and exists in

83
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vintage Books ed (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 93.
84
Foucault, 93.
85
Foucault, 101.
86
Foucault, 102 (my emphasis).

19
uneven exchange with various kinds of power"
87
– power political (e.g. colonial), intellectual (as
found in traditional philology), cultural (as established in canons of taste and text), and moral (as
established by a logic of ‘us’ versus ‘them’). If power intellectual consists of ‘knowing’ the
Orient, this (structuration of) knowledge is what paves the way for power political in the way of
colonialism and, in the postcolonial context, neo-imperialist intervention and control. In other
words, discourse precedes and enables material mechanisms of power. What is more, while
Orientalism, as a discourse, derives its power from distortion and inaccuracy, “it would be wrong
to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding
identity.”
88
So where and how do mythic and material powers converge? While Writing
Resistance does not attempt to forge a distinction between Orientalist fantasy and some sort of
subaltern ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ (to do so, I believe, would be to repeat the Orientalising gesture of
attempting to ‘unveil’ the mysteries of the East), it is concerned with the way that structurations
of Oriental knowledge and the rhetorical homogenisation of ‘the world of Islam’ sets up
Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ bodies as objects of discursive consumption and control.
What does it mean for Muslim women and sexual minorities in the West to be preceded by
dominant discourses that interpret them as passive victims or misguided sympathisers to the
systems of their own oppression, to be always already ‘known’? How does this ‘knowledge’ of
Muslim women’s and sexual minorities’ oppression – which we know not to be a fabrication of
the West, but which is nevertheless distorted and hyperbolised in dominant Western discussions
of Islam – make material violences against Muslims yet more possible? And how might Muslim
women and sexual minorities answer to these violences (or choose not to) when their body is
always already been assumed to ‘speak’?

87
Said, Orientalism, 12.
88
Said, 5.

20
For Judith Butler, the fact that we are always preceded by discourse and shaped by the
discourses that precede us does not mean that we are powerless to resist. While “…the social
norms that constitute our existence carry desires that do not originate with our individual
personhood,” she insists, there is room within this network of power to “maintain a critical and
transformative relation” to the discourses that do us violence: “If I have any agency, it is opened
up by the fact that I am constituted by a social world I never chose. That my agency is riven with
paradox does not mean it is impossible. It means only that paradox is the condition of its
possibility.”
89
Anthropologist Saba Mahmood is sceptical of this discussion of agency, which she
argues “tends to focus on those operations of power that resignify and subvert norms.”
90
Arguing
that there is yet insufficient study of women whose agency is enacted in adhering to convention,
Mahmood asserts the need for feminist scholars to recognise that norms can be inhabited in
“radically different ways”
91
without the need or the impetus for radical intervention – rebellion is
not contingent on Western interpretations of agency, nor is agency contingent upon the defiance
of normative or homogenising powers. For Mahmood, feminine agency cannot be reduced to
terms of submission and oppression, freedom and constraint. Nor should adherence to
convention, after Mahmood, be read necessarily as a mode of survival, though this is true for
many who are marginalised. Mahmood and Butler are nonetheless in accordance on the potential
for the body, through its daily gestural practices, to engage with dominant discourse – be it
through faithful adherence or conscious aversion to existing norms, the subject bears an agentive

89
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York ; London: Routledge, 2004), 2–3 This paradox is notable in Fatema
Mernissi’s playful reproduction of Orientalist imagery in her fictional autobiography (Chapter One) and in strategies
employed by Meryem Alaoui and Leïla Slimani in the promotion of their ‘universal’ authorship (Chapter Three). .
90
Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival
in Egypt’, Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 42, no. 1 (2006): 203,
https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/4633.
91
Mahmood, 205.

21
relation to existing networks of discourse and power through their willingness, to use Butler’s
terminology, to either be recognised by them or to refuse this recognition.
This opens up multiple modes of resistance to those who are traditionally underrepresented
in political, cultural, and literary networks of power. As Butler suggests, “[t]here are advantages
to remaining less than intelligible, if intelligibility is understood as that which is produced as a
consequence of recognition according to prevailing social norms.”
92
For many women and
sexual minorities in Islamicate society, however, legibility in dominant discourse is a crucial
strategy of resistance. Islamic feminist Asma Barlas, for example, proposes a “Qur’anic
hermeneutics of sexual equality,”
93
whereby scripture is used to dismantle the patriarchal culture
in which the text was first read and understood – by men – but which the Qur’an itself does not
condone. In doing so, she suggests, Muslim women and men might achieve a new “language of
rights”
94
which stands alongside – and not opposite – Western/liberal notions of social justice. In
Chapter One, we will see Moroccan sociologist Fatema Mernissi stage a similar return to
scripture in the pursuit of a nisa’ist (womanist) Islam;
95
and as the theorists discussed in Chapter
Four will demonstrate, this kind of “sexually sensitive” exegesis has become a vital component
of Muslim gay rights discourse.
96
Like Barlas and Mernissi, Moroccan feminist and linguistics
scholar Fatima Sadiqi notes the strategic importance of speaking in the language of authority –
which is here the language of Islamic law – yet she maintains that patriarchy, “the strongest and

92
Butler, Undoing Gender, 3.
93
Asma Barlas, ‘Globalizing Equality: Muslim Women, Theology and Feminism’, in On Shifting Ground: Muslim
Women in the Global Era, ed. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New
York, 2005), 91.
94
Barlas, 106.
95
Fatima Mernissi, Le harem politique: le Prophète et les femmes, Espaces libres Spiritualés 218 (Paris: A. Michel,
2010); Fatima Mernissi, Sultanes oubliées: femmes chefs d’État en Islam (Paris: Michel, 1990).
96
See, for example, Scott Alan Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian and
Transgender Muslims, A Oneworld Book (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 41; Shadaab Rahemtulla, Qur’an of the
Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam, First edition, Oxford Theology and Religion
Monographs (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2017).

22
most pervasive source of primary authority in Morocco,”
97
will not be destabilized until its
prominence as a social institution is separated from its relationship to Islam. For Sadiqi, the only
way to incorporate the multiplicity of Maghrebi women’s experiences into the nation’s historical
and social narratives is to build a “larger-than-Islam”
98
feminist framework that would emphasise
women’s political, economic and linguistic contributions throughout Maghrebi history. The
question of amazighité
99
emerges as a particularly productive discursive space from which to
approach existing networks of discourse and power, permitting critics to look beyond the
Islamic/secular feminist divide not only to the discrimination of indigenous women, which has
been long denied, but towards the range of intersectional factors that impinge on Moroccan
women’s lives. Stressing that the patriarchal institution pre-dates Islam, Sadiqi claims that the
polarization of the Moroccan feminist debate between the nationalist/traditionalist attachment to
Islam and the promise (or threat) of secular modernity dismisses the problem of female
domination that persists across all demographics and bears a palpable relation to ethnicity,
wealth, and class. She does identify, however, the potential for an alternative – and traditionally
“women-related”
100
– language to enter the sphere of socio-political influence in the form of
Berber.
101
Unlike Arabic, a language inextricable from masculinist interpretations of Islam; and
French, the equally patriarchal language of the coloniser; Berber, she argues, has been influenced
by women down to its very syntax, its letters first appearing as tribal motifs sewn into carpets

97
Fatima Sadiqi, Moroccan Feminist Discourses, Comparative Feminist Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014), 71.
98
Sadiqi, xiii.
99
Amazigh-ness. Amazigh refers collectively to the indigenous peoples of the Maghreb, of which there are many
distinct cultural and linguistic groups.
100
Sadiqi, Moroccan Feminist Discourses, 3.
101
I use this term because it appears to be Sadiqi’s preference in addressing international audiences where the word
is more easily recognized. ‘Berber’ is not a term favoured by Amazigh artists and activists in the region, however,
and it should be noted that in this case Sadiqi is speaking specifically about Tamazight (just one, albeit the most
prevalent, of many Amazigh languages).

23
that men would take into the world but upon which women inscribed their most intimate desires.
In more recent years, furthermore, Sadiqi has noticed a “re-emergence of Berber women’s tokens
in youth culture” as political “empowerment tools.”
102
It seems significant for Sadiqi that
Amazigh dialects offer a mode of articulation away from established discourses of gender in
Morocco, but by gesturing beyond language towards a pre-colonial, pre-Islamic elsewhere,
Sadiqi suggests that we can denature postcolonial structurations of gender, patriarchy, and
national identity in relation to ‘the West’ and/or Islam.
While Mernissi and Sadiqi each employ a degree of strategic conservatism in their demand
for material change in Moroccan educational policy and gender-discriminatory law, they are
cognizant of the radical impact women could have upon discourses of power, even as they are
constrained by them. That patriarchy, here, is identified as the guiding principle behind religious
and historical interpretation, rather than its consequence or truth, allows women to assert their
rights without renouncing their place in the nation or in relation to its dominant faith.
Consequently, the binary logic imposed by dominant discourse begins to collapse, revealing, in
its wake, the fallacy of supposedly ‘natural’ relationships of power. The failure of dominant
discourse to account for women’s histories, creativity, and desire points to its own limits, and
thus to the limits of its power. But while Mernissi emphasises the need for Moroccan women to
participate in religious discourse as part of their legal and social advancement, Sadiqi is more
interested in demonstrating the ways in which women already are and already have been
engaging in modes of linguistic, economic and cultural production. Feminist resistance for
Sadiqi, then, is not so much a quest for the establishment of new kind of feminine agency as the
establishment of new ways of seeing feminine agency where it has always been at play.

102
Sadiqi, Moroccan Feminist Discourses, 4.

24
Sadiqi’s use of amazighité to delineate a discursive space outside of the binaries of
dominant discourse, partnered with her emphasis upon women’s creative and bodily modes of
inscription, points to a discursive excess akin to the Cixousian notion of ‘feminine writing’: “une
écriture neuve, insurgée”
103
capable of exploding the phallocratic order that has thus far
dominated the experiential possibilities of Woman. While, for Hélène Cixous, écriture féminine
is reducible neither to the practice of writing nor to the work of women per se,
104
like amazighté
(for Sadiqi) it forms a crucial component in the prise de la parole of the oppressed; working
against patriarchy, but also against capitalism, against class hierarchy, against imperialism –
against all the sciences de l’homme that attempt to homogenise world history, placing (a
particular kind of) man and his desires at their centre. The arrival of écriture féminine thus
denotes an upheaval, an eruption, that will shake the foundations of those institutions that never
cease producing (and reproducing) the masculine: language, law, philosophy; logos, reason and
“truth.” In contrast, feminine desire – and thus, writing – does not stake a claim in this
machinery. It does not contest or oppose; rather, it exceeds the logic of phallocentrism. It
shatters, decentres, and – most importantly – creates: “Si la femme a toujours fonctionné ‘dans’
le discours de l’homme…il est temps qu’elle disloque ce ‘dans,’ qu’elle l’explose, le retourne et
s’en saisisse…qu’elle s’invente une langue pour lui rentrer dedans.”
105
Écriture féminine,
therefore, constitutes a dismantling of the structures of oppression and an embodiment of
difference – a desire that doesn’t speak against but speaks differently.

103
‘a new, insurgent writing’ Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies, 45 (my translation).
104
Écriture feminine cannot be conceived as an exclusively female praxis, and nor is the ‘masculine’ to be equated
with male desires so much as with the phallocentric discourse that constructs and reinforces them at the cost of all
other ontologies. Interestingly enough, Cixous draws on the work of Jean Genet (who, as we will see in Chapter
Four, holds a significant place in Moroccan queer history) as a quintessential example of how men can produce
'feminine' writing.
105
Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies.

25
Though the authors and artists discussed in the coming chapters employ a variety of
different approaches to writing (and re-writing) resistance, Cixous’ ‘feminine’ will thus prove
critical to the dissertation’s discussion of sex, love and discursive protest in Moroccan literature
and film. Eschewing the binary “couples” found in phallocratic discourse – homme/femme,
activité/passivité, logos/écriture; each of which is defined by what it does not or cannot signify

106
– the ‘feminine’ writer allows the boundaries between the ‘self’ and ‘Other’ to be dissolved,
coming together in a revolutionary act of love. Contrary to the “économie appropriante,”
107
of
the masculine, wherein ‘love’ is propelled by a desire to penetrate, to colonize, and to pacify,
108

the ‘feminine’ subject wants and gives all, gives only for the pleasure of giving, and expects
nothing in return. Love, here, denotes a desire for multiplicity and co-creation rather than
conquest:
Aimer, regarder-penser-chercher l’autre dans l’autre, dé—spéculariser, déspéculer. C’est difficile ? Ce n’est
pas impossible : et c’est cela qui nourrit la vie, un amour qui ne s’entetient pas de ce désir inquiet qui pare au
manque et veut confondre l’étrange, mais qui se réjouit de l’échange qui multiplie.
109

A feminine resistance, then, is one that builds with and towards the Other instead of
seeking to obliterate what might appear to threaten the Self. To ‘love’ is to build away from the
language of oppression (though not, necessarily, the oppressor) toward a new language of revolt.
In this sense, ‘feminine’ writing (which Cixous has also described an embodiment of
bisexualité
110
) is also a queer writing, insofar as it destabilises ‘masculine’ (thus heterosexist and

106
See Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, La jeune née, Série féminin futur 984 (Paris: Union Générale
d’Éditions, 1978); Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman, Theory and History of
Literature, v. 24 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
107
‘appropriative economy’ Cixous and Clément, La jeune née, 144. (my translation).
108
‘“L’amour à votre façon c’est la mort pour nous,” writes Cixous. [’Your way of love [l’amour] is death [la mort]
for us." Cixous and Clément, 123.
109
Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies, 67–68; ‘To love, to watch-think-seek the other in the other, to de-
specularize, to unhoard. Does this seem difficult? It’s not impossible, and this is what nourishes life – a love that has
no commerce with the apprehensive desire that provides against the lack and stultifies the strange; a love that
rejoices in the exchange that multiplies.’ Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, 893.
110
‘Bisexualité, c’est à dire repérage en soi, individuellement, de la présence, diversement manifeste et insistante
selon chaque un ou une, des deux sexes, non-exclusion de la différence ni d’un sexe, et à part de cette “permission”

26
heteronormative) structurations of meaning and power. What is more, while it is not inherently
tied to the embodiment of sexual difference or differential sexuality, its possibility is opened up
by this experience. As Sara Ahmed notes in Queer Phenomenology,
Heterosexuality as a compulsory orientation reproduces more than “itself”: it is a mechanism for the
reproduction of culture, or even the “attributes” that are assumed to pass along a family line, such as
whiteness. It is for this reason that queer as a sexual orientation “queers” more than sex, just as other kinds of
queer effects can in turn end up “queering” sex.”
111

Not only do queer subjectivities harbour perspectives capable of disrupting the language of
power (patriarchal, colonial, national/ist, imperialist), but attempts to reformulate this language
might similarly allow for the cultural and discursive ‘queering’ of sexuality. While Ahmed
avoids making an essential connection between the diasporic and the queer, she also finds a
certain affinity between the dis-orienting effects of inhabiting postcolonial or diasporic space and
inhabiting a queer identity. The migrant, she argues, is in the position of always facing at least
two different directions: what was home and what is to become home. The child of migrants is
similarly displaced, constantly called into relation to their ‘origins’ which, in the interracial body
at least, are often incongruous with the lines that they must live by. Bodies that are ‘out of line’
nonetheless impact the spaces they inhabit, sometimes barely noticeably, by treading new paths
of desire, itineraries of subtle deviation, through spaces that are not made to accommodate them.
For some bodies, just being there is enough to be “out of line,” and to throw established patterns
of relationality and motility into crisis. Queer resistance – like Cixous’s ‘feminine’ and Butler or

que l’on se donne, multiplication des effets d’inscription du désir, sur toutes parties de mon corps et de l’autre
corps.’ [Bisexuality, that is to say identification in oneself, individually, of the presence, variously manifest and
insistent according to each man or woman, of the two sexes, non-exclusion of difference or of a sex, and apart from
this “permission” that one gives oneself, multiplication of the effects of desire’s inscription, on all parts of my body
and the other body.] Cixous and Clément, La jeune née, 155–56. (my translation). Cixous’ ‘bisexualité’ strongly
resembles Dialmy’s notion of ‘l’écrivain androgyne’ found in Dialmy, Féminisme, Islamisme, Soufisme. However,
while the androgynous author is defined by lack (they bear neither the ‘universal’ status of the masculine author nor
the ‘particularity’ of feminine writers), Cixous’ bisexualité is defined by multiplicity and plenitude the coming
together of both sexes in the act of creation.
111
Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006),
161–62.

27
Mahmood’s inhabitance of socio-sexual norms – thus begins within (and in critical relation to the
‘within’ of) dominant discourse. It is a tactical residence that lays the foundations for new
ontologies.
Chapter Outline
Together, the works discussed in Writing Resistance make up a powerful archive of rebellion
that calls into question the very notion of revolt. In Chapter One, “‘Strange Memory’: strategies
towards a feminine archive,” I explore the discursive tactics employed by Moroccan sociologist
and feminist scholar, Fatema Mernissi (1940-2015), in her lifelong quest to remedy Muslim
women’s misrepresentation in the ‘man-written’ archives (religious, colonial, Orientalist,
national/ist). Drawing on Mernissian notions of knowledge, memory and trespass as well as
elements of performance theory,
112
this chapter explores the resistive potential of women’s
cultural and discursive ‘acts’ throughout Muslim and Moroccan history while tracing Mernissi’s
own methodological trajectory over the course of her career – from feminist “vitriol” towards a
more “seductive” strategy,
113
and finally beyond the phallocratic assumptions that have
traditionally defined ideas of ‘writing’ and ‘truth.’
Chapter Two, “Sex Work and ‘Free’ Women in Moroccan Cinema,” examines the socio-
political dynamics of Moroccan women’s cinematic representation through the popular yet
provocative figure of ‘the prostitute.’ Through a contextualised reading of Nabil Ayouch’s Much
Loved (2015),
114
which was banned in Morocco but widely celebrated in France, and Narjiss
Nejjar’s Dry Eyes (2003),
115
which promotes a government-sponsored narrative of national

112
Notably, Diana Taylor’s concept of ‘repertoire.’ See Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing
Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
113
It is Mernissi who describes her methodological progression this way. Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic
Memory.
114
Nabil Ayouch, Much Loved (Pyramide, 2015).
115
Narjiss Nejjar, Les Yeux Secs, 2003.

28
progress, I explore the complicated and often contradictory motifs of sexual freedom, oppression
and agency that circulate in discussions of Moroccan sex work. Grounding the films within
larger political and theoretical debates surrounding the image, Muslim gender oppression and
sexual nationalism, the chapter interrogates the interest of the diasporic director in shedding light
on the ‘realities’ of Moroccan sex work, highlighting the cultural and material factors that define
narratives of gender and sexuality in Moroccan cinema.
Chapter Three, “Moroccan women writers and the demand for unmarked authorship,”
carries the questions of truth and representation explored in earlier chapters into the context of
the French literary market, exploring the inter- and extra-textual strategies employed by
Francophone Moroccan writers Meryem Alaoui
116
and Leïla Slimani
117
in their pursuit of a
writing without origin. While both authors insist that their fiction be read independently of their
biographical reality, it is clear that the Franco-/Maghrebi woman author remains under immense
pressure to produce ‘authentic’ narratives of Muslim women’s marginality, regardless of
authorial intent. Exploring the postcolonial relationship between literature and identity,
118
I
suggest that Alaoui and Slimani make effective use of these discursive demands, playing on their
audience’s expectations to expose the heavily racialised and sexualised dynamics of cultural
consumption in the metropole.
In my final chapter, “If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Moroccan: towards a
new national romance,” I investigate the discursive limits of ‘love’ as the language of protest in
Moroccan youth movements and literature. ‘Love’ is increasingly foregrounded in discourses of

116
Meryem Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval (Paris: Gallimard, 2018).
117
Leïla Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle Au Maroc (Paris: Les Arènes, 2017); Leïla Slimani, Dans le
jardin de l’ogre, Collection Folio 6062 (Paris: Gallimard, 2016); Leïla Slimani, Chanson Douce (Paris: Gallimard,
2016).
118
By way of Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘To(o) Queer the Writer - Loca, Escritora y
Chicana’, in The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, ed. AnaLouise Keating (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Roland
Barthes, ‘La Mort de l’auteur’, 1967; and Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic.

29
gender justice in Morocco, yet the appeal to love as ‘universal’ continues to ground these
discussions in French national/ist articulations of sexuality.
119
The research of scholars like
Fatema Mernissi, meanwhile, suggests that love is a concept with wide-ranging and often radical
significance in Muslim and Moroccan culture and history.
120
Drawing on diverse definitions of
love as a cultural, affective and spiritual phenomenon, in addition to global feminist and anti-
capitalist discourses on the revolutionary promise of love,
121
this chapter explores declarations of
love in the work of author- activists Abdellah Taïa
122
and Sonia Terrab
123
as a new form of
patriotic protest; the budding of a new national romance.

119
As Khatibi writes, " ….si dans la culture universelle, certains thèmes sont en quelque sorte éternels comme
l’amour, la haine, la jalousie..., il s’agit pour le critique de préciser à chaque fois le contenu particulier de cet amour,
de cette haine, de cette jalousie, dans le cadre de l’évolution de l’histoire et en fonction de la spécificité des cultures.
[“…if in universal culture, certain themes are in a way eternal such as love, hatred, jealousy ..., it is for the critic to
specify each time the particular content of this love, this hatred, of this jealousy, within the framework of the
evolution of history and according to the specificity of cultures.” [“…if in universal culture, certain themes are in a
way eternal such as love, hatred, jealousy ..., it is for the critic to specify each time the particular content of this love,
this hatred, of this jealousy, within the framework of the evolution of history and according to the specificity of
cultures.”] Abdelkebir Khatibi, Maghreb Pluriel (Paris: Denoël, 1983), loc 236.
120
Fatima Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans: à travers le miroir des textes anciens, 2012.
121
Houria Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love, trans. Rachel Valinsky,
Semiotext(e) Intervention Series 22 (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2016); bell hooks, All About Love: New
Visions, First Perennial edition (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001); Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, Fiftieth
anniversary ed, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006); Joseph E. B. Lumbard,
‘From “Ḥubb” to “ʿIshq”: The Development of Love in Early Sufism’, Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford, England)
18, no. 3 (2007): 345–85, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etm030; Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion.
122
Abdellah Taïa, La vie lente (Éditions du Seuil, 2019); Abdellah Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé (Paris:
Points, 2018).
123
Sonia Terrab, Shakespeare à Casablanca (Ali’n Productions; 2M TV, 2016); Leila Slimani and Sonia Terrab,
‘Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous sommes hors-la-loi’, Telquel.ma, accessed 11 February
2021, https://telquel.ma/2019/09/23/nous-citoyennes-et-citoyens-marocains-declarons-que-nous-sommes-hors-la-
loi_1651557?fbrefresh=4.

30
CHAPTER ONE

Strange Memory – strategies toward a feminine archive in the work of
Fatema Mernissi

1 Introduction
What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and
punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape
attempts at assassination if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the
mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition.
- Fatema Mernissi
124

A foundational figure in Muslim and Maghrebi feminist circles and one of the few
Moroccan women to gain scholarly recognition worldwide, Fatema
125
Mernissi (1940-2015)
leaves a far-reaching, radical legacy in her work; one that will continue to shape studies in
gender, history, and sociology for a long time to come. But as we rush to memorialise the late
Fatema Mernissi, it is important to take a moment to remember what remembering meant for this
scholar, who devoted a lifetime of research and dozens of publications to the subject of Muslim
and Moroccan (as well as her own personal) memory. While her work spanned diverse
categories of expertise and scholarly inquiry, Mernissi maintained a critical curiosity towards
women’s history – or apparent lack thereof – and the politics of amnesia that appears to govern
discussions of Islamic tradition and modernity. Over the course of her long career, Mernissi
never ceased to interrogate the strangeness of Muslim memory – a memory that, as well shall
see, has been censored, guarded and weaponised by political elites since the dawn of Islam – nor
Muslim women’s estrangement from it, through their systematic expulsion from the archives.

124
Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, 11. print
(Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 2002), 194.
125
While Mernissi’s first name is spelled “Fatima” in some publications, “Fatema” appears to have been the author’s
own preferred spelling. I will therefore use the latter variation, except where citations require the former.

31
Keenly aware of the power of discourse to shape women’s daily realities, Mernissi’s
corpus stages a series of interventions into the religious, national/ist and Orientalist archives that
have sought to define Moroccan, Maghrebi and – more broadly – Muslim womanhood for
centuries. In what remains perhaps her best-known work, Le harem politique: le prophète et les
femmes [The Veil and the Male Elite: a feminist interpretation of women’s rights in Islam] (1987
[1991]), this intervention entails a return to scripture: “[d]elving into memory… with no
guardian or guide,”
126
Mernissi interrogates the techniques employed by theologians to verify
Islamic law, reinterpreting religious texts towards a feminist perspective, using a scientific eye.
In Sultanes oubliées: femmes chefs d’État en Islam [The Forgotten Queens of Islam] (1990
[1993]) and Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory [1996], she applies the same technique to
Muslim history. Unearthing long-suppressed yet overwhelming evidence of Muslim women’s
historical rebellion and agency, Mernissi exposes how conservative Islamic and neo-colonial
forces have converged in recent years to produce the myth of the ‘traditional’ Muslim woman.
Later in her career, Mernissi’s work makes a shift toward the Western archive and non-Muslim
audiences as she explores (and sometimes makes strategic appeals to) neo-/Orientalist fantasies
about the ‘harem’ in Dreams of Trespass: tales of a harem girlhood (1994) and Scheherazade
Goes West (2001). Finally, in her fieldwork as a sociologist and much of her autoethnographic
work, it is illiterate women’s voices Mernissi brings to the fore, carving out a space for them
alongside the voices of the male elite in the annals of Moroccan, Muslim and colonial history.
Reflecting on the critical role that women have played in renegotiating Moroccan memory
through cultural performances such as oral storytelling and carpet-weaving, she uncovers a vast
repertoire of feminine history that defies inscription in the archives.

126
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 9. Originally published in 1987 as Le harem politique and translated in
1991.

32
Though Mernissi’s discursive strategy varies vastly across these works, responding to the
enormous shifts in global feminist discourses about Muslim women and international politics
since the 1970s, her objective remains to address the disparity in discourses created by and about
Muslim women throughout history. Conscious of the violence of living in a world predicated on
another’s fantasies, Mernissi calls into question the networks of social, political and economic
power that dictate what is culturally understood as ‘truth’ and ‘fact,’ invoking women to become
active readers of their own history. For the act of reading, Mernissi argues, is itself a kind of
writing; and for Muslim women, writing is a “subversive and blasphemous act par
excellence.”
127
It is this kind of reading that I strive to bring Mernissi’s work; not because her
corpus is in any way misguided or incomplete (though it has garnered its fair share of criticism
over the years), but as a tribute and a testament to Mernissi’s methodology, and to the ceaseless
battle between “woman” and “the word.” What can be gained by gaining recognition in the
language of authority? What does the re/writing of unwritten history mean for knowledge, and
for the ways in which Muslim women are known? Following in Mernissi’s footsteps, I attempt to
read her corpus as she reads the archives, by “…gliding toward the areas where memory breaks
down, dates get mixed up, and events softly blur together, as in the dreams from which we draw
our strength.”
128

2 The sacred text as political weapon
This religion is a science, so pay attention to those from whom you learn it.
Imam Malik Ibn Nanas
129

127
Fatna A. Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, The Athene Series (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), 6.
This book was written by Mernissi and appeared under a pseudonym until after her death.
128
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 10.
129
Cited in Mernissi, 59.

33
Fatema Mernissi is perhaps best known for her contributions to the field of “Islamic
feminism” – a concept that had scarcely begun to take form in the mid-1970s when she published
the now-infamous Beyond the Veil (1975), based on her doctoral research at Brandeis University,
Massachusetts. In Morocco, where Mernissi first trained as a sociologist and later taught at
Université Mohammed V in Rabat, it is generally recognised that the feminist movement began,
in association with the country’s nationalist movement, with the demands of the Akhawat al-Safa
(Sisters of Purity) to abolish polygamy and ensure “full and equal political rights”
130
for women
as early as 1946 – a promise that sadly would not be delivered by their brothers in arms upon the
publication of the shari’a-based mudawana, or family code, a year after Morocco’s 1956
independence.
131
But where Islamic principles continue to be seen by many Western and
Moroccan feminists as antithetical to women’s liberation and self-determination, in the wake of
the Iranian revolution (1979), the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and the Gulf War (1990-91),
feminist scholars and activists in the Muslim world turned increasingly to religious arguments in
favour of female emancipation – a move many saw as necessary to make already-existing
movements more intelligible amid rising conservatism in Muslim states (and rising Islamophobia
in Europe and North America). By now, ‘Islamic feminism’ is well-recognised as category of
theoretical inquiry, but it nonetheless remains a contested term: Mernissi herself never identified
her work by it and notable feminist figures in Moroccan politics and activism such as Nadia
Yassine and Khadija Moufid actively reject the label, even as others use it to define their

130
Fatima Sadiqi, ‘Morocco’, in Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance,
ed. Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin (New York: Freedom House, 2010).
131
Moroccan feminists’ disillusionment with the national project in the wake of independence is echoed in the work
of Leila Abouzeid, whose account of an ex-militant navigating post-protectorate Moroccan society as a recent
divorcée in The Year of the Elephant has earned her national and international fame. See Leila Abouzeid, Year of
the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman’s Journey toward Independence and Other Stories, trans. Barbara M. Parmenter,
Rev. ed, Modern Middle East Literatures in Translation Series (Austin: The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The
University of Texas at Austin, 2009).

34
work.
132
Though, as we will see in Mernissi’s historical research, Muslim women resisted
patriarchal oppression long before European colonisers adopted a paternalistic concern over their
“plight,” critics across the globe continue to perceive “feminism” as a Western import. Thus,
while self-defined Islamic feminists like Asma Lamrabet (former director of the Moroccan
Centre d'Études et de Recherche Féminine en Islam [CERFI]
133
) insist that that feminism is a
“universal heritage” applicable to all cultural contexts and strategically adopt the international
language of women’s rights in order to be “globally understood,”
134
others frame their women-
centred movements entirely in religious terms.
For Mernissi – who, in her radical inquiry into the place of Muslim woman in politics in
The Veil and the Male Elite (1991)
135
defines being Muslim as “belonging to a theocratic
state”
136
– articulating feminist demands in religious terms is a question of self-defence: in a
juridical culture that relies on religion to justify systematic misogyny (it is important to note that
Mernissi does not see misogyny as inherent to Islam, even if it is inculcated into Islamic law) it
is crucial that women become versant in the language used to deprive them of their rights.
Approaching the religious foundations of Muslim women’s exclusion from public life through a
careful re-reading of the sacred texts, Mernissi adopts a critical approach akin to what Islamic
feminist Asma Barlas has termed a “Qur’anic hermeneutics of sexual equality,”
137
whereby
scripture is used to dismantle the patriarchal tenets by which the text has been read and
understood, but which the Qur’an itself does not condone. For Mernissi, this practice is itself

132
Merieme Yafout, ‘Islamic Feminism in Morocco: Concepts and Perspectives’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New
Perspectives, ed. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 96–110.
133
Centre for Studies and Feminine Research in Islam.
134
Yafout, ‘Islamic Feminism in Morocco: Concepts and Perspectives’, 105.
135
Originally published as Le harem politique in 1987.
136
‘Being Muslim is a civil matter, a national identity, a passport, a family code of laws, a code of public rights.’
See Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 21.
137
Barlas, ‘Globalizing Equality: Muslim Women, Theology and Feminism’, 91.

35
grounded in Islamic tradition: while those who question Islamic law (particularly women,
Mernissi will attest) risk being accused of bid’a,
138
for it is not the believer’s place to question
the word of God), critical analysis of the sacred texts has a firm place in Islamic religious
scholarship. According to Mernissi, even in the first century of Islam, manipulation of the
Qur’an and falsification of the hadith
139
was so prevalent that religious authorities developed a
science for verifying those traditions cited as the basis of law. “The most astonishing thing,” says
Mernissi, “is that the scepticism that guided the work of the founders of religious scholarship has
disappeared today.”
140

Thus, Mernissi sees a feminist inquiry into religious scripture not only as a civil right, but
as part of her religious duty. The careful study and interpretation of the sacred texts known as
ijtihad, she argues, while it is often perceived to be the domain of men, is encouraged of all
believers – this is why early Islamic scholars painstakingly included multiple versions of the
same hadith in their studies, alongside detailed biographical information about each source and
the chain of transmitters, so that “the believing reader…can continually judge whether they are
worthy of credence or not.”
141
This in mind, Mernissi leads her readers in The Veil and the Male
Elite on a critical investigation of a hadith frequently mobilised in the discussion of women in
politics: “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity.” Though this
hadith is counted among those verified by the venerated ninth-century scholar, Imam al-Bukhari,
in his foundational collection of al-Sahih (“the authentic”), Mernissi suggests that a more
contextualised reading of the utterance casts some doubt on its textual authority. Adopting the

138
‘Innovation’ or ‘errant behaviour’; which is “considered a deadly sin in Islamic orthodoxy.” See Mernissi,
Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 111.
139
Things that the Prophet is reported to have said, which in addition to the Qur’an and the Sunna (accounts of the
Prophets daily life) constitute an important resource for Islamic jurists and scholars.
140
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 45.
141
Mernissi, 35.

36
methods of the seventh-century theologian Imam Malik Ibn Nanas (of the Maliki school, upon
which Moroccan family law was until very recently based), Mernissi questions the origins of this
hadith, beginning with its transmitter, ‘Abu Bakr, one of the Prophet’s closest Companions and
the first ever Muslim Caliph. According Imam Malik’s principles of validation, she argues, Abu
Bakr’s contributions to the hadith ought to be dismissed on the basis that, according to one
biography, he was at one point convicted of false testimony, making him an unreliable witness.
But even if we accept the validity of ‘Abu Bakr’s hadith, we might question what could have
inspired such a comment by the Prophet to be repeated:
On what occasion did Abu Bakra recall these words of the Prophet, and why did he feel the need to recount
them? Abu Bakra must have had a fabulous memory, because he recalled them a quarter of a century after the
death of the Prophet, at the time that ‘Ali retook Basra after having defeated ‘A’isha at the Battle of the
Camel.
142

The Battle of the Camel is a divisive moment in Muslim history, not least because it was
led by ‘A‘isha, the Prophet’s third wife and “the first Muslim woman to claim and assume a
political career,”
143
who remains a contentious figure in the debate surrounding Muslim women’s
involvement in public life to this day. An act of civil disobedience against Caliph ‘Ali Ibn Abi
Talib, this battle is symbolic of the conflict between Shi’a Muslims, who supported the Caliphate
of ‘Ali, and the Sunni, who like ‘A‘isha did not recognise ‘Ali as the Prophet’s rightful
successor. According to Mernissi, ‘Abu Bakr was just one among many men who rejected
‘A‘isha’s call for arms – unsurprisingly, given the seriousness of challenging the Caliph, who is
considered to be the Prophet’s living representative and the transmitter of God’s unalterable
truth. That ‘Abu Bakr was the only one to condemn the battle on the basis that it was led by a
woman, however, raises significant questions for Mernissi, who insists that such discrimination

142
Mernissi, 50.
143
Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland, 5. printing (Minneapolis: Univ.
Minnesota Press, 2009), 66.

37
is fundamentality out of keeping with the principles of the Prophet and the overarching message
of the Qur’an. According to Mernissi, there is copious documentation to support that fact that the
Prophet actively welcomed women’s inclusion in religious and political life: “The biography of
the Prophet, the Sira, always shows him carrying out with his wives the two most important acts
of Islam from its very beginning: praying and making war.”
144
‘A‘isha herself played an active
role in religion and politics during the Prophet’s lifetime, and continued to shape the Muslim
world long after his death – Mernissi estimates that she contributed more than 15% of the hadith,
which shari’a law takes as its sacred foundation.
145
Yet Abu Bakr was not alone in rejecting this
legacy. As Mernissi points out, the advent of Islam was a time of radical transition for those who
chose to adopt this new religion, and from the very beginning men resisted its teachings – many
of them concerning the emancipation of women and slaves, both of whom constituted a great
source of wealth for notables in the region – where they contradicted Jahaliya
146
custom. It is for
this reason, Mernissi believes, that after the death of the Prophet we see a “resurgence in many
Hadith of that superstitious fear of femaleness that the Prophet wanted to eradicate.”
147

As Mernissi’s research reveals, much of this misogyny falls apart when its religious
grounding is subjected to scrutiny. Another hadith Mernissi mentions – “Three things bring bad
luck: house, woman, and horse” – was evidently refuted by ‘A‘isha, who reported that the
transmitter walked into the room when the Prophet was mid-way through his speech and only
heard the end of his sentence: “May Allah refute the Jews; they say three things bring bad luck:
house, woman, and horse.” Though it is noted by several theologians, Al-Bukhari’s Sahih (an
important reference for Islamic jurists and scholars) omits the context provided by ‘A‘isha, and

144
Mernissi, 83.
145
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 93.
146
The pre-Islamic period, sometimes referred to as “the age of ignorance.”
147
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 75.

38
in fact cites the truncated version of the hadith on three separate occasions, each with a different
transmission chain,
148
highlighting the need to interrogate even the most revered of religious
sources. Yet, according to Mernissi, this interrogation is still insufficient to ‘lift the veil’ on the
Qur’an’s message of sexual equality: it is not only theologians’ and historians’ selective
transmission of hadith and elements of the sunna that continues to form patriarchal assumptions
about women’s inferior status in Islam, but the nuanced interpretations of politicians and
religious authorities. Even when the Prophet was alive, men resisted Islam’s introduction of new
rights for women but, unable to argue with the Qur’an, had to resort to other means of eliding the
law. Unhappy with the establishment of female inheritance (under Islam, women, who were
previously inherited as chattel, were now themselves able to inherit property), powerful men
sought refuge elsewhere in the sacred text: while the Qur’an dictates that women should be able
to inherit, it also warns believers not to give their wealth to the foolish (al-sufaha), and those
opposed to the new inheritance law agreed that, since women and children are foolish, this meant
that wealth should not be inherited by women. Thus, Mernissi demonstrates that “[n]ot only have
the sacred texts always been manipulated, but manipulation of them is a structural characteristic
of the practice of power in Muslim societies.”
149

This creates something of a paradox for the Mernissian reader of the Qur’an – Mernissi is
clearly interested in showing how men’s distortion of religious scripture has produced
misconceptions about Islam’s teachings on women, but at the same time she encourages women
to make use of the same methods of reinterpretation to support an egalitarian model of Islam. We
might well ask: what differentiates Mernissi’s ijtihad from these men’s distortion of the text?
What is the difference between these men, who “[f]inally, in desperation, …took to interpreting

148
See Mernissi, 76.
149
Mernissi, 8–9.

39
the text as a means of escaping it,”
150
and the faithful critic in pursuit of a feminist
reinterpretation? In condemning the male elite’s misuse and misrepresentation of the sacred text,
Mernissi implies that there is an essential truth to it (as is the belief of all Muslims), yet her own
analysis suggests that it could be read to mean anything – having knowledge enough to support
your cause in its language is thus imperative to gaining access to power. I do not see Mernissi’s
message, however, as an instruction in discursive strategy alone – that would make her analysis
appear disingenuous, which she is careful to avoid. Rather, it is a lesson in the rights of the
believer to engage continuously and critically with their faith. In the vignette above, and in the
wealth of other historical research she brings to The Veil and the Male Elite, Mernissi is keen to
demonstrate that there never was, contrary to popular belief, a ‘golden age’ of Islam. The
misogyny of the era, which many use as a referent for ‘true’ Islam, was neither due to nor in
keeping with the Prophet’s teachings, but a product of the cultural environment into which Islam
was born, and where it did not always triumph. It could be that Muslims have yet to realise an
ideal Islam, wherein believers faithfully live by the true principles of their religion, or it could be
that faith is in a constant state of evolution – Mernissi’s Islam is not one in turmoil (or in fitna,
chaos) but one in movement.
Though believers must accept the Qur’an as the revelation of divine law, Mernissi
demonstrates that the hadith, the sunna, and the attempts made by theologians to confirm their
veracity in the first centuries of Islam remain susceptible, as historical texts, to the subjective
influences of their transmitters as well as the inevitability of human error. And “[c]learly,” writes
Mernissi, “the imams were able to take advantage of our ignorance.”
151
But this susceptibility
lends the sacred texts a dual quality: “Depending on how it is used, the sacred text can be a

150
Mernissi, 121.
151
Mernissi, 115.

40
threshold for escape or an insurmountable barrier.”
152
For if, through censorship and the
application of their own particular brand of ‘aql, or religious reasoning, men have wielded the
sacred texts as a weapon against women for centuries, with access to religious and historical
knowledge, women are just as capable of wielding them in their own defence. Asma Lamrabet
adopts a similar approach to Mernissi in her religious interpretation: seeing the dominant Islamic
system in Morocco (a unique and somewhat incongruous hybrid of secular democratic ideals and
religious conservatism imbricated in both customs and law, which Mernissi refers to as “Medina
Democracy”
153
) as suited neither to the rapid changes in Moroccan society nor the original
teachings of Islam, Lamrabet insists that “Islam has an evaluative nature, and ijtihad is a
necessary tool for the adaptation of Islam to contemporary reality.”
154
It is from this standpoint
that she launches her critique of inheritance law: shar’ia law dictates that a woman may only
inherit half as much as a man, and just as the male elite in the Prophet’s time used ijtihad to
prevent their women from receiving even this much, Lamrabet reasons that a law clearly
conceived to ensure that heads of families (men) could provide for all their dependents should be
adjusted now that women increasingly find themselves the sole provider for their household. It
would appear that this kind of argumentation carries more political weight than the
“Westernised” language of human rights and gender equality adopted by secular feminists in
Morocco. As demonstrated by her appointment as Director of CERFI, where she oversaw
Islamic feminist research conducted by religious scholars for many years with support from the
State, Lamrabet is generally recognised as an authoritative voice on matters of women and

152
Mernissi, 64.
153
See Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam.
154
Sara Borillo, ‘Islamic Feminism in Morocco: The Discourse and the Experience of Asma Lamrabet’, in
Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, ed. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa
World Press, 2016), 121.

41
public/religious affairs. Yet, despite frequent protests by Moroccan women over the last several
years, the inheritance law has yet to be changed (indeed, this was rumoured to be the reason
Lamrabet recently left Morocco and her post at CERFI, although she denies any connection
155
).
The ‘Ulema also put a stop to CERFI’s translation of Lamrabet’s book, Femmes et le coran: une
lecture de liberation
156
(which details her argument on the inheritance issue) on the basis that she
lacked the religious credentials.
157
Thus, while mastery of the sacred texts no doubt empowers
women by enabling them to articulate their demands in the language of political (and patriarchal)
authority, it seems the male elite still bear the power to decide which speech it will and will not
recognise.
While it is important to look at where feminist movements in Morocco are resisted, it can
be just as crucial to examine where they are not. Indeed, there has been radical progress in terms
of women’s access to religious and political authority since Mernissi first embarked on her
critique of the sacred texts: feminist groups finally succeeded in changing the mudawana (family
code) much criticised by Mernissi in 2004; the Ministry of Islamic Affairs graduated its first
group of murshidat (female preachers) in 2006;
158
and in 2009, Morocco introduced a 12%
women’s quota at local elections,
159
with women’s parliamentary representation rising to 21% in
2016.
160
It is important to note, however, that each of these achievements, though they have no
doubt opened doors for women, form part of a larger project of increased religious control.

155
Safaa Kasraoui, ‘Islamic Feminist Asma Lamrabet Opens up About Her Resignation’, Morocco World News
(blog), 26 March 2018, https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/03/243173/islamic-feminist-asma-lamrabet-
opens-resignation/.
156
Translated as Qur’an and Women: A Narration of Liberation. (Markfield: Kube Publishing, 2016).
157
Borillo, ‘Islamic Feminism in Morocco: The Discourse and the Experience of Asma Lamrabet’, 121.
158
See Moha Ennaji, ‘Women and Religious Knowledge: Focus on Muslim Women Preachers’, in Women and
Knowledge in the Mediterranean, ed. Fatima Sadiqi (Place of publication not identified: ROUTLEDGE, 2017),
164–76.
159
Sadiqi, ‘Morocco’.
160
‘Gender Quotas Database’, International IDEA: Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, accessed 2
October 2019, https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/gender-quotas/country-view/200/35.

42
Feminist organisations had been campaigning for years to change the mudawana; the last
remaining piece of Moroccan legislature to be grounded in the religious texts.
161
Yet, as
Moroccan gender scholar and activist Fatima Sadiqi points out, the State was not pushed to
implement the changes until the 2003 Casablanca attacks, which prompted an array of anti-
terrorism measures.
162
Moroccan mosques, which until then had enjoyed a level of independence
from the State, came under the control of the Ministry of Islamic affairs, which from 2003
onwards would appoint all Imams and approve all sermons. Likewise, Moha Ennaji asserts that
the murshidat programme “is equally a governmental, if not royal, initiative and institution
aiming at political gains — a tool in the arsenal of war on terror, Islamist extremism, etc.”
163
It
should also be noted that the murshidat, whose primary role is to reach out to women in
impoverished neighbourhoods that might prove fertile ground for Islamist recruitment, are “not
authorized to lead prayers or to hold the post of imam…on the grounds that never in the history
of Morocco have [they done this].”
164
On the other hand, it is true that Moroccan women have
been granted unprecedented access to political roles, but those who do forge their way into
politics meet a number of obstacles. Activist and former member of the Justice and Development
party (PJD), Khadija Moufid, says she ultimately chose to abandon her position because she

161
Mernissi describes the mudawana drafted after independence as “no more than a brilliant transposition of Imam
Malik’s graceful and anecdotal [7th-century text] into a series of articles, sections, and sub-sections in
the...Napoleonic tradition.” Similarly, Soumia Boutkhil heavily criticises Article 19 of the 2011 constitution, which
states that men and women, are only equal under the law with the following caveat: “with respect for the…constants
[constantes/thawabit] and of the laws of the Kingdom.” Boutkhil believes this sentence opens up the law to religious
interpretation, and that its ambiguity is not only intentional but symptomatic of the State’s manipulation of religious
and conservative progressivist elements. Thus, the manipulation of the male eite continues. See Beyond the Veil, 11;
Soumia Boutkhil, ‘Moroccan Women in Limbo: On Liminal Citizenship and the Quest for Equality’, in Women’s
Movements in Post-"Arab Spring" North Africa, ed. Fatima Sadiqi, Comparative Feminist Studies Series (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
162
Sadiqi, ‘Morocco’.
163
Ennaji, ‘Women and Religious Knowledge: Focus on Muslim Women Preachers’, 168.
164
Ennaji, 170.

43
resented the idea that she should be confined to dealing with “women’s issues”
165
: “no-one
would openly admit to blocking women from running for office or assuming positions of
authority in Morocco…but daily practices make it clear that women are not welcome at the
higher echelons within the political establishment.”
166
Thus, despite the legal and social
advancements women have made over the last two decades in Morocco, it is clear that the State
has a limited interest in increasing women’s religious and political authority. While the
emancipatory theology encouraged by Islamic feminists (whether or not they choose to go by
that name – I am referring here to scholars and activists whose pursuit of Muslim women’s rights
is grounded in religious principles) certainly constitutes a compelling strategy of feminine
resistance to patriarchal control; ultimately, against a cultural misogyny that successfully resisted
the message of sexual equality delivered by the Qur’an even as it was insisted on by the Prophet
himself, religious fluency can only be one weapon in the Muslim woman’s feminist arsenal.

3 A nisa’ist historiography
Memory and recollection are the dawn of pleasure; they speak the language of freedom
and self-development.
- Fatema Mernissi
167

Though many see legal discrimination as the primary obstacle to women’s emancipation in
Morocco and much of the world, the new mudawana is an excellent example of the limitations of
a feminist movement that begins and ends with the law. The hard-won establishment of
fundamental women’s rights in 2004 (Sadiqi lists, among others, the right to divorce and child

165
Doris H. Gray, Beyond Feminism and Islamism: Gender and Equality in North Africa, New paperback ed
(London: Tauris, 2015), 124.
166
Interview with Moufid, paraphrased in Gray, 126.
167
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 10.

44
custody, laws against sexual harassment and the raising of the age of consent
168
) was indeed
cause for celebration, yet as Sadiqi points out, the changes were severely limited. Although new
restrictions were placed on polygamy, for example, the practice was not completely outlawed,
despite the fact that feminist associations have been campaigning for its abolition for over sixty
years.
169
What is more, the legislative changes that were made have yet to be effectively
enforced:
The implementation of the family law…varies from region to region, but it has generally been met with
resistance. It is still very poorly understood in rural and sometimes even urban areas, and many male judges
are reluctant to apply it. Moreover, the ongoing societal influences of patriarchy, tradition, illiteracy, and
ignorance may prevent women from invoking their rights or reporting crimes such as rape, child abuse,
sexual exploitation, and domestic violence.
170

Although the 2004 mudawana is “now considered one of the most progressive legal texts
in the Arab world,” its incompatibility with societal norms frequently prevents it from translating
into “tangible gains for individual women in their daily lives.”
171
According to Ennaji, this social
resistance is reinforced by the state’s “weak commitment…to protect women from violence,
especially domestic violence, at the legal level, precisely concerning police investigation,
sanctions, and legal advice to women victims.”
172
This is perhaps exacerbated by the text’s long-
awaited transposition into civil code. Though Moroccan feminists have long campaigned for
family law to be formally extricated from scripture, now that the mudawana is “no longer
considered a sacred text,” Ennaji suggests that it might lack the authority it previously held:
“While in the past the Mudawana was treated like the holy Qur’an, it has now become more like
secular law, more open to debate.”
173

168
Sadiqi, ‘Morocco’.
169
This was one of the primary demands of the Sisters of Purity (Akhawat al-Safa) in the build-up to Moroccan
independence. See Boutkhil, ‘Moroccan Women in Limbo: On Liminal Citizenship and the Quest for Equality’.
170
Sadiqi, ‘Morocco’, 2.
171
Sadiqi, 3.
172
Ennaji, ‘Women and Religious Knowledge: Focus on Muslim Women Preachers’, 167.
173
Ennaji, 174.

45
The discrepancy between the legal objectives inscribed in the mudawana and the reality of
its reception and (lack of) implementation in Moroccan society point to the power that social and
cultural understandings of gender still hold over women’s daily lives. While the state is evidently
interested in projecting a national image of social equality, its reluctance to reinforce the changes
introduced as part of its anti-terrorism measures over fifteen years ago suggest that it is equally
interested in catering to the electorate’s more conservative elements. Paradoxically, however, the
state’s attempts to modernise and democratise only seem to reinforce Islamists’ fanatic
attachment to ‘tradition’ – the greater the threat of a Western-inflected vision of ‘progress’ the
greater the retreat to Muslim ‘origin.’ In her preface to the revised edition of Beyond the Veil
(published in 1987), Mernissi asserts that Islamic conservatism in Morocco is much less about
religion and than it is about identity: in response to overwhelming (and often exploitative)
changes in the socioeconomic landscape as a result of globalisation, Muslims have developed a
powerful discourse of cultural stasis and impermeability (even as they use Facebook to talk about
it). Resistance to women’s increasing social mobility and bodily freedoms, Mernissi argues,
should also be understood in this context: the idea that the ideal Muslim woman is somehow
untouched by social change should not be read as a “regression” but as “a political statement
about men undergoing bewildering, compelling changes affecting their economic and sexual
identity – changes so profound and numerous that they trigger deep-seated, irrational fears.”
174

The image of Muslim women and society projected by Islamic conservatives in the region is
therefore not a reflection of Moroccans’ contemporary social reality: it is an attempt at self-
definition and resistance to the violence of Western hegemony.
175

174
Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, ix.
175
This is not to say that conservative and fundamentalist discourses about Muslim women do not themselves do
violence – rather, it is a call to Western readers not to believe the gender narratives that these groups produce, and

46
For Mernissi, then, Islamic conservatism and fundamentalism in Morocco (she is careful
not to conflate the two) is a temporal problem. “Today,” writes Mernissi, “it is the control of
time that is the basis of power.”
176
Unhappy with their present, and rallying against the drive of
Western capitalism to move endlessly forward into the unknown, ‘modern’ Muslims seek refuge
in fantasies of former glory:
Why is there this desire to turn our attention to the dead past when the only battle that is important to us at the
moment is that of the future? The societies that threaten us in our identity are single mindedly focused on the
future and make of it a science – or, I would say, a weapon of domination and control.
177

This explains why Islamist speech, as Tunisian psychoanalyst Fethi Benslama observes, is
perpetually “haunted by the question of origins”
178
: compelled by a “desire for exile from
present” to “return to primal scenes,” the Islamist takes comfort in rejecting the uncertain future
of modernity for “a future reduced to a concluded past about which nothing can be said.”
179
This
is not to say that the past that Islamists create for themselves is any more real than the
speculative future imposed on them by Western capitalism, but it is certainly easier to manage.
Unable to combat the present, the ideologue keeps a tight grip on Muslim memory. Yet this
‘memory,’ according to Mernissi, is a contemporary phenomenon, forged uniquely in relation to
the relentless anxieties of the present:
Delving into memory, slipping into the past, is an activity that these days is closely supervised…The act of
recollecting, like acts of black magic, really only has an effect on the present. And this works through a strict
manipulation of its opposite – the time of the dead, of those who are absent, the silent time that could tell us
everything.
180

that Western liberals mistakenly understand to be the reality of Muslim gender relations (as Mernissi points out,
Western feminists’ view of Muslim woman often overlaps with Islamists’: subservient, docile, ignorant etc.).
176
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 17.
177
Mernissi, 17.
178
Fethi Benslama, Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009),
9.
179
Benslama, 10.
180
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 9–10.

47
The mythological ‘origins’ so vividly recalled by Islamic conservatives have been artfully
curated to suit the ideological interests of the age. The ‘history’ that Muslims are being asked to
believe in is not a faithful reconstruction of the past.
While Mernissi is sympathetic to the need to build Muslim and Moroccan community
outside of the language of neo-colonial and capitalist control, she is wary of attempts to structure
this community around a historical narrative that not only opposes women’s progress but
occludes Muslim women’s rich and rebellious past. According to Mernissi, the idea – apparently
shared by “Conservatist Religious Arab Male Leaders” and “Provincial Western Feminists”
181
–
that feminism is a Western import is fundamental to conservatives’ persistent repression of legal
and social change in the way of women’s rights. As such, medieval practices that many perceive
to be incongruous with women’s contemporary reality as well as the fundamental teachings of
Islam (polygyny, halved inheritance etc) remain inscribed in Moroccan law, and where legal
changes have been made to ensure women’s access to fundamental freedoms, they are attacked
as neo-colonialist rhetoric. It thus becomes Mernissi’s project, in The Forgotten Queens of Islam
(1993)
182
and Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory (1996),
183
to trace a lineage of Muslim
women’s empowerment, demonstrating that “women’s passivity, seclusion and their marginal
place in Muslim society has nothing to do with Muslim tradition and is, on the contrary, a
contemporary ideological production.”
184
Scouring the archives for female leaders (itself
experienced by religious conservatives as “a troubling blasphemy”
185
) and other figures of
resistance and rebellion, Mernissi finds no shortage of historical material on women both

181
Capitals used in the original text. Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 13.
182
Originally published in 1990 as Sultanes oubliées.
183
Published in English.
184
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 99.
185
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 9.

48
respected and adored in Muslim history, yet the silence surrounding these women in
contemporary discourse prevails. Preachers, innovators and instigators; leaders of sermons,
battles and states; from the jawari (slave women) who whispered counsel in their masters’ ears
to the princesses and noblewomen who tossed convention (and their veils) to the wind, Mernissi
demonstrates that Muslim have always existed in positions of power, and – perhaps more
importantly – always resisted those powers that seek to oppress women. So “[w]hy,” Mernissi
asks, “do these politicians-turned-Imams come up with an anti-dignity reading of Islam focussed
on obedience? How come they do not see all the incredible wealth of woman-enhancing
historical data they could draw on to build a human rights-nurtured Islam?”
186
The evidence is
not lacking; only the will to remember has been lost. Thus, faced with this politics of “amnesia
as memory, of the past as warping the possibilities of the present,”
187
Mernissi delves into the
archives.
In 1987, Mernissi writes in The Veil and the Male Elite that “…it is more than ever
necessary for us to disinter our true tradition from the centuries of oblivion that have managed to
obscure it,”
188
and in 1990, after a difficult and daring excursion into the annals of Muslim
history, she returns with her findings, in The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Sultanes oubliées).
Here, Mernissi proposes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to give up on her previous quest to combat
misogyny in the language of law-making and adopt more trivial pursuits:
As a good obedient Muslim woman, I shall leave those matters to men. I know my place; I can only take up
that which is my concern – trifles. And what could be more trifling than to investigate the women who maybe
never existed – the women who directed Muslim affairs of state between 622 and 1989? Playing the detective
– especially the private detective – is not a very serious activity. We turn to a private detective when we think
that the public authorities will not take up our case. And this is apparently the situation with these queens.
189

186
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, xii.
187
Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, 194.
188
Mernissi, 77.
189
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 2.

49
Since religion and politics are men’s domain, Mernissi jests, they should be the ones to
ponder the position of women in politics. But memory, of course, is political; and so is
remembering. Despite the “wealth of woman-enhancing…data”
190
available to an ardent
investigator like Mernissi, historical records of Muslim women in positions of power and revolt
are widely inaccessible, even to the educated elite. According to Mernissi, this is because
“[h]istory, the recorded memory of a culture,…goes through highly complicated processes often
tightly controlled and censored by those in power, before it is presented to citizens for selectively
oriented consumption.”
191
Although the Qur’an commands its believers to read, just as we have
seen with the sacred texts, many Muslims are forced to rely on others to read their history for
them, and women in particular have been discouraged from venturing into the archives
unchaperoned. But in order to uncover the “disdainful silence”
192
that Mernissi identifies at the
heart of “one of the most fascinating purges in world history”
193
– the mass forgetting of Islam’s
many queens – one first has to go in search of such a past. Reading Muslim women’s forgotten
history is not a simple matter of uncovering the truths that have been obscured, by will or by
negligence, over the centuries; it is a process of active reinterpretation; of re-writing, even.
194
In
this sense, reading, too, is political, since it is an act of innovation (bid’a), and not the mere
reception of knowledge – the passive reader of Muslim history will not uncover Muslim
women’s rebellious past, just as the active reader will not find those passive women said by
conservatives to dwell in Islam’s golden age, for “[i]f you dare listen to women, you will find

190
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, xii.
191
Mernissi, 94.
192
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 18.
193
Mernissi, 3.
194
This is how Mernissi refers to her methodology in Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (under the pseudonym
Fatna Aït Sabbah). ‘What I mean by “re-writing” is an active reading - that is, aa process of decoding the heritage
and at the same time coding it in a different way.’ See Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious.

50
resistance.”
195
Mernissi’s intervention into the dominant historical narrative (and, consequently,
the rhetoric of nostalgia that saturates revivalist doctrine) is thus twofold: firstly, by resurrecting
the forgotten queens of Islam where they have already been amply documented, she exposes the
fundamental role that male historians have played in eradicating powerful women from Muslim
history, forging a “collective Muslim memory that is uniformly misogynistic”
196
; and secondly,
by re-examining dominant definitions of ‘power’ in Islamic culture and history, she reveals
Muslim women’s historical influence to be much larger than previously thought, even by the
most woman-forward historians.
If lack of precedence is an oft-cited justification for barring women’s entry into the world
of politics, then Mernissi’s research quickly proves the absence of female political figures in the
annals of Muslim history to be a semantic sleight of hand. While there has never been, in
Mernissi’s estimation, a female Caliph, there have been numerous female leaders addressed by
other names. Usually referred to as al-hurra (‘free woman,’ as opposed to jarya, or ‘slave’) or
malika (‘queen’
197
), women like Sayidda al-hurra, who governed Tétouan for almost thirty years
in the sixteenth century, and the long-serving Yemeni queens Asma and ‘Arwa, some of the only
women ever to have the khutba
198
proclaimed in their name, are now greeted with “complete
amnesia”
199
by contemporary historians despite their rule being diligently recorded by earlier
chroniclers. The defacto sovereignty of others, like the former slave Khayzuran, continues to go
largely unrecognised since their leadership was mediated through men – though Khayzuran

195
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 85.
196
Mernissi, 46.
197
From mulk, a power related to earthly concerns; as opposed to the caliphate, associated with divine power.
198
The Friday prayer, in which the current leader is officially announced to the masses. Naming at the khutba is one
of the two traditional sanctioning markers of sovereignty, along with the minting of the sovereign’s name on the
state’s coignage. Mernissi contends that some fifteen women ruled Muslim states between the 13
th
and 17
th
centuries
with all of the required insignia (pronouncement in the khutba and minting of coins in their name). See Mernissi,
The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 110.
199
Mernissi, 116.

51
effectively ruled the Muslim empire for a number of years (in partnership with her husband, the
Caliph Al-Mahdi, succeeded by their two sons), “[h]er political actions could only appear on the
public stage masked by the presence of a man.”
200
Meanwhile, those women whose historical
influence it is more difficult to deny, since their political careers are acknowledged in the sacred
texts, are frequently defamed or diminished in the historical narrativisation of their lives. The
male elite have long cast aspersions on the indisputable power exercised by ‘A’isha, the
prophet’s wife, and Balqis, the Queen of Sheba. One tenth-century historian, Mas’udi, went so
far as to attribute the latter’s inexplicable authority to an otherworldly influence, deciding that
Balqis’ mother must have been a jinn. But, as Mernissi suggests, since “[t]he Koran did not
consider it interesting or necessary to tell us about either the father or the mother of Balqis,” we
can assume “[i]t was Mas’udi’s personal problem: he could not bear to see a woman depicted on
a throne, even in the Koran, without feeling the need to attack her and put her humanity in
doubt.”
201

This is not to say that the custom-tailoring of Muslim memory does not do violence to
Muslim women. According to Mernissi, one of the biggest threats to gender equality in
contemporary Islamic societies is precisely that which is posed, to this day, by men like Mas’udi,
who persist in eradicating and manipulating voices of the past to suit their own beliefs. As such,
Mernissi argues that historical investigations like hers are not only the right of every Muslim
woman, but their duty: “Muslim women in general, and Arab women in particular, cannot count
on anyone, scholar or not, ‘involved’ or ‘neutral’, to read their history for them.”
202
But the
susceptibility of the archives to this kind of subjective (and political) influence, while proving

200
Mernissi, 51.
201
Mernissi, 143.
202
Mernissi, 116.

52
them to be an effective ideological weapon, also opens them up to a variety of interpretive
possibilities that, in turn, may harbour potential for new resistance in the present. As Mernissi
notes, not all male historians have endeavoured to eradicate these women from Muslim history
(although the rising number of women historians has no doubt contributed to the expanding
feminine archive) – many of Islam’s early chroniclers, she contends, wrote enthusiastically and
respectfully about Muslim women’s rule, and male authors continue to contribute to the
documentation of notable Arab women’s lives through the publication of Akhbar al-nisa
203
and
Nissa’iyyat.
204
Furthermore, Mernissi suggests that a “determining factor in…historical amnesia
seems to be geocultural,” for “not all Arabs forget the same things.”
205
Yemeni historians, for
example, appear to have no trouble remembering Asma and ‘Arwa, even if the Muslim scholarly
elite has widely forgotten them elsewhere. These contributions form the foundations of what
Mernissi refers to in Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory as “nisa’ist” literature (from the
Arabic for woman: nisa’): a literature that works to ensure, by reinserting Muslim women into
the archives, that women have a place in Muslim collective memory.
Bringing powerful women in Muslim history out of their obscurity does important work in
dismantling the mythologies of historical/cultural origin perpetuated by conservatives and
Islamists who try to justify their misogyny in the name of hallowed tradition. Just as vital to
nisa’ist writing, however, is the history of Islamic women’s rebellion, of resistance against these
very same traditions spanning centuries before the arrival of neo-/colonial ideas about
“feminism,” and of power wielded by women even where it was not granted or recognised.

203
Literally ‘women’s news’: “…biographical portraits of famous individuals which are notable for their particular
attention to detail and for their inclusion of themes that the methodological rules of scholarship prohibit in more
mainstream work.” Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 93–94.
204
Mernissi describes these as “who’s who compilations” of Arab feminist figures. See Mernissi, Dreams of
Trespass, 120.
205
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 117.

53
While the memory of Islam’s forgotten queens disrupts the apparently naturalised concept of
Muslim female inferiority, demonstrating that women have historically ruled just as well (and
just as badly) as their male counterparts, remembering those women on the other side of power
not only sets a historical precedent for indigenous rebellion, but presents us with the tools for a
more feminised reading of authority. “This is especially necessary,” she writes, “for
understanding the ‘history’ of women in Islam”:
…a ‘history’ doomed, like that of peasants and the poor, never to be reflected in the official discourse. It is
time to begin to rewrite the history of the Muslims, to go beyond the Islam of the imam-caliph-president, of
the palace and its ‘ulama; to move beyond the Islam of the masters, and doing that means going into the
swampy, dark areas of the marginal and the exceptional…the history of order thwarted, the history of
rejection, of resistance. This is the only history that can give the Muslims back their glorious humanity…”
206

Not such a “trifling” endeavour, then, to go digging for stories of “women who maybe
never existed.”
207
By casting new light on these long-forgotten rulers and trouble-makers,
Mernissi begins to rewrite not only Muslim women’s history, but Muslim history as a whole,
with potentially devastating implications for the contemporary reality of political Islam. And the
key to disinterring these hurrat, these free women (from hurr, meaning free), is harrara, writing,
or the liberation of meaning from words.
208

4 Going west
Revolution is to understand the other’s unfamiliar and threatening languages.

- Fatema Mernissi
209

While Mernissi’s nisa’ist historiography is primarily aimed at deconstructing the
mythologies of Islamic origin through which conservatives and fundamentalists project their
misogynistic visions onto Muslim societies, it is also deeply motivated by a need to detach so-

206
Mernissi, 84–85.
207
Mernissi, 2.
208
See Mernissi, 15.
209
Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 13.

54
called ‘progressive’ principles (chief among them, legal and social equality for women) from the
ever-looming threat of Western neo-/imperialism. Documenting the history of women’s
oppression and their active struggles to participate in the public sphere is therefore equally as
important as documenting women’s victories – by demonstrating that Muslim women have
always expressed their discontent with patriarchy, Mernissi proves that ‘feminism’ is not simply
a Western import to be resisted in the name of ‘true’ Islam. As Mernissi points out in both The
Veil and the Male Elite and Forgotten Queens, many of the principles associated with Western
feminisms are equally representative of the teachings of Islam, as they were originally
understood and disseminated by the Prophet. Such principles have never ceased to be resisted,
however, by groups of men concerned with protecting their own interests, and this is not only
true when it comes to the treatment of women: Mernissi frequently refers to the example of
slavery, which persisted in Muslim states for centuries despite its clear condemnation in Qur’an,
and was only abolished in countries like Morocco under colonial law. A nisa’ist historiography,
which dwells in these dark chapters of Muslim history and refuses to smooth over such historical
indiscrepancies, breaks down the binary oppositions that have enabled Islamic conservatives and
Western feminists to dominate discussions on the status of women in Islam, allowing a new
language of Muslim women’s rebellion to blossom.
Despite a clear commitment to developing an indigenous (Arab-Muslim) feminist model,
however, Mernissi’s personal feminist philosophy, where she allows it to interrupt her usual
scholarly distance, is frequently articulated in the secular/universalist terms of Euro-American
feminisms, and her work has come under fire by critics for imposing a distinctly Western
understanding of women’s emancipation on her subjects.
210
The analogy she draws between

210
Carine Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World Women’s Writing: Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive
Memoirs’, Research in African Literatures 44, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 30–49; Raja Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A

55
contemporary women living in the Muslim world and those subjected to historical slavery, for
example, could be problematic for some (apart from anything else, it would seem to reinforce the
stuck-in-the-stone-age rhetoric that she claims to be refuting in her work), but it is the more
subjective framing of later autoethnographic work that appears most troubling. In 1994, Mernissi
published (in English) the somewhat provocatively titled Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem
Girlhood, a playful collection of childhood anecdotes that plies its readers with entertaining
vignettes of bourgeois Moroccan life under French occupation. Billed as a “memoir” in which
the author “weaves her own memories with the dreams of memories of the women who
surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth,”
211
the book is explicitly catered to a Western
audience, with titbits of Moroccan history and culture appearing in lengthy footnotes
accompanying the text. Apparently written in response to rising U.S. Islamophobia and
widespread misapprehensions about the Muslim world during the Gulf War,
212
Dreams presents
a sympathetic – and eclectic – portrait of Moroccan femininity through the inquisitive gaze of a
seven-year-old Mernissi as she tries to understand her place in a world riddled with in invisible
boundaries. Throughout the novel, Mernissi quizzes the adults in her life on the meaning of
hudud (frontiers) and haram (the forbidden); two concepts that appear to rigidly define
Moroccan social and spatial realities despite no-one being willing or able to explain exactly what
(or where) they are. How do you know if you’ve crossed a forbidden boundary if you can’t see
where it is? Why do some harems, like the one Mernissi inhabits in Fez, permit only one wife per
husband and keep women strictly confined behind walls, when others, like her grandmother

Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its Legacy’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, ed. Moha Ennaji,
Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 129–44.
211
Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass, see blurb.
212
Mernissi in interview with Serge Ménager, cited in Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World
Women’s Writing: Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive Memoirs’, 14.

56
Yasmina’s in the Rif mountains, allow them to ramble endlessly across the hills with their co-
wives? The varying responses Mernissi receives only add to her confusion, but eventually we are
led to understand that there is a kind of freedom in this ambiguity. Though the women of
Mernissi’s harem long to come and go as they please, to work and study, make decisions for the
household and choose for themselves what to buy at the souq, across the chapters Mernissi
introduces us to myriad strategies of feminine resistance (from smuggling in cigarettes to
sneaking out through the terrace to attend possession dances hosted by travelling Sufis) as well
as to the boundless possibilities of storytelling. Reading Dreams, it quickly becomes apparent
that the real stars of Mernissi’s childhood were those women whose resistance to the hudud
inspired her own: Aunt Habiba, the divorced aunt consigned to the top floor of the Mernissi
home, whose only remaining power resides in her ability to captivate audiences through her
colourful retellings of the Arabian Nights; cousin Chama, who brings Lebanese pop stars and
Egyptian feminists to life on the terrace through spectacular theatrical productions in which all
the women and children of the harem play a part; and Mernissi’s mother, whose reluctance to
participate in traditional harem life puts her in ceaseless conflict with her conservative mother-
in-law.
The women of Mernissi’s harem clearly defy the stereotypes of female misery and
passivity that saturate Western images of women in the Muslim world. The authenticity of these
depictions is brought into question, however, in the French translation of the book (translated by
Claudine Richetin but revised and edited by Mernissi), Rêves de femmes: une enfance au harem,
which explicitly outs itself – in stark contrast with the English edition – as fiction. The blurb to
the French edition states that Mernissi herself cannot be certain if characters like Aunt Habiba

57
truly exist, and, in a footnote attached to an extended account of a massacre the French army
committed in 1944, Mernissi reveals that:
Cette version des faits…n’est pas historique, on s’en doute; c’est celle de ma mère, qui est un personnage de
fiction, comme d’ailleurs l’enfant qui parle, et qui est supposée être moi-même. Si j’avais essayé de vous
raconter mon enfance, vous n’auriez pas terminé les deux premiers paragraphes, parce que mon enfance fut
plate et prodigieusement ennuyeuse. Comme ce livre n’est pas une autobiographie, mais une fiction qui se
présente sous forme de contes racontés par une enfant de sept ans, la version des faits concernant janvier
1944, rapportée ici, est celle qui traînait dans mes souvenirs. Souvenirs de ce que se racontaient les femmes
illettrées dans la cour et sur les terrasses.
213

For Carine Bourget, who accuses Mernissi of “drowning out illiterate women’s voices” by
“invent[ing] characters that long for a Western lifestyle,”
214
the fact that Dreams was originally
marketed as autobiography constitutes a grave betrayal of the Western reader and a grotesque
manipulation of third-world representativity – not only does Mernissi “trick” the reader into
believing that her own beliefs (which happen to overlap with Western feminist ideals) are largely
shared by Moroccan women; according to Bourget, she capitalizes on first-world market
demands for narratives of Muslim gender oppression by “pander[ing] to Western expectations of
a third-world woman longing for a Western lifestyle.”
215
Bourget is particularly concerned by
Mernissi’s disclaimer, attached to the footnote cited above, that “[p]our compliquer les choses, il
faut…se rappeler que la version que j’ai présentée coïncidait avec un packaging littéraire dont
j’avais besoin pour séduire mon lecteur."
216
But while I would agree that Mernissi deliberately
plays on Orientalist motifs in order to “seduce” the Western reader (not least in the actual

213
‘This version of events ... is not historical, one would suspect; it’s that of my mother, who is a fictional character,
just like the child who is speaking, and who is supposed to be myself. If I had tried to tell you about my childhood,
you wouldn’t have finished the first two paragraphs, because my childhood was flat and stupendously boring. As
this book is not an autobiography, but a fiction that takes the form of tales told by a seven-year-old child, the
January 1944 version of the story reported here is the one I remember. Memories of what illiterate women told each
other in the courtyard and on the terraces.’ Fatima Mernissi, Rêves de femmes: une enfance au harem, trans.
Claudine Richetin, Livre de poche 14513 (Paris: Albin Michel, 2010), 234–35 My translation.
214
Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World Women’s Writing: Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive Memoirs’,
35.
215
Bourget, 37.
216
‘To complicate things, you must also remember that the version I presented coincided with a literary packaging
that I needed in order to seduce my reader.’ Mernissi, Rêves de femmes, 235 my emphasis.

58
“packaging” of her book, which portrays three women walking in a courtyard with their backs
turned to the onlooker, framed by an ornate doorway, as if we were literally peering into the
‘harem’ of the narrator’s girlhood), I would question the emphasis placed on the author’s
responsibility to “authentically” represent Moroccan women. This burden, after all, is something
many Maghrebi and Muslim authors actively struggle to escape in their work, which first-world
markets never cease to read as “ethnography,” and it is uncertain that Mernissi’s Western readers
would have understood the text’s feminist message any differently had it been billed as fiction
rather than memoir.
217
What is more, as Bourget herself admits, it is now generally “taken for
granted by both general readers and scholars” that “any narrative is a construct and language
shapes reality even when one endeavors to tell the truth,”
218
and while Mernissi admits to
embellishing her childhood and fabricating certain characters, the events in the novel are still
supposedly based on her “[s]ouvenirs de ce que se racontaient les femmes illettrées dans la cour
et sur les terrasses.”
219
We can therefore assume that, not only does Dreams contain some
element of biographical truth, but Mernissi’s endorsement of “a Western-style liberation”
220

would likely have been just as apparent had the author, an international scholar renowned for
writing openly and passionately in condemnation of Muslim patriarchy, faithfully recounted the
“reality” of her formative years. While Bourget sees Mernissi’s oscillation between claims to
fantasy and memory as a mercenary exploitation of her writerly privilege, I would argue it is
precisely this blurring of boundaries, the strategic destabilisation of fact and fiction, that makes

217
The fact that the French edition openly refers to itself as fiction would appear to support this, since the French
literary market is hardly devoid of Orientalist consumer demands. Mernissi has also been open in English interviews
about the fact that the book is not a true autobiography – its fictitiousness was no secret.
218
Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World Women’s Writing: Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive Memoirs’,
33.
219
‘[m]emories of what illiterate women told each other in the courtyard and on the terraces,’ Mernissi, Rêves de
femmes, 234.
220
Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World Women’s Writing: Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive Memoirs’,
44.

59
Mernissi’s interventions into dominant discourse so effective. We see this strategy at work in
Beyond the Veil and Le harem politique as well as Sultanes oubliées, and Dreams of Trespass is
no exception: “C’est un récit sur les frontières, elles bougent par definition!”
221
If Mernissi’s
narrative is troubled, it’s because ‘narrative,’ for Mernissi, means trouble. That said, at the end of
this troublesome footnote, Mernissi does think to recommend a useful reference for those readers
interested in knowing “la version historique”
222
of the events she described (though Bourget, for
some reason, decides to cut this part).
Whether the women in Mernissi’s harem truly dreamed of trespass or these rebellious role-
models are figments, themselves, of her imagination, her work makes no secret of her stance on
contentious issues such as the veil and polygamy, both of which she vehemently opposes on
religious as well as secular grounds in her various scholarly treatises on the subjects.
223
However,
one does not have to delve too deeply into Mernissi’s vast scholarship on women in Islam to see
that she is equally critical of patriarchal structures in the West. Though she does not hesitate to
condemn Muslim misogyny, she is clearly sceptical, despite her commitment to certain
“universal” ideals, of Western models of female emancipation; particularly where they revolve
around the sexualisation of female bodies. Even in Beyond the Veil, which Raja Rhouni
considers one of Mernissi’s most problematic texts due to its inclusion of somewhat “essentialist
statements about Islam,”
224
Mernissi suggests that, while Western feminist movements are
fundamentally limited by the historical belief that women are biologically inferior to men,
Muslim feminist movements have boundless potential since gender in Islam is structured around

221
‘It’s a story about boundaries; they move by definition!’ Mernissi, Rêves de femmes, see blurb My translation.
222
‘Abd l’Krim Ghallab’s Tarikh al-haraka al-wataniya bi’l’Maghrib [History of the Moroccan Nationalist
Movement]. Mernissi, 235.
223
Mernissi, Beyond the Veil; Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite; Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam;
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory.
224
Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its Legacy’, 132.

60
the belief that women are innately powerful. It is in an attempt to control this power and to
protect men from it, rather than a denial of feminine power per se, that Islamic patriarchy
implements its mechanisms of spatial and social control. In contrast, for Mernissi there is nothing
emancipatory in Western sexuality, which she sees as defined by “the mutilation of the woman’s
integrity, her reduction to a few inches of nude flesh whose shades and forms are photographed
ad infinitum with no goal other than profit.”
225

Though Mernissi’s understanding of structural misogyny in the Muslim world shifts over
time, her critique of Western gender models persists along these lines: in Scheherazade Goes
West, published in 2001, she muses that “size 6” might be “a more violent restriction imposed on
women than is the Muslim veil.”
226
Moreover, Mernissi is clearly keenly aware of the threat
(both real and perceived) of feminist imperialism, and where her feminism does converge with
Western models, she is always careful to root her argument in Muslim tradition. In Muslim
Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, a collection of essays drawing on various aspects of
Mernissi’s research which was published in English in 1996 (just two years after Dreams), she
takes Western feminists to task on the chauvinism she has encountered as a Muslim woman
during her feminist career, and in a final chapter reflecting on the concept of nushuz (a wife’s
rebellion against her husband), she again explains the Muslim resistance to ‘feminism’ through
its association with Western capital:
Individual freedom, which women’s rebellion represents, challenges the entire notion of community as
primary. However, it is also because individualism is encroaching from another quarter that it poses such a
threat when expressed by women as well. That other quarter is capitalism, which is based on the profitability
of individualistic innovation. Capitalism is seen as ferociously aggressive and fiercely individualistic. Arab
countries have also become dumping grounds for the goods of the capitalist world: Western arms, films and
consumer goods constitute a virtual invasion.”
227

225
Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, 167.
226
Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West, 213.
227
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 119.

61
Women’s rebellion, Mernissi contends, is condemned in Islam because of its association
with individualism, or more specifically bid’a (innovation), which is not only disruptive to
Islamic structurations of power (“The believer can only reinterpret; he cannot create, for creation
is the monopoly of God.”
228
), but also the Muslim emphasis on community. Significantly, she
argues, the concept of ‘the individual’ does not originate in Western culture – though it is
frowned upon, it has always existed in Islamic culture and thought. Nonetheless, the Western
emphasis on individualism is frequently perceived as a threat to Muslim society, making it
crucial for Muslim feminism to articulate itself outside of these terms.
This is not to say that Mernissi’s position as a Western elite does not impact her work.
Rhouni is particularly critical of Mernissi’s “framing power”
229
when it comes to her fieldwork,
in which she visibly organises interviews with working-class Moroccan women around a pre-set
agenda, liberally imposing her own interpretation of the data provided.
230
Nonetheless, it alerts
us to an aspect of Mernissi’s feminist project and scholarly work that is, for whatever reason, not
represented in Dreams (even though it appears in work published by Mernissi in English
afterwards
231
). According to Rhouni, although Mernissi does occasionally “fall prey to the
pitfalls of representation and authority,”
232
her fieldwork studies are some of “the first and most
invigorating feminist critiques of capitalism and the weakening of women’s power with the
integration of the various Third World countries into the capitalist world market; and it is
unfortunate that this aspect of her work is not well known or discussed.”
233
So why is it that

228
Mernissi, 119.
229
Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its Legacy’, 137.
230
According to Rhouni, Mernissi’s article “Zhor’s World: A Moroccan Domestic Worker Speaks Out” (1982) is
clearly guided by prompts that allow the scholar to launch a critique of the veil, even though Zhor herself doesn’t
mention it once: “Zhor’s voice thus has become a commodity for Western feminist consumption.” (138).
231
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory; Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West.
232
Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its Legacy’, 137.
233
Rhouni, 133.

62
Mernissi, who is clearly sceptical of what Western gender models have to offer Muslim women
and wary of promoting Western feminisms in her work, decides to indulge Western readers with
fantasies of Moroccan women dreaming of make-up and monogamy in Dreams of Trespass? Did
her publishers veto any hint of anti-Western, anti-capitalist critique, was it simply not the place
for it, or did Mernissi censor herself in an attempt to “seduce” her audience? That this aspect of
Mernissi’s work has been overlooked in comparison to her work on Islam, Rhouni contends, is
itself symptomatic of Orientalism.
234
While Bourget suggests that Dreams is inappropriate for
teaching due to its false projection of Orientalising feminist fantasies, there is presumably a
reason that the text is so widely taught in America (and not, for example, Women’s Rebellion or
Scheherazade Goes West; two barely more scholarly examples of Mernissi’s Anglophone work
in which she openly criticises the West’s distorted image of Muslim femininity). Moreover,
while Mernissi no doubt consciously played on Orientalist imagery in the hopes of selling as
many copies of the book as possible,
235
a glance at her surrounding work suggests that there is
more to this seduction strategy.
It is important to note that, over the course of her forty-year writing career, Mernissi’s
approach to the art of discursive battle transformed dramatically. By her own admission, the
playful optimism of her later work is a far cry from the “vitriolic” writing that characterised her
early articles in Lamalif (a Moroccan political magazine, edited by Zakya Daoud, that was
banned in 1988).
236
One study was apparently so provocative that Mernissi had it published
under a pseudonym: Fatna Aït Sabbah’s La femme dans l’inconscient musulman, published in

234
Rhouni, 134.
235
Mernissi explicitly refers to the pressure received by her French and German publishers to include ‘harem’ in her
book titles and display images of veiled women on the cover (a practice she vehemently condemns here). See Fatima
Mernissi, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, 2. ed., revised ed (Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Publ,
2002), 187.
236
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 3.

63
1982, was only attributed to Mernissi after her death in 2016. In Women’s Rebellion (where,
interestingly enough, Mernissi refers at length to the mythical Sabbah
237
), Mernissi elaborates on
the shift in her discursive strategy, explaining that she no longer views writing, in 1996, as “a
boxing match.”
238
Rather than decimating one’s opponents through writing, she argues, “the goal
is to turn the ‘monsters’ around you into adorable little interlocutors who listen to you with
delight.”
239
In short, there is more to gain through the art of persuasion. Published five years
later, Scheherazade Goes West is a testament to this strategy. Apparently bewildered by
Americans’ and Europeans’ reactions to the word ‘harem’ (from smiles of embarrassment to
flirtatious laughter) during her worldwide promotion of Dreams, Mernissi once again sets about
investigating the notion of the ‘harem’; this time as it exists in the Western imagination. Paying
homage to her grandmother Yasmina (who may or may not be a fiction, seeing as she also
appears in Dreams), Mernissi vows to embrace the Sufi principle of isti’dad, which she describes
as a “state of readiness” to receive messages. Thus, with a childlike curiosity not unlike that of
Dreams’ young girl protagonist, she launches her inquiry, quizzing journalists on their questions
and asking friends and colleagues for guided tours of their own Oriental imaginings.
“Apparently,” she writes:
…the Westerner’s harem was an orgiastic feast where men benefited from a true miracle: receiving sexual
pleasure without resistance or trouble from the women they had reduced to slaves. In Muslim harems, men
expect their enslaved women to fight back ferociously and abort their schemes for pleasure. …My harem was
associated with a historic reality. Theirs was associated with artistic images created by famous painters such
as Ingres, Matisse, Delacroix, or Picasso – who reduced women to odalisques…
240

While it is hard to believe that Mernissi really “knew hardly anything about Westerners
and even less so about their fantasies”
241
when she embarked on this research, the claim to

237
“She argues, and I agree with her, …”Mernissi, 109.
238
Mernissi, 2.
239
Mernissi, 2.
240
Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West, 14.
241
Mernissi, 10.

64
innocence serves as a useful platform from which to launch a well-meaning critique of the
Western archive. Just like Mernissi’s promise to stick to the “trifling” matter of women’s history
in Forgotten Queens, however, there is more to this investigation than initially meets the eye.
Front and centre of Mernissi’s inquiry (and, indeed, much of her work) is Scheherazade,
the storytelling Queen whose ability to weave a captivating tale not only persuades her husband,
King Shahrayar, to put off her execution night after night so that he might hear the next part, but,
over the course of 1001 nights (a long time, Mernissi points out, to keep a story going),
convinces the “violent despot” to change “his entire world view.”
242
Mernissi leaps to defend her
beloved Scheherazade, whose intellectual power and political ingenuity is apparently lost on
Western audiences – the courageous and cerebral woman who voluntarily risked her life to end
the femicidal rampage of a scorned tyrant is reduced, in Western adaptations of her tale, to the
role of titillating temptress and “frivolous entertainer.”
243
According to Mernissi, while there is
no doubt something sensual about Sheherazade’s monologue, it is her mind that functions as her
“erotic weapon” – if she had simply used to her body to seduce King Shahrayar, she would have
been dead come morning. Scheherazade’s nutq, her capacity to think in words and penetrate a
man’s brain by using carefully selected terms,
244
is crucial to Islamic understandings of
femininity and to Mernissi’s discursive strategy as a whole: a rebel and a revolutionary if ever
there was one, instead of launching an attack, Scheherazade sidles up to her opponent, speaking
his language and deferring to his power, and finally, having won his attention, proceeds to
radically change his mind. While, in the West, Mernissi argues that this kind of intellect detracts
from a woman’s beauty, in Arab-Muslim culture it is considered the epitome of feminine

242
Mernissi, 49.
243
Mernissi, 49.
244
See Mernissi, 38.

65
attraction. Even the jawari (female slaves) of the medieval courts – the very stuff of harems in
the Western imagination, where they appear as mute, decorative objects of masculine desire –
were expected to display an array of talents and a vast knowledge of different subjects, to
effortlessly recite of poetry and song, and to participate actively in political and philosophical
debate.
245
In what Mernissi refers to in Forgotten Queens as the first slave revolt in Muslim
history, some masters became so enamoured with their jawari that they would be permitted to
consult on affairs of state:
The power of the women slaves over the caliphs effected some transformations not foreseen by the shari’a –
transformations at the very centre of the system – in the relations of women with ‘the representative of God
on earth.’ Unlike the zanj, who tried to seize power from the periphery of the system, the jawari operated
within the caliph’s palace itself, in the bed and the heart of the man whom the law set up as absolute master
of souls and possessions.
While these women will never be acknowledged as leaders, they managed to effect radical
change from a position of – apparently – complete disempowerment; from within the harem.
According to Mernissi, by projecting their own fantasies of voiceless, passive femininity
onto Scheherazade, Western artists have “achieved…what Shahrayar had failed to do in
medieval Baghdad – they silenced the storyteller.”
246
Yet she delivers this message sweetly: like
a polite foreign guest shrugging off an offensive assumption, she makes light of the
misunderstanding. Feigning surprise at the inconsistencies between the different harems she
encounters at home and in the Western imagination and nestling scathing scholarly criticisms
between amusing personal anecdotes, she shows that the image of the passive, unagentive
Muslim woman is just as much a product of the Western archive as it is of Muslim patriarchal
domination. And like a true Scheherazade, she does this in the language of the master: her
“seduction” of the Western reader, just like her promise to leave politics alone by looking up

245
Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West; Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam.
246
Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West, 68.

66
forgotten women in the annals of Muslim history and her embrace of religious scrutiny in the
name of ijtihad, is strategic.

5 Other languages of rebellion
Dignity is to a have a dream, a strong one, which gives you a vision, a world where
you have a place.
- Fatema Mernissi
247

While critics may be skeptical of Mernissi’s willingness to embrace “the other’s strange
and threatening languages,”
248
there is undeniably more to her seductive strategy than selling out
to Western audiences. On a purely practical level, Mernissi points out that nisa’ist literature
published in English stands a much better chance of reaching fellow Muslim scholars, since
English texts are more easily translated into Muslim languages (such as Urdu).
249
What is more,
Mernissi is not alone in seeing the merits of internationalising Moroccan feminist discourse. The
Amazigh scholar and activist Fatima Sadiqi favours writing in English because she views it as a
neutral space for feminist discussion outside of the languages of Arab nationalism and French
colonialism. Gender scholar and activist, Souad Slaoui, meanwhile, asserts that expressing
feminist objectives in such a way that will attract international endorsement is key to securing
financial and political support for projects that would otherwise be overlooked by Moroccan
authorities.
250
There are, of course, many who see English, French, and the supposedly
‘universal’ language of human rights in which Mernissi and other Moroccan feminists frequently
frame their arguments as necessarily and unavoidably imbricated in structures of neo/colonial
power. But Mernissi knows that to master the language of her oppressors is to master the

247
Aunt Habiba speaking to a young Fatema Mernissi in Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass, 214.
248
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 13.
249
See Mernissi, 105.
250
Based on comments in a personal interview conducted at Fez University on the 14
th
May, 2019.

67
language of authority, and for Mernissi, “[a]uthority is the key word where writing is
concerned.”
251

As Sadiqi points out, “[t]hroughout the history of Morocco, political and social power
has been constructed mainly on the basis of written culture, and Islam as Scripture was jealously
guarded by those who administered political and social power.”
252
To write is therefore a
powerful act for any Muslim woman. Although figures like Scheherazade reveal women’s
subversive and influential role in the Muslim cultural legacy, Mernissi reminds us that, until it
was transcribed into classical Arabic, One Thousand and One Nights was considered “popular
trash of no cultural value.”
253
Committed to paper, Scheherazade’s rebellious tales were suddenly
granted “a scandalously dangerous ‘academic’ credibility.”
254
It is this conflict between the oral
and the written, rather than language or even ideology, that will help us to understand the
fundamentally subversive nature of Mernissi’s work. From her interviews with rural Moroccan
women in the 1970s to her more literary portrayal of scenes of storytelling in Dreams of
Trespass, throughout her career Mernissi frequently and consciously brings illiterate women’s
voices into writing, investing them with new authority. Yet, according to Mernissi,
Scheherazade’s greatest triumph was not her eventual assimilation into written discourse, but
“the triumph of wahm (‘imagination’) over the legitimacy of the keepers of cidq (‘truth’),”
through which “she corrodes their credibility.”
255
Who decides what is true, and therefore worthy
of written record? And what consequences does this authorised knowledge have for women’s
material realities? In Doing Daily Battle [Maroc raconté par ses femmes], a collection of

251
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 4.
252
Sadiqi, ‘Berber Women’s Oral Knowledge’, 121.
253
Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West, 55.
254
Mernissi, 58.
255
Mernissi, 53.

68
interviews with working-class Moroccan women published in 1984, Mernissi asserts that the
seemingly concrete domains of economic planning and legislature are dangerously predicated on
“male fantasy”
256
– a fantasy in which Moroccan women remain secluded and immobile,
dependent on their male relatives for economic survival. “The world that emerges through the
words of women,” she writes, “is a world fundamentally different from the world prescribed as
ideal by the pervasive male discourse, the discourse that reverberates in legislation and the state-
operated mass-media.”
257
The objective of the book was “to break that ancestral silence.”
258

Through their published interviews, the experiences of Moroccan women acting as “sources of
income, energy and work, ceaselessly struggling against poverty, unemployment and
insecurity”
259
were given new legibility, revealing the fundamental rift between “perception” and
“reality” that lies at the heart of Moroccan policy-making. While critics like Bourget, Rhouni and
Marnia Lazreg question Mernissi’s ability to reproduce illiterate women’s voices without
imposing her own feminist values,
260
Mernissi is more concerned about the value system that
prevents Moroccan women from contributing to their own national discourse.
Mernissi is clearly conscious of her privileged position as a woman with access to writing,
which she views as a powerful and necessary tool for Moroccan and Muslim women’s
emancipation. In her later work, however, she begins to dwell on the limitations of a feminist
movement that hinges on written discourse. In Women’s Rebellion, she continues to extoll the

256
Fatima Mernissi, Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers
University Press, 1989), 6.
257
Mernissi, 4.
258
Mernissi, 1.
259
Mernissi, 2.
260
Lazreg asserts that while Doing Daily Battle ‘purports to give a voice to illiterate women in Morocco...the text
reveals a narcissistic attempt to speak for other women while rising above them.’ See Marnia Lazreg, ‘Feminism and
Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria’, Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (1988): 106,
https://doi.org/10.2307/3178000; See also Bourget, ‘Complicity with Orientalism in Third-World Women’s Writing:
Fatima Mernissi’s Fictive Memoirs’; Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its
Legacy’.

69
virtues of writing,
261
but asserts that it is equally important for educated women to “try to
decipher women’s refutation of patriarchy when voiced in languages other than their own.”
262

For Mernissi, the problem of misrepresentation is part of a broader devaluation of feminine
knowledge and practices that needs to be addressed. The task of the intellectual feminist,
therefore, is not only to bring illiterate women into writing, but to “to grasp and decode illiterate
women’s rebellion.”
263
In her later work (particularly Dreams and Women’s Rebellion), Mernissi
brings her readers’ attention to an array of “dissenting practices considered marginal, criminal or
erratic”
264
in conservative Moroccan society, such as saint-worship, Sufi mysticism and belly-
dance, and Fatima Sadiqi commends her as one of the few Moroccan scholars to engage with
women’s labour such as carpet-weaving.
265
However, the primary example of illiterate women’s
rebellion that Mernissi, inspired by her maternal grandmother, returns to repeatedly in her work,
is oral literature.
If ruling elites have kept a tight grip on what is authorised to circulate in writing, then
Mernissi believes it is because they understand the disruptive potential of the storyteller, who
blurs the line between ‘fact’ and ‘fantasy’ (revealing where ‘fantasy’ posits itself as ‘fact’). This
is why, Mernissi notes in Scheherazade Goes West, storytellers were banned in medieval Bagdad
just as journalists continue to be censored today.
266
So what can be gleaned from those narratives
that do not make it into the written archives? According to anecdote, though her fascination with
storytelling began in childhood, Mernissi’s research on Moroccan women’s oral tales was
prompted, in her early days as a sociologist, by a moment of discursive disorientation while

261
It’s “better than a facelift,” she says, just look at the youthful complexions of Nawal El Sadaawi and Assia
Djebar! See Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 1.
262
Mernissi, 16.
263
Mernissi, 16.
264
Mernissi, 16.
265
See Fatima Sadiqi, ‘The Big Absent in the Moroccan Feminist Movement: The Berber Dimension’ (n.d.), 15.
266
See Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West, 53.

70
reading the ‘official’ version of her beloved One Thousand and One Nights. Re-reading her
grandmother Yasmina’s favourite of Scheherazade’s tales, in which an unhappy wife deserts her
husband and flies away without a trace, she realises that Yasmina’s is not the accepted version of
events. In the written text, which Yasmina was unable to read, the unhappy wife is found by her
husband and returned to her home at the end of the tale – a happy ending, still, but for a different
audience. Even the title is different: what Yasmina called the story of “The Lady with the
Feather Dress” appears in print under the anguished husband’s name as the tale of Hassan al-
Basri, revealing a narrative structured around an entirely different order of desire. Fascinated by
the discrepancies in what, until then, she had assumed to be a shared cultural heritage, Mernissi
subsequently tasked her students at the university of Rabat with recording oral tales from women
in the Sahara desert and the Atlas mountains, finding that – just as in Yasmina’s retelling of
Scheherazade’s tales – across this previously unwritten archive “the cleverer sex is rarely the one
that religious authorities would expect.”
267
For Mernissi, this reveals the fundamentally
subversive nature of the oral medium which, unlike written discourse, escapes the forces of
censorship. While educated women like Mernissi fight to make themselves legibile in the
languages of authority, illiterate women are able to introduce “heretical distortions”
268
into even
the most canonical of texts.
269

In Dreams of Trespass, storytelling emerges as a vital site of feminist questioning in the
Mernissi household. In a world riddled with real and invisible boundaries, the borderless world
of storytelling allows women to escape – if only temporarily – their limited positioning within a

267
Mernissi, 9.
268
Mernissi, 5.
269
It is worth noting that, for Mernissi, this extends to the sacred texts. In a childhood anecdote recounted in The
Veil and the Male Elite, Yasmina once again prompts a moment of self-realisation in Mernissi as she encounters the
“official” teachings of Islam in her childhood Qur’anic school. Yasmina’s Islam, which she later realises is based on
Sufi principles, has a much softer set of rules, and features none of the troubling adages about women that Mernissi
encounters in her schooling. Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite.

71
world dictated by another’s fantasies. What is more, the ability to capture an audience proves an
instrumental source of power and political bargaining for those who, like Mernissi’s divorced
Aunt Habiba, do not rank highly in the social structure of the harem. According to Fatima Sadiqi,
it is typical of older women to “reinforce their status in the family by…deliberately postponing
the end of a story until the following night, thus creating continuous suspense.”
270
They use this
time strategically to present their own visions of how things should be, using “powerful thinking
and memory, as well as…psychological knowledge of human beings” to “make the possibility of
transforming the world easier to grasp.”
271
But while, for Mernissi, storytelling seems to
represent primarily a way for women to imagine a future outside of Islamic patriarchal
oppression, Sadiqi’s research demonstrates that oral literature is equally a reflection of women’s
agency in Morocco’s pre-Islamic past. Like Mernissi, Sadiqi finds that the “female way of
speaking displaces the laws of both gender and genre in the Moroccan context,”
272
but she is
quick to remind her readers that the feminine domain of oral literature was traditionally valued in
indigenous communities, and only later excluded from the public sphere with the introduction of
Islam. What is more, she maintains that orality remains “a fundamental component of Moroccan
culture” in spite of the Islamic emphasis on the authority of the written word, making
“[w]omen’s oral knowledge …instrumental in the making of the history and present of
Moroccans.”
273

Sadiqi’s approach makes an interesting antidote to criticisms that, in writing about women
who fantasise about romance and rebellion, Mernissi is imposing a “Western” model of female
emancipation. According to Sadiqi, the use of storytelling, poetry and song to express personal

270
Sadiqi, ‘Berber Women’s Oral Knowledge’, 119.
271
Sadiqi, 119.
272
Sadiqi, 110.
273
Sadiqi, 108.

72
and political desires is a well-established (if not well-documented) practice among women in
Morocco, and recorded examples of women’s oral narratives include ample criticisms of
polygyny, veiling and political Islam, as well as desires for tenderness and romantic love.
274
The
growing interest among linguists and sociologists in recording oral literature therefore has
important consequences for the understanding of Moroccan women’s historical agency.
Transcribed and translated collections of oral literature in Darija (colloquial Moroccan Arabic)
and Tamazight – primarily oral languages which, until recently, had no standardised written form
– have brought new attention to the cultural and political influence of illiterate women. Some
notable examples are Kharboucha, whose ‘aita (political songs, or “calls”) spurred an entire
Berber tribe to resist the Makhzen,
275
eventually leading to her capture and her death; and
Tawgrat Walt Aissa N’Ait Sokhman, whose poetry criticised cowardly men for their failure to
resist colonisation and called on women to join the fight for independence. As Sadiqi points out
in Women Writing Africa, oral testimonies are often the only remaining record of women’s
participation in the anti-colonial resistance, and certainly of controversial topics such as sex work
and slavery.
In addition to shedding light on the lives of illiterate women, the fieldwork of researchers
such as Sadiqi, Joseph Chetrit and Hasna Lebbady has led to the re-emergence of other
suppressed and forgotten archives, allowing us to trace various histories – Amazigh, Jewish and
Andalusi – that have hitherto escaped (or been excluded from) the national narrative.
276
These

274
Cite examples in Women Writing Africa.
275
Morocco’s central authority.
276
See Sadiqi, ‘Berber Women’s Oral Knowledge’; Joseph Chetrit, ‘Textual Orality and Knowledge of Illiterate
Women: The Textual Performance of Jewish Women in Morocco’, in Women and Knowledge in the Mediterranean,
ed. Fatima Sadiqi (Place of publication not identified: ROUTLEDGE, 2017), 89–107; Hasna Lebbady, Feminist
Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives, 1st ed (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

73
archives significantly complicate what Mernissi terms “pervasive”
277
discourse, pushing us to re-
evaluate the cultural status of feminine knowledge and to question contemporary assumptions of
textual authority. In her work on Andalusi-Moroccan oral narratives, Hasna Lebbady asserts that
women’s khrafa (taken from the Andalusi word, karafa, for tales told over an evening of
spinning) originate in a culture that was neither “primarily based on orality [nor] in any way
illiterate,” and “did not perceive literacy and orality in terms of binaries.”
278
What is more, these
narratives were instrumental in preserving a period of Muslim history that, during the Spanish
Inquisition, was largely obliterated from the written archive. When the Spanish burned their
books, Muslims fleeing Al-Andalus were still able to carry their history with them as “invisible
luggage”
279
in the form of stories, poetry and song. According to Joseph Chetrit, the oral poetic
genre known as ‘rubi performs a similar function in today’s Jewish-Moroccan diaspora
communities, where women’s oral knowledge continues to perform a variety of “educative and
formative functions.”
280
Armed with an immense corpus of memorised stories, songs, proverbs
and poetry in their native Judeo-Arabic, Jewish-Moroccan women are able to transport centuries
of Muslim- and Amazigh-inflected Jewish tradition into their new lives in Israel, France and
Canada. This knowledge constitutes “a source of personal enrichment and…social prestige”
281

for illiterate women, whose ability to retrieve, reproduce and interpret vast stores of standardised

277
Mernissi chooses to use the word ‘pervasive’ rather than ‘dominant’ here because she feels that the latter “would
[incorrectly] imply the existence of other discordant, contradictory discourses." See Mernissi, Doing Daily Battle, 4.
278
Lebbady, Feminist Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives, 22; According to Ibtissem Bouachrine,
women were highly active in all aspects of Andalusi life, including writing and publishing. This is not to say that all
women enjoyed such freedoms, however. Andalusi society was still strictly segregated, and many women were
restricted to their reproductive functions and kept behind closed doors. See Ibtissam Bouachrine, Women and Islam:
Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of Feminist Critique (Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK:
Lexinton Books, 2014).
279
Lebbady, Feminist Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives, 21.
280
Chetrit, 101.
281
Chetrit, 101.

74
texts such as proverbs and poems, Chetrit argues, demonstrates that oral knowledge acquisition
is just as vital and complex as learning through literacy.
Though Chetrit sees no particular advantage to literate versus illiterate knowledge and
practices, he laments that Jewish-Moroccan women’s knowledge of oral texts is depleting on
account of their lack of performance.
282
It is this fear that has prompted linguists and
anthropologists to record North African oral literature – first in writing and later using audio-
visual equipment – since the early days of colonial “discovery,” and which makes the work of
researchers like Sadiqi, Lebbady and Chetrit so valuable today. But to what extent do these
attempts to preserve a dying art reinforce the centrality of the written text, and the insufficiency
of oral knowledge? For Mernissi, putting oral texts into writing is a way of giving illiterate
women’s voices more authority. But while this – ironically, though certainly not unconsciously
on Mernissi’s part – goes some way to destabilise the systems through which discourse is
authorised, it nonetheless assumes (indeed relies upon) the value attached to the written archive.
For performance studies scholar Diana Taylor, writing is inherently attached to colonial
structurations of knowledge, as it facilitates the management of historical and cultural memory
from afar.
283
It is therefore not enough to challenge the “hierarchies of legitimation that
structure… traditional academic practice”
284
by giving written validation to oral knowledge and
practices. Rather, Taylor proposes a methodological shift towards performance, or “embodied
knowledge,” as its own “episteme, a way of knowing, [and] not simply an object of analysis.”
285

This approach is helpful in identifying where oral storytelling, like other embodied acts,

282
Chetrit, 93.
283
Taylor is working from de Certeau’s concept of ‘writing’s expansionism’ here. Taylor, The Archive and the
Repertoire, 18.
284
Taylor, 27.
285
Taylor, 180.

75
“exceeds the archive’s ability to capture it.”
286
Though many stories are inherited, and Chetrit
notes the formal and informal training that respected orators undergo to perfect their
performances, as Lebbady points out, oral narration is “a very flexible medium,”
287
and even the
best-known tales vary vastly in terms of content, style and delivery between different performers,
occasions and audiences (as Yasmina’s rendition of “The Lady in the Feather Dress” has shown).
Sadiqi emphasises the multiple methods through which women personalise their narratives,
including a wealth of paralinguistic features such as volume, intonation, pitch and tempo “as well
frequent touching, hand-holding, hand gestures, facial expression, tilted heads, sustained gaze,
locked-eye gaze, and nodding.”
288
According to Sadiqi, the cultural and moral significance of
oral narratives also reflects the social and political context in which they are delivered. As such,
“tales are never repeated in the same way, even by the same woman.”
289

A written version, then, can only be a record of a single performance – that of the writer,
who has chosen which words to relay, and has chosen only to relay words. According to Taylor,
even audio-visual recordings fail to reproduce embodied acts like oral storytelling, since what
makes a performance is contingent on the time, space and context of its immediate delivery. This
is not to say that performance ‘disappears.’ However, unlike the written archive, which can be
reproduced ad infinitum, performances (even those re-enacted by multiple performers) are not
duplicated so much as “reactivated,” re-appearing “in a constant state of againness.”
290
The
stable and immutable connotations of the “archive” are thus insufficient to describe individual
and collective stores of performatic and embodied knowledge, and Taylor suggests instead the

286
Taylor, 21.
287
Lebbady, Feminist Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives, 12.
288
Sadiqi, ‘Berber Women’s Oral Knowledge’, 119.
289
Sadiqi, 118.
290
Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 21.

76
term “repertoire” to encompass both verbal and non-verbal “scenarios.”
291
The paradox with
which scholars like Mernissi are presented, then, is how to emphasise the epistemological
significance of the repertoire without reducing it to the il/legitimising logic (as well as the
narrative constraints) of the archive.
Apparently conscious of the non-verbal knowledge that is lost in her transcription of oral
tales and testimonies in her academic work, Mernissi devotes a great deal of space to fictional
“scenarios” of storytelling, music and dance in Dreams of Trespass. Ending just as little Fatema
embarks on her school career, the novel is very much a meditation on the education received
among the illiterate women of her harem – mesmerising tales of rebellious princesses, theatrical
re-enactments of the lives of Egyptian pop-stars and feminists, and silent wars waged through
women’s embroidery. For Taylor, however, such attempts to record and celebrate embodied
knowledge “seem destined to reproduce the problems of objectifying, isolating, and exoticizing
the non-Western that they claim to address.”
292
A member of Marxist intellectual circles in Rabat
during the 1970s,
293
Mernissi is no doubt conscious of how the demand for Moroccan women’s
“authentic” cultural production feeds into the larger commodification of the Orient and
indigeneity, but this does not make her work immune to the pitfalls of culture-as-capital. By
recuperating repertoire for the purposes of the Western archive, it could be argued that Mernissi
is capitalising, to a certain extent, on the symbolic value of Moroccan women’s illiteracy.
However, Mernissi does not claim to be able to escape imbrication in structures of patriarchal
and capital control. Rather, she consciously engages with these systems in order to destabilise

291
Interestingly enough, “scenarios” is term Mernissi also employs in her analysis of the Moroccan visual artist
Lalla Essaydi. Lalla Essaydi and Fatima Mernissi, Les Femmes Du Maroc, 1st ed (Brooklyn, N.Y: Powerhouse
Books, 2009).
292
Specifically, Taylor is addressing UNESCO’s program for protecting ‘masterpieces’ of oral heritage. See Taylor,
The Archive and the Repertoire, 24.
293
Alongside other sociologists like Khatibi, Gessous and Pascon. See Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at
Fatema Mernissi’s Work and Its Legacy’, 134.

77
accepted hierarchies of knowledge and power, gesturing constantly to the limits of her own
endeavour.
In Women’s Rebellion, Mernissi strongly emphasises the need to attribute academic and
economic value to Moroccan women’s labour and cultural production. In doing so, however, she
is careful to note the ways in which “dissenting”
294
feminine practices, such as saint-worship, are
protected and moderated by the authorities. According to Mernissi, tombs and sanctuaries
provide Moroccan women with a well-established forum within which to express their discontent
with Islamic patriarchy. In allowing women to commune with each other and with the saints
(many of whom embody radically a-traditional gender roles) on their own terms and in their own
language, these “anti-establishment arenas”
295
offer vital sites of healing and empowerment. It is
a wonder, then, that these “informal women’s association[s]”
296
are tolerated in a phallocratic
society. For Mernissi, however, the State has a strategic interest maintaining the sanctuary:
The saint in the sanctuary plays the role of the psychiatrist in the capitalist society, channeling discontent into
the therapeutic processes and thus depriving it of its potential to combat the formal power structure. Saints,
then, help women adjust to the oppression of the system. The waves of resentment die at the sanctuary’s
threshold. …In this sense, sanctuaries are ‘happenings’ where women’s collective energies and combative
forces are invested in alienating institutions which strive to absorb them, lower their explosive impact,
neutralize them.
297

This particular “dissenting practice,”
298
which has long fascinated ethnographers and is
widely acknowledged in Moroccan society, thus plays an important role in pacifying women’s
rebellion. The sanctuary provides women with a unique opportunity to vent their frustration with
a society that routinely discriminates against them. Ultimately, however, this outlet works to

294
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 16.
295
Mernissi, 25.
296
Mernissi, 25.
297
Mernissi, 31.
298
Mernissi, 16.

78
uphold the status quo by defusing and isolating any rebellious impulses, preventing them from
manifesting elsewhere.
299

Even where Moroccan women’s repertoire is officially recognised, it is clear that it does
not necessarily signify the dismantling of established knowledge/culture hierarchies. Yet, even
subsumed by the inevitable processes of objectification (intellectual, political, capital) that bring
it into dominant discourse, Mernissi would contend that feminine knowledge is never completely
neutralised. Another example can be found in skilled feminine labour such as aSTTa (carpet-
weaving). The cultural knowledge and technical expertise of these women artisans has become
increasingly valorised over recent years, and the fact that Berber rugs are made by women is now
a prominent selling point for tourists, who will happily pay tradesmen several times the at-source
price in order to support a feminist enterprise. Women, of course, have always made these
carpets, just as men have always controlled the market – attributing value to their labour has not
reduced the exploitative dynamics of this trade, it has simply created a different demand for it.
But for Mernissi, the carpet is a perfect example of how Moroccan women have used feminine
knowledge and ingenuity to overcome marginalisation in a society that consistently undervalues
their labour and their daily realities. Building on Mernissi’s extensive research on aSTTa, which
she describes as a form of feminine “writing,”
300
Berber
301
linguist Fatima Sadiqi asserts that
these carpets not only carry meaning, but can be said to have their own syntax: the symbols

299
According to Mernissi, this is a common tactic among “unresponsive administrative bureaucracies” uninterested
in delivering substantial change. This was also a common complaint following the February 20th movement in
Morocco, where Mohamed VI’s rapid response to protester’s demands was considered by many to be largely
performative. See Mernissi, 31.
300
According to Sadiqi, Mernissi conducted extensive research on carpet-weaving in the Atlas mountains from
1984-2004, culminating in a book titled The Flying Carpet’s Secret. Personally, I have been unable to find any
record of this research or this publication, save referenced in talks given by Mernissi in Morocco, and by Sadiqi,
who reports that she has a forthcoming book on the subject. See Sadiqi, ‘The Big Absent in the Moroccan Feminist
Movement: The Berber Dimension’, 15.
301
I use ‘Berber’ with reference to Sadiqi because this is the term she chooses to identify by in her work, although
‘Amazigh’ is generally the preferred term to denote the indigenous people of Morocco.

79
woven into Berber rugs are not merely decorative, but contain complex and often taboo (even
sexually explicit) messages which are passed unwittingly by men from village to village, to
major cities and finally into the hands of tourists, who go on to display them in their faraway
homes.
302

Complete with their own rebellious narratives, carpet designs passed down through
generations of weavers play in important role in attesting to Berber women’s historical agency. It
is important to note, however, that aSTTa does not exist purely as a means of immortalising
tradition; rather, carpet-weaving (just like oral storytelling, which often accompanies the
practice) is part of a living, ever-evolving discursive economy in which Amazigh women’s
travelling symbols perpetually take on new meaning. In light of the Amazigh cultural revival,
which has gained significant momentum in recent years, Sadiqi notes that Berber women’s
cultural “tokens” are “rapidly gaining ground in the key spheres of authority.”
303
Tamazight and
Tifinagh (the Tamazight alphabet) now appear everywhere from graffiti and rap videos to
primary schools and even parliament,
304
and with this re-emergence of indigenous culture
questions of appropriation naturally abound. Detached from the “scenario” of aSTTa, a sacred
ritual in which women sing and share stories as they weave,
305
these women-created symbols
shed the full scope of their meaning (on Madonna’s Instagram page, certainly, but even woven
into the carpets themselves). Sadiqi, however, views these travelling tokens as testament to
women’s continuing participation in the creation of Berber and Moroccan identity. This in mind,

302
Based on conference paper delivered by Sadiqi in honour of Mernissi soon after her death, at the Festival
Amazigh de Fès in July 2015.
303
Sadiqi, ‘The Big Absent in the Moroccan Feminist Movement: The Berber Dimension’, 14.
304
The newly-standardised Amazigh alphabet, known as Neo-Tifinagh, features a number of symbols traditionally
used in Amazigh women’s carpet designs. Tamazight (the Amazigh language) became an official language of
Morocco in 2003, and is now taught in some primary schools. In 2012, the popular singer and poet Fatima Chahou
(a.k.a. Tabaamrant) controversially posed a question in parliament for the first time in Tamazight. See Sadiqi, 9.
305
See Sadiqi, 14–16.

80
we might think of Mernissi’s attempts to bring women’s unwritten knowledge into the archive as
another “reactivation”
306
of sorts – a faithful reproduction, no, but nonetheless an unsettling
performance for the traditional keepers of cidq, or ‘truth.’
As Diana Taylor’s work demonstrates, illiterate women’s knowledge represents much
more than a series of alternative narratives through which to re-evaluate written history. To think
embodied knowledge in terms of narrative, Taylor argues, is to reaffirm the centrality of the text,
when what is needed is a more comprehensive framework for understanding the different ways
one can produce, transmit, receive and perform knowledge. Yet Mernissi’s research shows that,
even reproduced and understood as ‘texts,’ Moroccan women’s oral tales and other previously
unwritten or unrecorded practices (such as saint-worship and aSTTa) can have destabilising
consequences for the supposedly infallible institution of ‘archive.’ Under Mernissi’s careful
scrutiny, even apparently irrefutable documents such as the hadith and the sunna reveal elisions
and inconsistencies; for the written archive, too, is subject to human impulses and error.
Furthermore, as Mernissi points out in Forgotten Queens, Muslim Women’s Rebellion and The
Veil and the Male Elite, no repetition or transmission of knowledge is perfect or complete: even
the word of God demands active interpretation, or ijtihad, which Mernissi considers the right and
duty of all students and believers. While, as Taylor points out, this kind of impermanence and
malleability is more readily associated with repertoire, Mernissi’s approach encourages us to
rethink the false dichotomy between written and unwritten knowledge, exposing the subjective
and often political bias that lies behind ‘official’ accounts of Muslim and Maghrebi history. If it
were not preceded by this problematisation of ‘archive,’ Mernissi’s written celebration of
illiterate women’s oral narratives and knowledge practices could well be seen as an appropriative

306
Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 32.

81
(and tokenistic) attempt at intellectual inclusivity. In the context of her larger corpus, however,
this work highlights the instability and insufficiency of written knowledge, and the effects of
Muslim women’s exclusion from it. While the insertion (or reinsertion) of women’s voices and
experiences may not be enough to dissipate the authority of the archive, they bring
uncomfortable attention to the mechanisms of patriarchal, political and economic power that
work to authorise certain narratives while occluding others. The problem that some may have
with Mernissi’s work is her own implication in these structures of authority. As a highly-
educated urban elite with feminist principles that, although she is careful to root them in Muslim
culture and history, appear more than palatable to those imperialist feminists she swears against
in her work, we may question her use of long-dead and illiterate women’s voices to bolster her
own Muslim feminist discourse. I believe what Mernissi is championing, however, is not any
particular version of Muslim and Moroccan women’s desires and realities, but the “active
reading,”
307
or re-writing, of Muslim and Moroccan women’s history as it has been given to us.
By reminding us of the voices that have not, historically, been permitted to contribute to the
dominant narrative (be it religious, patriarchal, national or colonial), she calls our attention to the
limits of written authority even as she embraces it.

6 Conclusion: the dance of masks
Though, as we have seen, Mernissi’s methodology varies over the course of her career, she
remains strategically engaged with her corpus and her audience, even where it may appear she is
catering to their demands. Like the many rebellious women discovered in her careful reading of
Muslim history, Mernissi makes the most of the tools available to her in order to implement the

307
Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, 5.

82
changes she desires, quietly engineering a revolution from behind the scene of power. While she
may appear to oscillate between Arab-Muslim and Euro-American audiences, devout religious
reasoning and Western secular ideals, according to Mernissi, any Muslim woman’s rebellion
requires such a “dance of masks.”
308
This was understood by the jawari (slaves) who whispered
radical politics into their masters’ ears, and by Scheherazade, who relied every night for nearly
three years on her ability to sweet-talk her executioner. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi recounts
another of her favourite tales from One Thousand and One Nights; the story of Princess Budur,
who upon finding herself abandoned by her husband while travelling dresses up in his clothes to
avoid being robbed or raped. Posing as her husband, Princess Budur not only succeeds in
protecting herself but is awarded a kingdom to rule and a princess of her own to marry: Hayat al-
Nufus. According to Mernissi, Scheherazade tactically waits until the 962
nd
night of her ordeal to
deliver the somewhat “insolent” message that “a woman can fool society by posing as a man.”
309

But what would be so threatening to King Schahriar about this tale? That Princess Budur was so
easily able to fill the role of a man, through a simple change of dress? That her disguise was so
effective as to render the difference between man and woman meaningless? Or that she dared to
take on the guise of masculine authority rather than resign to her own appalling fate? For
Mernissi, Princess Budur’s is an encouraging tale because she did not wait to be rescued but
instead “dared to imagine the impossible, the unrealistic,”
310
dressing up as a man in order to
recreate a world.
Where Princess Budur dons men’s clothing, Mernissi uses religious, scholarly and
historical language to make herself legible to (and as) authority, granting her unprecedented

308
Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 187.
309
Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass, 137.
310
Mernissi, 133.

83
access to traditionally masculine domains of discursive power. Not unlike Princess Budur,
however, the power granted by this intellectual crossdressing is simply a means to end – though
her newfound authority grants her some privileges, it does not ultimately liberate her from the
systems of oppression she initially found herself caught up in and, moreover, it is not what she
truly desires. When Princess Budur is offered Hayat’s hand in marriage, she once again becomes
vulnerable to the violence of patriarchal tyranny in the form of Hayat’s father, who will kill her
whether she refuses the offer or she accepts only to fail in her marital duties. In yet another bid
for survival, Princess Budur confesses everything to Hayat, who agrees to fake the loss of her
virginity and aid Budur in her quest to find her missing husband. For Mernissi, this is the real
message of Budur’s story: that, in solidarity, women can not only escape their fate but pursue
happiness on their own terms.
311
A somewhat optimistic reading, perhaps, of a tale that ends with
the unruly wife reuniting with the husband who abandoned her (and after whom the story is
officially named) only to offer him her kingdom and be outranked by his new wife, Hayat.
312
,
The comradery between these two women nonetheless offers a glimmer – however small – of
revolutionary promise that apparently sparked hours animated discussion amongst the women in
the Mernissi household. This optimism, I contend, is what defines Mernissi’s broader strategy
when it comes to reinserting women into Muslim and Moroccan history. Heeding the advice of
her illiterate grandmother Yasmina, she invites us not only go looking for the voices of the
oppressed, but to be receptive to those messages we did not necessarily go looking for. By
embodying a state of isti’dad, of readiness, we might at last allow ourselves to remember the

311
See Mernissi, 143.
312
See Wendy Doniger, The Ring of Truth and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry, 2017 According to Doniger, Prince
Qamar leaves Budur in pursuit of a precious, magical jewel that he stole from the vagina of his wife as she slept.
When Budur eventually tracks him down, before revealing her true identity she enacts a somewhat sinister revenge
on him by threatening him with sodomy. As the story goes, she only tricked him ‘in jest,’ but Doniger reads the
trick, which reduces Prince Qamar to tears, as payback for leaving Budur with the threat of her own rape.

84
dreams, the fantasies and the hopeful whispers of revolt that – though hidden – must have always
been there, lurking in the fissures of the archive.

85
CHAPTER TWO

Sex Work and ‘Free’ Women in Moroccan Cinema

A plane?
Yes a plane. We’re in it, all three of us. Having fun, laughing, happy.
And where is this plane heading to?
To a faraway island. Where we’ll be beautiful, without any make-up, or sexy clothes.
We’ll be decent women. And men will treat us like ladies.
– Much Loved
Mes yeux sont secs. Mon cœur est sec. …Retourne à ta ville. Là-bas, les rêves sont
peut-être possibles. Ici tout est sec.
313

– Dry Eyes

1 Introduction
As Danielle Hipkins and Kate Taylor-Jones note in their anthology on Prostitution in
Global Cinema, sex work poses complicated questions for feminists and filmmakers alike: how
to attest to the marginalisation that sex workers often experience without reinforcing socio-visual
tropes of sexual transgression and/or victimhood? How to address the exploitative dynamics of
race, class and gender that undeniably operate in the sex industry without dismissing sex
workers’ individual, professional and sexual agency? According to Russell Campbell, the
“oppressed but often insubordinate” figure of the prostitute has long played a role in artistic
attempts to confront and critique the violences and hypocrisies of patriarchy.
314
Ever a threat to
“screen morality,”
315
the woman who sells sex performs a radical assault on structures of
femininity in any culture, which will explain the historical censorship of prostitution in cinemas

313
“Take me, like they all do…the gaze of men dishonours me, and you are a man…under no gaze will I see myself
recovered by the veil of virgins. My eyes are dry. My heart is dry…Go back to your city. There, dreams might be
possible. Here everything is dry.” (my translation).
314
Russell Campbell, Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema (Madison, Wis.: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2006), 4.
315
Campbell, 232.

86
from across the globe.
316
Sex work nonetheless remains an important vector for cinematic
discussions of feminine oppression and agency, and Moroccan cinema is no stranger to rhetorical
power of ‘the prostitute.’
The lives of sex workers have already been amply represented in Moroccan literature, if
not in film – Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Harrouda (1973), Abdelhak Serhane’s Messaouda (1983), and
Mohammed Choukri’s Le pain nu
317
(1972), all of which give voice to ‘the prostitute,’ are
widely celebrated and distributed in Morocco (albeit usually in French) and lauded for their
incisive commentary on Morocco’s social and sexual hypocrisy. The often-reductive
representation of sex workers in these novels, however, has come under fire by feminist critics.
The question is not whether the authors are truly invested in promoting the status of women in
Moroccan society so much as whether is possible for them to divest their work of the gendering
tropes of dominant national/ist discourse. For Moroccan scholar Soumia Boutkhil, “this kind of
writing capitalizes,” despite the best of pro-feminist intentions, “on outdated and deeply rooted
gender stereotypes, closeting the female figure in male phantasmagoric visions.”
318
Jimia
Boutouba identifies a similar trend in Moroccan cinema: though male directors have long been
grappling with questions of gender inequality in their work, she argues, ‘woman’ remains bound,
in cinematic language, to her symbolic status as “la sauve-garde des valeurs traditionelles, de
l’ordre moral et de la nation”
319
The restriction of women on screen to symbolic roles like the

316
According to Campbell, representations of prostitution were effectively banned in Euro-American cinema for
much of the twentieth century, although taboos around sex work have never applied to French or Japanese cinema.
See: Campbell, 5.
317
Al-khobz al-hafi, or For Bread Alone; originally written in Arabic.
318
Soumia Boutkhil, ‘“The Evil Eye”: Re/Presenting Woman in Moroccan Literature in French.’, in Representing
Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism, ed. Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil (Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Press, 2008), 58.
319
‘the safeguard of traditional values, moral order and the nation.’ Jimia Boutouba, ‘Femmes d’images et Images
de Femmes: Parcours Féminins et Culture Visuelle Au Maghreb’, Nouvelles Études Francophones 27, no. 1 (Spring
2012): 146 (my translation).

87
mother (whose narrative counterpart is often the ‘whore’) and spaces like the family (“veritable
microcosme de la nation”
320
) only serves to return the feminine body to its symbolic function in
Moroccan national/cultural discourse,
321
affirming conservative assumptions that women’s rights
and responsibilities should be confined to the domestic sphere. This does not mean that such
narratives are unproductive, however. According to Valérie K. Orlando, cinematic roles for
Moroccan women “almost always allow [them] to harness power-engaging agency that
challenges antiquated…views about them,”
322
despite the persisting tropes through which this
agency is articulated. Though the (primarily Western feminist) emphasis on feminine agency is
one that I will later be questioning, it is clear that Morocco’s “cinematic heroines” have played a
significant role in shaping and reflecting the national/ist narrative.
It should come as no surprise that Moroccan cinema is influenced by national/ist discourse
when the majority of Moroccan films receive financial backing from the The Centre
Cinématographique Marocain (CCM), which has its origins in the French protectorate and
continued to be used throughout the reign of Hassan II as an influential propaganda tool.
323

Cinema nonetheless presents a vital forum for social protest in Morocco, where literacy rates
remain low, and Orlando contends that Moroccan filmmakers are, “more than ever
before,…compelled nationally and internationally to dispel the stereotypes that prevail about
women’s roles, place, and agency in both private and public spheres.”
324
What is more, this is

320
‘Veritable microcosm of the nation’ Boutouba, 146 (my translation).
321
As sociologist Abdessamad Dialmy’s asserts, in Moroccan society the feminine body is singularly “entrusted
with Arab culture and identity.” Abdessamad Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, trans. Allon J.
Uhlmann, Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 49, no. 2 (2005): 17.
322
Valérie K Orlando, ‘Divas, Psychos and Action Chicks: Depictions of Women’s Place and Space in Moroccan
Cinema in the Age of Globalization’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, ed. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi,
and Karen Vintges (Africa World Press, 2016), 191.
323
See Roy Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’, Black Camera 1, no. 1 (2009): 5–29.
324
Orlando, ‘Divas, Psychos and Action Chicks: Depictions of Women’s Place and Space in Moroccan Cinema in
the Age of Globalization’, 187.Valérie K Orlando, ‘Divas, Psychos and Action Chicks: Depictions of Women’s

88
something that the CCM appears to actively support: thanks to State funding, the percentage of
women directors is on the rise in Morocco,
325
and female-centred and -directed films are widely
promoted (even if distribution remains limited).
326
While this reflects a government interest in
promoting the status of women, however, it may speak just as loudly to a desire to promote the
national image. Though I will soon argue for the censorship of Nabil Ayouch’s somewhat
explicit film about sex work, Much Loved (2015), to be understood (at least partly) in terms of
the Moroccan government’s reluctance to be fixed by the Western gaze – a gaze that defines the
Arab world as the locus of sexual dysfunction – the politics of the image
327
sometimes produces
the opposite effect: Fatima Jebli Ouazzani’s In My Father’s House (1997) and Narjiss Nejjar’s
Dry Eyes (2004) were both critically acclaimed in Morocco, yet the former was never released
there due to its overtly sexual themes
328
and the latter, which deals with rural prostitution, is
virtually impossible to find.
329
While it is true that film suffers from poor circulation in Morocco
in general (mostly pirated DVDs of blockbuster releases being sold in major cities) and cinema
attendance is steadily dwindling,
330
the discrepancy between the State’s official commendation
of these films and their directors and the accessibility of their work in Morocco is telling,
perhaps, of the way Moroccan funding and awards operate in relation to promoting a progressive
image of the nation on the international stage. The specific economic influence of France on the

Place and Space in Moroccan Cinema in the Age of Globalization’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, ed.
Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges (Africa World Press, 2016), 187.
325
Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’, 26.
326
See Valérie Orlando, Screening Morocco: Contemporary Film in a Changing Society, Ohio University Research
in International Studies, Africa Series, no. 89 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011).
327
I am referring here to Rey Chow’s discussion of ‘the native as image’ in Writing Diaspora: Tactics of
Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Arts and Politics of the Everyday (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1993), 20.
328
Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’, 25.
329
It took me two months of contacting libraries and film departments in Morocco before I could locate a copy of
the film, which I eventually acquired in a hurried meeting with another academic at a train station.
330
See Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’.

89
Moroccan film industry, furthermore, cannot be underestimated. Both Roy Armes and Valérie K.
Orlando emphasise the historical role of cinema as a French colonial apparatus, whereby
ethnographic film was used to “justify [France’s] thirst for empire.”
331
In the postcolonial era,
however, Orlando argues that it is funding that dictates the subject matter of Moroccan films: not
only does the continued residence, training and funding of Moroccan filmmakers in France raise
important questions as to the kinds of narratives that Moroccan filmmakers produce; the relative
strength of the French market – in terms of distribution, consumption, as well as the financial and
cultural investment in film through awards ceremonies etc. – means that the Western viewer,
who inevitably expects certain stereotypes from Moroccan auteurs, remains “a major factor in
the filmic equation.”
332

Banned in Morocco for its pornographic content but widely fêted on the Euro-American
circuits as a gritty, feminist narrative, Nabil Ayouch’s Much Loved (2015) offers a fascinating
glimpse into the socio-political dynamics at work in the Moroccan film industry. While
Morocco’s sex industry presents a complex reality that many artists and activists are keen for the
Moroccan public to face up to, the graphic content of Ayouch’s film – coupled with the
surrounding discourse of sexual emancipation, which appears to be very-much grounded in
French discussions of the “right to femininity”
333
– raises fundamental questions as to the
cultural and political dimensions of sexploitation cinema. Released in the aftermath of Hassan
II’s Lead Years, soon after Tamazight was made an official language and just as Moroccan
feminists secured long-awaited legal reforms, Nejjar’s government-sponsored debut feature, Dry
Eyes (2003), presents a very different picture of Moroccan sex work. While Nejjar’s reliance on

331
Orlando, Screening Morocco, 4.
332
Orlando, 39.
333
A concept often associated with the ‘secular feminist’ organisation known as Ni putes ni soumises (Neither
Whores Nor Submissives). See Fernando, The Republic Unsettled.

90
feminine motifs such as ‘the prostitute’ and ‘the mother’ sometimes risks metaphorising
Amazigh women’s realities into obscurity, ultimately, I will argue, it is the director’s use of these
motifs that enables Dry Eyes to appeal to multiple spectatorships, with destabilising
consequences for authoritative discourses on women and Imazighen in the ‘new’ Morocco.
Though produced more than ten years apart and in very different soci-political circumstances, a
close reading of the discourse surrounding these two films reveal a fundamental relationship
between the production of Morocco’s national and cinematic ‘image.’ ‘The prostitute,’
meanwhile, proves an enduring figure in discussions of sexual freedom and exploitation,
exposing the complex ways in which nationalist/imperialist discourses surrounding sexuality –
and ultimately the subject – are constituted by ongoing relations of power political, cultural and
of course capital.

2 Much Loved (2015)
2.1 Une atteinte flagrante
Though Much Loved is certainly not Nabil Ayouch’s most nuanced or insightful work,
thanks to the controversy it generated in Morocco it is no doubt now among his best-known
features. Banned by the Moroccan Minister of Culture (before he had even seen the film), the
2015 release, which centres on a group of crass but loveable Marrakshi sex workers catering to a
mostly Saudi Arabian clientèle, was condemned on the grounds that "[i]l comport[ait] un outrage
grave aux valeurs morales et à la femme marocaine, et une atteinte flagrante à l'image du
royaume.”
334
In Europe and the US, meanwhile, the film was celebrated as a courageous exposé

334
“It constitute[d] a gross insult to Moroccan women and a flagrant attack on the image of the kingdom [of
Morocco].” Cited in Lila Taleb, ‘Le Film “Much Loved” de Nabil Ayouch Interdit Au Maroc’, AtlasInfo, 26 May
2015, https://www.atlasinfo.fr/Le-film-Much-Loved-de-Nabil-Ayouch-interdit-au-Maroc_a62424.html (my
translation). When he issued the statement banning the film, the Moroccan culture minister had apparently not even

91
of a taboo topic that much needed to be talked about. At home, Ayouch had already established a
solid reputation for tackling tough social issues with integrity,
335
but the release of Much Loved
propelled him to much broader international acclaim – even as, back in Morocco, he and lead
actress Loubna Abidar faced criminal charges for pornography. After being featured in the
Directors’ Fortnight (La quinzaine des réalisateurs) at Cannes, where it was also nominated for
the Queer Palm award,
336
Much Loved later went on to win the Lumière Award for Best
Francophone Film Outside of France (a little bizarrely, given the film only features a smattering
of French); and in 2016, the French Minister of Culture titled Nabil Ayouch Chevalier des Arts
et des Lettres de la République Française.
337
Abidar, meanwhile, received two nominations for
Best Actress: one she won, at the 2015 Gijòn Awards in Spain, where Much Loved was also
nominated for Best Film; and another at the 2016 César Awards, where she was less successful,
though she received a standing ovation for her “courage” during the ceremony. After the
aggressions she and her fellow cast-members had suffered at home (Abidar was forced to leave
the country after being physically attacked, while Ayouch and other members of the acting cast
reportedly received death threats), the actress described her night at the César Awards as a

seen the film (a fact Loubna Abidar, star of Much Loved, ridicules him for in her 2016 autobiography): the decision
was reportedly based on the recommendation the Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM), a government-
affiliated institution responsible for the regulation, support and promotion of Moroccan cinema since 1944, whose
members had attended a screening of the film at Cannes.
335
Many of Ayouch’s earlier films (Mektoub [1997] Ali Zaoua [2000], Horses of God [2012]) received Moroccan
government backing as well as critical acclaim; even Whatever Lola Wants (2007) – a peculiarly trite and orientalist
venture with Canadian funding in which an American postal-worker with big dreams finds herself (and her fame)
under the tutelage of an Egyptian belly-dancer who is forced into hiding after a scandalous affair.
336
An award dedicated to LGBT-related film. One of Much Loved’s most relatable characters is Randa, who realises
her sexuality through a tender initiatory experience with a female client and dreams of running away to Spain, where
“you can be who you want to be” [41:00]. The film’s handling of male homosexuality is less straightforward,
however, with catty trans women staking out territory against the young street boys who poach their foreign clients,
and sex-worker Soukaina’s homophobic reaction towards her poetry-loving Saudi client, who turns to violence when
she discovers gay pornography on his computer and criticises his inability to perform “like a man.”
337
Knight of Arts and Letters of the French Republic (awarded for contributions to the enrichment of the French
cultural inheritance).

92
personal “renaissance.”
338
She has since been granted French citizenship on account of her
forced exile, though she made a quiet return to Moroccan media in 2018 with the release of her
debut single (in Darija), “Bella Hanouna.” As for Ayouch, though he still claims to feel hurt by
the “hystérie collective”
339
that initially surrounded the film’s censorship,
340
professionally
speaking, he appears to have emerged from the polemic relatively unscathed. Funding for
Ayouch’s subsequent film, Razzia (2017), was initially retracted by CCM (whose
recommendations formed the basis for Much Loved’s ban), but the committee later selected the
film as Morocco’s official entry for the 2018 Academy Awards.
341

According to Abidar, who quickly released a tell-all memoir (La dangeureuse [2016])
recounting her side of the Much Loved affair, she and Ayouch were severely shocked by the
State’s decision to ban the film, which they saw as an attempt to censor the voices of Moroccan
women and sex workers, and the pair have since gestured toward the recent rise in Moroccan
Islamism as the underlying cause.
342
Given the government’s loosening grip on Moroccan media
since the demise of King Hassan II and the advent of a much more progressive and (ostensibly)

338
Loubna Abidar: ‘C’est Une Renaissance Pour Moi Ce Soir’, accessed 16 October 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRqKG4vq1K8.
339
‘collective hysteria.’ Quoted in Anna Ravix, ‘Nabil Ayouch : «C’est Devenu Une Hystérie Collective, Avec de
La Haine, Des Menaces de Mort» - Culture / Next’, Libération, 6 January 2015,
https://next.liberation.fr/cinema/2015/06/01/nabil-ayouch-c-est-devenu-une-hysterie-collective-avec-de-la-haine-
des-menaces-de-morts_1320804.
340
"Ça reste d’abord une blessure. On fait des films pour les montrer. L’interdire dans mon pays d’origine, c’était
couper le lien avec ce public. De plus, la manière dont il a été interdit en a fait ce qu’il n’était pas : un objet
diabolique. Le torrent de violence et de haine qui a suivi m’a choqué. Dans le même temps, ça m’a permis
d’éprouver ma relation avec le Maroc. Je me suis rendu compte que j’étais très attaché à ce pays, aux gens. Mais je
n’oublie pas. Les mots que j’ai entendus, lus. Cela va bien au-delà des milliers de « like » sur des pages Facebook
appelant à ma mort. Ce sont les insultes sur mes origines, ma famille.” Ayouch in interview with ‘« L’interdiction de
“Much Loved” Reste Une Blessure »’, Le Monde, 14 March 2018,
https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2018/03/14/l-interdiction-de-much-loved-reste-une-
blessure_5270955_3476.html.
341
See Martin Dale, ‘Nabil Ayouch’s “Razzia” Chosen As Morocco’s Oscar Entry – Variety’, Variety, accessed 20
June 2019, https://variety.com/2017/film/awards/nabil-ayouch-razzia-morocco-foreign-language-academy-awards-
1202561364/.
342
Throughout her book, Abidar refers to the problem of Islamic extremism as one shared across both French and
Moroccan society. Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse.

93
democratic era under his son, Mohammed VI, Much Loved’s interdiction is indeed surprising:
officially, Morocco does not have censorship laws, even if writers and artists know to avoid
certain ‘taboo’ topics (criticism of the royal family, for example) in their work.
343
For Ayouch,
the fact that Moroccans did not have access to the film to judge for themselves whether it was
indecent (although pirate copies certainly circulate) directly contributed to the public’s outrage,
and falsified pornographic footage of Abidar that was posted on social media purporting to be
clips from the film did not aid their cause. What some find even more shocking, however, is
Ayouch’s lack of foresight in delivering such a film to Moroccan audience. The anecdotal
response of many Moroccans appears to be that, while sex work does indeed need to be talked
about, the film wasn’t made “for Morocco” – Ayouch’s decision to leave certain explicit scenes
in the final cut (some of which Abidar now claims were included without her approval) has been
widely criticised, and the obvious boost to the film’s overseas ratings in light of its rejection by
Moroccan authorities has led many to believe Ayouch made the film to be deliberately
provocative. With its frequent nudity and explicit language, Much Loved certainly demonstrates
a degree of disregard – if not disrespect – for traditional Moroccan approaches to sexuality and
visual culture. However, the perceived damage of the film clearly extends beyond a lack of
cultural sensitivity. Even if we accept that, as Abidar suggests, the film shook the nation because
it provided “une vision éclairée de la société marocaine,”
344
forcing it to confront a reality it did
not want to face, the violence of the public’s reaction and the abuse that Abidar and her co-stars

343
Ayouch (in interview with Leila Slimani) and film scholar Roy Armes (in his article, “Cinemas of the Maghreb”)
both speak of ‘autocensure’ and the invisible line that vocal members of Moroccan society know not to cross in their
work. See Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges; Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’; Kenza Sefrioui also writes about
“defacto” censorship: though there is no censorship bureau that issues bans on cultural content in Morocco, certain
texts are practically impossible to find due to lack of distribution and sales, while others go missing in the mail (with
paper-trails that mysteriously disappear at the Ministry of Communication). Kenza Sefrioui, Le livre à l’épreuve: les
failles de la chaîne au Maroc (Casablanca: En toutes lettres, 2017), 38.
344
‘an informed vision of Moroccan society’ Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, Loc 1670 (my
translation).

94
were subjected to as a result of the film raise certain ethical questions concerning Ayouch’s
directorial intent.
While the film is not ‘pornography,’ as was alleged by the State and presumed by the
Moroccan masses, there is nonetheless something pornographic about the vision it re/presents.
To follow Rey Chow in her elaboration of Frederic Jameson in Writing Diaspora, “[t]he visual is
essentially pornographic.”
345
Chow writes:
The activity of watching is linked by projection to physical nakedness. Watching is theoretically defined as
the primary agency of violence, an act that pierces the other, who inhabits the place of the passive victim on
display. The image, then, is an aggressive sight that reveals itself in the other; it is the site of the aggressed.
Moreover, the image is what has been devastated, left bare, and left behind by aggression – hence Jameson’s
view that it is naked and pornographic.
346

According to Chow, this violence is definitive of post/colonial depictions of native
‘woman,’ whose “defiled image”
347
has become essential to the (de)construction of her identity.
When attempting to restore the native (in this case, Morocco’s misunderstood and mistreated sex
workers) to her authentic identity, a common path of resistance is to try – as Ayouch and Abidar
apparently tried – to “subjectivise” the subaltern, to “change the defiled image…by showing the
truth behind/beneath/around it.”
348
The problem with this gesture is two-fold. Firstly, Chow
asserts that to combat “the politics of the image…by a politics of depths” is to ignore the power
of the image “precisely as image and nothing else.”
349
The image is not simply “the bad thing
that must be replaced”;
350
we have to find a way to represent the native that bears witness to the
defiled image as an unerasable part of her status. Secondly, the “inevitable subjectivising”
351
of
the native in postcolonial discourse usually occurs in line with a “subject-constitution that is

345
Jameson quoted in Chow, Writing Diaspora, 29.
346
Chow, 29.
347
Chow, 29.
348
Chow, 29.
349
Chow, 20.
350
Chow, 20.
351
Chow, 31.

95
firmly inscribed in Anglo-American [or Franco-European, in this case] liberal humanism.”
352
To
borrow momentarily from Gayatri Spivak,
353
the subaltern cannot speak, not because there is no
evidence of subaltern subjectivity, but because “speaking itself belongs to an already well-
defined structure and history of domination.”
354

Much Loved is problematic for both these reasons, but only when we examine the multiple
lines of sight that make up the politics of the image in Ayouch’s film do we see the extent to
which “watching,” in this context, functions as an “agency of violence.”
355
Firstly, by
reproducing explicit images of the kind of debauchery and depravity already readily associated
with sex work in Morocco (even as he claims to challenge this stigma by way of the film),
Ayouch ignores the politics of the image of prostitution (and by symbolic extension, female
sexuality) in the country, offering an already-condemned image up for further condemnation
(and at the very real risk of his actresses). Secondly, by delivering yet another narrative of sexual
oppression and women’s marginalisation in the Maghreb to European audiences (even as the
film purports to contest tired images of Maghrebi female victimhood) he blatantly disregards (the
more sceptical among us might even suggest that he manipulates) the politics of the image of
‘the native’ in international/neo-imperial discourse, offering up a symptomatic
356
depiction of
postcolonial subalternity for further consumption by the West. What is more, the ‘politics’ of
these two images are not produced independently – while Morocco’s condemnation of the film
confirms the repressive tendencies already assumed in the West to be characteristic of Morocco’s
(mis)treatment of women, many Moroccans condemned the film because they felt it catered

352
Chow, 35.
353
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’, Die Philosophin 14, no. 27 (1988): 42–58.
354
Chow, Writing Diaspora, 20.
355
Chow, 29.
356
Chow uses “symptomatic” in the Lacanian sense of “something that gives the subject its own ontological
consistency and ins fundamental structure” (30). We will later see how Muslim women’s narratives of Islamic
sexual oppression structure French universalist subjectivity in this way.

96
precisely to these assumptions. Whether or not this was Ayouch’s intention, he has done very
little since Much Loved’s release to dissuade Western audiences from reading the film as
representative of the Maghreb’s ‘gender problem’ – a common signifier, since the colonial era,
of racial/cultural inferiority. In this sense, the film could very well be understood as an “attack”
on Morocco’s national image, regardless of Ayouch’s motivations in representing such a
‘reality.’

2.2 The cost of breaking taboo
The idea that Much Loved’s narrative of violence and exploitation in the Moroccan sex
industry speaks more broadly to la condition de femme is a driving factor in Loubna Abidar’s
personal narrative accompanying the film. Indeed, it is largely thanks to this rhetoric that Abidar
was able to metamorphose from a small-time television actress into an international feminist icon
in the wake of the film’s release. Branding herself as “l’incarnation d’une résistance,” the
actress, who claimed she was exiled from Morocco for being “[t]rop libre. Trop Franche. Trop
Femme,”
357
put out a book with French publisher Éditions Stock the following year in which she
openly relates the Much Loved affair to her own experiences of sexual abuse, as well as
Morocco’s wider problem with women. Here, she likens her fraught relationship with her
homeland to an abusive love affair: “Mon Maroc me manque. Mais entre lui et moi, ça n’a pas
marché.”
358359
Co-written with French journalist Marion Van Renterghem, there is no doubt that

357
‘the incarnation of a resistance’ / ‘Too free. Too frank. Too woman.’ Van Renterghem in Abidar and Van
Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc 38 (my translation).

359
‘I miss my Morocco. But it didn’t work between him/it and me.’ Abidar and Van Renterghem, Loc 1786 (my
translation). Her relationship with France, it appears, is a healthier one. In her list of acknowledgements at the end of
the book, Abidar writes: "“Merci à la France de m’avoir accueillie et acceptée comme je suis.” [France, thank you
for welcoming me and accepting me as I am.] Abidar and Van Renterghem, 1848.

97
La dangereuse – so-titled after the nick-name (Abidar Khatar [danger]) Abidar coined for herself
in interview with a Moroccan journalist
360
– displays “a certain glee in exposing the sexual
hypocrisy of Muslims” which Mehammed Mack finds to be characteristic of French and
American media.
361
Part memoir, part manifesto, the book presents a troubling collection of
anecdotes interwoven with sweeping statements about the mistreatment of women in Moroccan
culture and society. Yet Abidar insists that the book, just like her acting career, is first and
foremost as a means for her to represent those who do not have a voice, and she loudly
condemns the silence of Moroccan feminists on the Much Loved affair: “Une minorité agissante
composée de certains journalistes, artistes et sites francophones me défend faiblement. Les
féministes ? Je ne les entends pas. Les intellectuels ? Muets.”
362

While international scholars like Valérie K. Orlando – echoing Paris-based Moroccan
writers Abdellah Taïa and Leïla Slimani – celebrate the “sociopolitical activist” potential of
Much Loved, lauding Ayouch’s “artistic resistance” to the problem of sexploitation in
contemporary Morocco,
363
it seems scholars and activists in the country did not identify so
readily with the message delivered by the film. Much Loved nevertheless did spark debate, as
Ayouch and Abidar intended, even pushing the government to release its first official data on
Moroccan prostitution in May 2015.
364
The precarity (and proliferation) of sex work is indeed a
point of concern for feminist scholars and activists in the country: according to anthropologist

360
See Abidar and Van Renterghem, 1127.
361
Mack, Sexagon, 27.
362
Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc 1514.
363
Valerie Orlando, ‘Depicting and Documenting Violence against Women in the Contemporary Counter-Narratives
of Moroccan Film’, Journal of Applied Language and Culture Studies, no. 2 (2019): 147; See also Madeleine
Löning, ‘Un Film Qui « trouble » : Subversion Des Identités de Genre et de La Sexualité Dans Much Loved de Nabil
Ayouch’, Expressions Maghrébines 16, no. 1 (23 May 2017): 183–99, https://doi.org/10.1353/exp.2017.0011;
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges.
364
Massoud Hayoun, ‘Morocco Publishes First Stats on Sex Workers after Film Causes Stir’, Al Jazeera America,
29 May 2015, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/29/morocco-publishes-first-stats-on-sex-workers.html.

98
Loubna Skalli, the growing sex industry is an inevitable consequence of the overall “feminisation
of poverty” in Morocco, whereby “[p]atriarchal ideology and systematic gender biases have
denied women not only equal educational and employment opportunities and treatment before
the law, but also equal support.”
365
As exemplified in the motley harem assembled by Noha
(played by Abidar) in Much Loved, the social and financial disenfranchisement of unmarried and
divorced mothers and widows, as well as the lack of work available to women (or lack of
payment for women’s work), leaves many vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Noha herself is a
single mother who supports her child, mother and younger siblings with the wages from her sex
work, even as they refuse to be seen with her; Randa is a lesbian whose father moved to Spain
when she was four and left his family with nothing; and Hlima is a country bumpkin who is
ostracised when she falls pregnant as a result of intra-familial rape (an occurrence that, according
to Abidar, is “presque systematique” in Moroccan households
366
) and comes to the city in search
of work. Only Soukaina, who is beaten by a Saudi client after mocking him upon discovering he
was homosexual, seems to be in it for the money: while the others dream of respect and the
freedom to be who they want to be, Soukaina aspires to have all the things she wants, “just like
princesses.”
367

According to Abidar, this is the real reason Much Loved was banned. Though many
condemned the film’s excessive nudity and vulgar language, she claims it was Ayouch’s frank
and unflattering portrayal of Morocco’s oil-rich allies that ensured its censorship: “Il dérange
parce qu’il montre les habitudes des clients saoudiens, et le Maroc n’a pas trop envie de fâcher

365
Loubna H. Skalli, ‘Women and Poverty in Morocco: The Many Faces of Social Exclusion’, Feminist Review, no.
69 (2001): 76.
366
‘almost systematic’ Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc. 1081 (my translation).
367
Ayouch, Much Loved, ??

99
l’Arabie Saoudite."
368
In the film’s opening scenes, we witness the women being put through a
series of humiliating rituals at one of their Saudi clients’ notoriously lavish sex parties: nestling
shot glasses in their cleavage for clients to drink tequila out of; crawling around on all fours
pretending to be kittens asking for “milk” as money is thrown at them; racing each other to the
bottom of a swimming pool to find a diamond one of the clients threw in there just to see them
fight for it.
369
Over the course of the film, the Saudis appear almost parodic in their proud
displays of consumerism and misogyny, but as Orlando points out, Ayouch does more in Much
Loved than simply caricature these unwelcome guests to Morocco: he is using his critique to
point to an unspoken relationship between Morocco’s growing dependence on international
investment and the proliferation of lesser-known, though no less prevalent, markets.
370
Travellers
from Gulf states are increasingly drawn to Morocco for its relatively ‘open’ and permissive
culture, but while the money they bring has become integral to the country’s tourist economy
(Saudi Arabia’s King Salman reportedly spent $100 million on his annual vacation to Morocco
the year after Much Loved was released, 1.5% of Morocco’s total tourist revenue
371
), Morocco’s
poorest remain the most vulnerable to the patterns of economic and sexual exploitation that it
accompanies.

368
‘It’s unsettling [for the Moroccan authorities] because it shows the habits of Saudi customers, and Morocco
doesn’t want to anger Saudi Arabia too much.’ Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc 1644 (my
translation).
369
According to Abidar, these and similar scenes of abuse and general debauchery in the film were loosely based on
what she observed while posing as a sex worker in order to research the role (“la réalité,” she writes, “aurait été trop
scandaleuse.” [‘the reality...would have been too scandalous’] Abidar and Van Renterghem, loc 1282 (my
translation).
370
For more, see Orlando, ‘Depicting and Documenting Violence against Women in the Contemporary Counter-
Narratives of Moroccan Film’, 168.
371
Lucy Pasha-Robinson, ‘Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Spends “$100m on Moroccan Summer Holiday” | The
Independent’, accessed 29 July 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-king-
salman-morocco-summer-holiday-100-million-kingdom-a7904381.html.

100
The exploitative dynamic of foreign influences (and the Moroccan government’s apparent
complicity in these structural violences) is again made present in Ayouch’s treatment of the child
sex industry. As Noha makes a boy selling lollipops at a café sit down for something to eat, she
asks him how much les français give him for letting them do what they want to him. While
Oussama (A.K.A. Chérine, a trans sex worker and a friend of Noha’s) berates the boy for
muscling in on her trade, the protective attitude that Noha takes toward him (due, perhaps, to his
proximity in age to her estranged son) reflects a growing public concern about child
sexploitation; a problem that has proliferated since the 2004 Indonesian tsunami pushed global
sex tourists to consider a new destination in Morocco.
372
Though legislation against child sexual
abuse does exist in Morocco,
373
the Moroccan NGO Touche pas à mon enfant asserts that a
moral and cultural disinterest in sexual violence and “une chape de silence quasi-totale”
374

surrounding paedophilia prevents a great deal of cases from ever being reported. Moreover, this
silence appears to be consciously upheld by the Moroccan government, particularly where it
concerns transgressions made by international visitors: in 2013, Mohamed VI outraged the
Moroccan (and international) public when he issued a pardon to Spanish convict Daniel Galvan
Viña after serving just two out of the thirty years he had been sentenced to for raping eleven
children in Morocco. The protests, which went largely unreported, were violently subdued by
police before the king eventually succumbed to local and international pressures and rescinded
the decision, claiming he was ignorant to Galvan Viña’s crimes.
375
According to Najat Anwar,

372
Youssef El Kaidi, ‘Sexual Tourism in Morocco’, Morocco World News (blog), 22 January 2013,
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/01/74751/sexual-tourism-in-morocco/.
373
Article 485 of the Moroccan constitution places a sentence of ten to twenty years on any “attentat de la pudeur”
committed against a minor (under eighteen years of age).
374
"…an almost-total blanket of silence" (my translation). ‘Touche pas à mon enfant’, accessed 29 July 2020,
https://touchepasamonenfant.com/.
375
See Abderrahim Chalfaouat, ‘Media, Freedom of Expression and Democratization in Morocco’, in Free Speech
and Censorship Around the Globe, ed. Péter Molnár, NED-New edition, 1 (Central European University Press,

101
founder of Touche pas à mon enfant, paedophilia in Morocco is by no means isolated to foreign
nationals, but nor is the Galvan Viña case an isolated incident, and non-Moroccan offenders are
known to benefit from their “immunité touristique.”
376
Data on child sex tourism remains sparse
for obvious reasons, but according to l’Observatoire nationale des droits de l’enfant in Rabat,
43% of minors reporting sexual abuse have been abused by foreign nationals, and a UNICEF
study on child sexual exploitation in Marrakech published in 2003 reports that some 88% of
child sex workers regularly work with international clients (though not exclusively).
377
A 2015
report by the Coalition contre les abus sexuels sur les enfants (Cocasse) further revealed that
boys like the one presented in Much Loved fall disproportionately victim to sexual abuse.
378

Like Ayouch, NGOs and activists overwhelmingly point to government inaction as the
source of Morocco’s sex tourism problem, citing poverty and infrastructural inequality as the
driving factors in pushing children and women to engage in sex work. Authorities’ inconsistent
(sometimes inexistent) approach to the problem of sexual misconduct is also a common point of
concern, and Ayouch makes a point of displaying how Moroccan police contribute to the
precarity of sex work. Noha and her co-workers, who are clearly well-known to the police, are
frequently patted down for money in exchange for going about their business, but when the client
who attacked Soukaina calls the police on Noha for making a disturbance outside his riad, she
finds her bribe is no match for the Saudi’s contribution: Noha is not arrested, but she is raped by

2015), 477, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt13wztv7.27; Aida Alami, ‘Moroccans Protest Pedophile
Pardon’, accessed 29 July 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/08/201383105651487162.html.
376
Benjamin Roger, ‘Najat Anwar : « Maintenant, les autorités traitent de la même manière un pédophile marocain
ou étranger » – Jeune Afrique’, JeuneAfrique.com, 1 October 2012,
https://www.jeuneafrique.com/174100/societe/najat-anwar-maintenant-les-autorit-s-traitent-de-la-m-me-mani-re-un-
p-dophile-marocain-ou-tranger/.
377
The majority of child sex workers (71%) have a mix of Moroccan and international clients. Mustapha Berre et al.,
‘L’exploitation Sexuelle de l’enfant: Cas de Marrakech’ (UNICEF, 2003).
378
‘Rapport: Augmentation du nombre d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs en 2015’, Telquel.ma, accessed 29 July
2020, https://telquel.ma/2015/11/26/nombre-dagressions-sexuelles-mineurs-double-en-an_1471681?fbrefresh=6.

102
the chief of police, who subsequently releases her after taking her to breakfast; the banality of the
act suggesting that such a reprimand is not a rare occurrence. In her memoir, Abidar recalls a
similar disregard for the ‘tainted’ woman when she had to report her own attack following the
release of the film: after three men in central Casablanca beat her and threatened to rape her,
condemning her character’s sexual behaviour, she found the police unwilling to report the attack,
leading her to believe they may have even been behind it.
379
Whether or not this is true, it is clear
that Ayouch and Abidar’s intentions are not only to bring awareness to Moroccan prostitution,
but to highlight the socioeconomic factors and incentives that go into maintaining the sex
industry. As Orlando writes, in watching Much Loved, audiences are forced to admit that
“prostitution is no secret, but rather an openly known fact making up part of Morocco‘s
millennial financescape.”
380
This is mind, the motives behind the Moroccan government’s
censorship of Much Loved are indeed questionable. Not only is there a political interest in
turning a blind eye to an industry heavily linked with Morocco’s international allies, but as
Moroccan sociologist Abdessamad Dialmy asserts, the government maintains a “practical,
though not legislative toleration of prostitution” hidden behind “a pretence of lack of knowledge
and awareness” precisely due to the significance of the industry’s economic role.
381

Dialmy’s account of what is at stake for the Moroccan scholar who approaches the
controversial topic of sexuality might further explain the silence of Moroccan feminists and
intellectuals on the film. According to Dialmy,
The researcher…feels isolated and is often subjected to rejection, threats, and persecution, for when the
researcher lays bare the sexual reality, this disturbs all sorts of social activists, be they technocrats,
politicians, or feminists alike. Sexuality in and of itself continues to be semi-banned in teaching. It is an

379
Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc 1756.
380
Orlando, ‘Depicting and Documenting Violence against Women in the Contemporary Counter-Narratives of
Moroccan Film’, 177.
381
Abdessamad Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, trans. Allon J. Uhlmann, Social Analysis: The
International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 49, no. 2 (2005): 24.

103
intellectual taboo for the various Arab peoples and a political taboo for the ruling Arab regimes and,
moreover, for the Arab feminist movements themselves.
382

As evidenced by Much Loved’s interdiction and Ayouch and Abidar’s subsequent
vilification and ostracisation from Moroccan society, there can be immense repercussions for
overstepping the boundaries of socially-sanctioned discourses on gender and sexuality. Yet, for
some, this transgression is viewed as a political necessity. As Madeleine Löning writes in her
reading of Much Loved, "[e]n abordant ouvertement le sujet du corps, de la sexualité et du
désir… Ayouch dénonce les tabous majeurs de la société marocaine ainsi que les contradictions
et marginalisations sociales qui en résultent."
383
Like Orlando and the film’s creators, Löning
sees Much Loved as a vital contestation of the social mores and religious dictates "qui ne laissent
que très peu de marge de manœuvre aux femmes."
384
Given the colonial origins of the concept’s
entry into European parlance, however, we may question what it means to “briser les tabous”
385

in a Moroccan film destined for international audiences. Happened upon by Captain James Cook
on his third world voyage in 1774, the Tongan term ‘taboo’ was, according to historian Naoki
Onishi, long used by anthropologists “to analyze the traditional inhibitions of ‘other,’ ‘different’
and usually ‘uncivilized’ cultures, but not their own.”
386
Freud’s definition of taboo as an
“irrational” and “primitive” form of cultural prohibition that no longer exists in Western
societies, yet resonates with us since it resides deep within our unconscious, subsequently
aligned the concept with the idea of something ‘repressed’ that must be liberated.
387
This in

382
Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, 2005, 29.
383
"[i]n openly addressing the subject of the body, sexuality and desire… Ayouch denounces the major taboos of
Moroccan society as well as the social contradictions and marginalizations that result from them.” Löning, ‘Un Film
Qui « trouble »’, 178 (my translation).
384
‘leaves women with very little room to maoeuvre.’ Löning, 189 (my translation).
385
‘break taboos’ Löning, 196 (my translation).
386
Naoki Onishi, ‘The Puritan Origins of American Taboo’, The Japanese Journal of American Studies 10 (1999):
34.
387
Onishi, 38; See also Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and
Neurotics, trans. A. A. Brill (London: Butler & Tanner, 1919).

104
mind, amid Ayouch and Abidar’s calls to ‘speak out’ about the reality of Moroccan sexuality we
might ask ourselves if there are other reasons for activists and intellectuals to stay quiet on the
subject. Where do we look for these silences, and what is the impetus behind breaking them?
For many, Moroccan feminists’ reluctance to back Dialmy’s demand for “an Arab sexual
democracy”
388
is a simple question of priority: why waste time campaigning for a woman’s right
to sexual pleasure when feminists in Morocco are busy fighting for the right to education,
custody, property, inheritance, sexual health and protection from domestic abuse? For others, it
might be that their movements are rooted in a religious/cultural tradition invested in preserving
the modesty of Moroccan women: they are simply not interested in “secularizing” sexuality, as
Dialmy suggests. Of course, it is important to note that modesty (hijab) is by no means the only,
or even primary, concept pertaining to sexuality in Islam, and nor is female sexual pleasure
antithetical to all Muslim morality structures. Dialmy, amongst others, has written at length
about Arab and Islamic erotology, noting that the Muslim concept of sexuality has shifted
significantly over time (as it has in the West).
389
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer, furthermore,
asserts that “Islam has a generally positive view of sexuality,” wherein sex (within marriage) is
viewed as “a divine gift.”
390
According to Obermeyer, both the Qur’an and the Hadith emphasise
consent and reciprocity in sexual relations, and the sexual pleasure of both partners is considered
essential to good sexual practice. Prostitution, of course, is a different matter, but it is important
not to simply attribute the silence surrounding Much Loved to the looming spectre of Islamic
conservatism. Feminists campaigning for revisions and better enforcement of the Moroccan

388
Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, 2005, 30.
389
Abdessamad Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, trans. Allon J. Uhlmann, Social Analysis: The
International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 49, no. 2 (2005): 16–33; See also Dialmy’s interview in
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges; Massad, Desiring Arabs.
390
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer, ‘Sexuality in Morocco: Changing Context and Contested Domain’, Culture, Health
& Sexuality 2, no. 3 (2000): 241.

105
family code are certainly concerned with protecting women and children from sexploitation and
gender violence, even if they do not leap to defend the artists working to expose this reality.
The lack of support for Much Loved’s feminist message in Morocco, then, is perhaps not so
much a question of taboo as of language.
391
As Moroccan scholar Soumia Boutkhil observes,
feminist discourse in Morocco is still caught in the Islamist/secularist binary of ‘tradition’ versus
‘modernity’ that has dominated the movement since the first women’s rights groups were formed
in the struggle against colonialism, and where sexual pleasure is aligned with secular modernity,
it will always be rejected by those in favour of a return to Islamic tradition (even if it is a
tradition that is, as Obermeyer argues, more cultural than theological). While Boutkhil echoes
Dialmy’s concern about the government’s ‘double discourse’ (while Moroccan women’s rights
have been written into law, she argues, the way in which they were written leaves them
deliberately open to multiple interpretations, allowing the State to “cater[] simultaneously to the
secularist and religious movements.”
392
), because social equality is so inextricably tied to the
politics of the image, she sees a need for a degree of strategy in formulating feminist demands.
According to Boutkhil, “[t]he global context, with all its conflicts and tensions,” has engendered
such “deep suspicion of what are thought to be repeated attacks from the West on Islam”
393
that
any movement presenting its motives in what are perceived to be secular terms will be met with
widescale resistance. NGOs that evoke (primarily Euro-American) discourses of equality,
emancipation, and the so-called ‘universality’ human rights often find themselves vilified by the
Moroccan press, even (perhaps especially) if their message is well-received by international

391
For some, quite literally: one journalist takes offense at the film because it is all in darija [find quote]
392
Boutkhil, ‘Moroccan Women in Limbo: On Liminal Citizenship and the Quest for Equality’, XX.
393
Boutkhil, XX.

106
donors. Yet a ‘universal’ message is, for Nabil Ayouch, fundamental to all cinematic
endeavours:
…whether cinema is able to speak to the world depends on the director’s talent and ability, [but] it is
when…directors achieve the universal, through the power of their story, their talent to convince, and
especially through the way in which they tell their stories, which must still be contemporary enough to attract
an audience that is different from the Moroccan audience, that they will start to also find funding in other
places.
394

According to Ayouch, the ability to produce a universal (or “contemporary”) narrative is
essential to secure international funding, and “for all the filmmakers who have international
ambitions, it all starts from the moment one looks for funds.”
395
This in mind, the apparently
foreseeable controversy sparked by Much Loved might be best explained using Chaim
Fershtman, Uri Gneezy and Moshe Hoffman’s definition of ‘taboo,’ as a system of prohibition
universally regulated by three kinds of “incentive”: “social,” “legal,” and of course
“monetary.”
396
According to Fershtman et al, while taboos differ from culture to culture the
phenomenon exists in all cultures, and especially for those caught between cultures, the selection
and rejection of conflicting taboos is fundamental to constructing one’s identity. Because taboo
is contingent on shared adhesion to cultural ‘norms,’ in multicultural contexts taboos indeed
become negotiable, but “deviation from the taboo will occur only when the realized benefits are
greater than the costs of deviation.”
397
And in the case of the transnational director, it is easy to
see the benefits attached to breaking Moroccan taboos about sexuality.

394
‘Interview with Nabil Ayouch’, Transnational Moroccan Cinema, accessed 27 June 2019,
http://moroccancinema.exeter.ac.uk/en/interview-with-nabil-ayouch-17-february-2016/.
395
‘Interview with Nabil Ayouch’.
396
Chaim Fershtman, Uri Gneezy, and Moshe Hoffman, ‘Taboos and Identity: Considering the Unthinkable’,
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 3, no. 2 (2011): 142, https://doi.org/10.2307/41237188.
397
Fershtman, Gneezy, and Hoffman, 144.

107
2.3 Inch’Ana : visualising feminine agency
That narratives breaking the ‘taboo’ on Muslim women’s sexual misery are applauded in
secular circles while they are typically not well received in Muslim communities is often read as
a pathological denial of gender violence and a systematic repression of women’s voices in Islam.
But as the work of scholars such as Lila Abu-Lughod, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Joan
Wallach Scott has shown us, the virtues of ‘speaking out’ about taboo topics pertain to a
distinctly Western, secular vision of women’s liberation; a vision that secures its universal status
through the obfuscation of its own cultural/historical specificity.
398
Muslim societies’ refusal to
take on this vision is generally seen as a rejection of universalist principles (equated with the
most basic human rights) rather than as an indicator of its own cultural irrelevance (i.e. its lack of
universal applicability), or else the sheer impracticality of speaking in secular feminist terms
when confronted with a radically different discursive genealogy about gender. However, as
revealed by Morocco’s overwhelmingly critical reception of Much Loved, what some believe to
have universal appeal might have difficulty translating across cultural (and discursive) contexts.
While the nationalist – and often anti-Semitic – undertones of the film’s Moroccan
criticism shouldn’t be ignored (one journalist wrote, after commenting on Ayouch’s Tunisian-
Jewish heritage: “Verily, Nabil is not from among us.”
399
), the film unquestionably projects a
view of gender and sexuality that is not only incongruous with Moroccan sexual discourse, but
also profits from the political charge of this incongruity. Even more interesting than the ways in

398
Lila Abu‐Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism
and Its Others’, American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (1 September 2002): 783–90; Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, no. 30 (1988): 61–88,
https://doi.org/10.2307/1395054; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘“Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity
through Anticapitalist Struggles’, Signs 28, no. 2 (2003): 499–535, https://doi.org/10.1086/342914; Scott, The
Politics of the Veil; Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Sexularism’, 2009, http://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/11553; See also
Fernando, The Republic Unsettled; Ticktin, ‘Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control’.
399
Ahmed Mohiuddin Siddiqui, ‘On the Banning of Nabil Ayouch’s Vulgar Film – Much Loved’, The Moroccan
Times, 29 May 2015, http://themoroccantimes.com/2015/05/15946/banning-nabil-ayouchs-vulgar-film-much-loved.

108
which Much Loved imposes a Western vision of feminine subjectivity on Moroccan audiences,
however, are the ways in which this vision (a vision supposed to ensure the exportability of the
film) is complicated by its own claims to universality. Harnessing the popular rhetoric of Muslim
exposure (the film’s ‘unveiling’ of Morocco’s sexual reality, as well as accusations about the
Moroccan government’s attempts to ‘cover up’ this reality
400
), Much Loved promotes a secular
universalist model of female emancipation and feminine agency that is very particular to French
republicanism; one that hinges on female “visibility.”
401
According to Scott, in contrast with
Islam, which sees modesty (hijab) as a necessary mechanism for dealing with the difficulties
posed to society by the fact of sexual difference, “the public display (and sexual desirability for
men) of women’s bodies” serves, in France, as a necessary “denial of the problem that sex poses
for republican political theory.”
402
Expanding on this model, Mayanthi Fernando goes so far as to
suggest that “[t]o express oneself, and therefore enact one’s autonomy, is to express one’s
feminine sexuality,”
403
making sexual difference (as displayed by secular women’s embrace of
“consumerist heterofeminity”
404
) synonymous – in “sexular” terms – with gender equality. It is
easy to see, then, how the explicit nudity that so shocked Moroccans (even those, like the
Minister of Culture responsible for issuing the ban, who reportedly never saw the film) could be
viewed as liberating by Western audiences. In a culture that keeps the female body under wraps,
there is indeed something radical about female nudity,
405
and, out of context, the film’s multiple
montages of women dancing, drinking and flirting in Marrakshi nightclubs (presumably designed

400
One critic puts it neatly: ‘[Ayouch] transgresse les grands interdits culturels tels que le dévoilement des corps
pour mettre à nu les nombreux problèmes politiques et sociaux.’ Löning, ‘Un Film Qui « trouble »’.
401
See Fernando, The Republic Unsettled; Scott, The Politics of the Veil.
402
Scott, The Politics of the Veil, 170.
403
Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 213.
404
Fernando, 214.
405
The Moroccan artist Zainab Fasiki, for example, is known to play on this taboo in her work: her cartoon self-
portraits always depict her in the nude, and her graphic novel, H’shouma [Shame], is a work of protest against the
stigma attached to women’s bodies in the Maghreb.

109
to show that there is more to Moroccan sex workers than their victimization) almost resemble
familiar scenes from a girls’ night out in Paris. Where the symbolic weight of these images
begins to fall down, however, is in relation to the film’s subject matter. I have already argued
that the explicit images depicted in the film were bound to offend mainstream Moroccan
sensibilities, but even in France the partnering of these images with the rhetoric of exposure that
surrounds the film makes for problematic reading in the context of (apparently non-voluntary)
sex work. While French neo-feminists might see make-up, mini-skirts and sexual promiscuity as
a manifestation of feminine agency (As Dounia Bouzar writes: in France, women’s “[l]iberty is
measured by the number of sexual acts they engage in.”
406
); here, these gestures speak to the
very real commodification and objectification of female bodies. This is not say that Ayouch’s
characters are devoid of agency: for the most part, they appear to conduct business on their own
terms,; and all of the characters seem to take a degree of pleasure in their lifestyle. For both
Löning and Orlando, this portrayal presents a commendable departure from traditional
representations of ‘the prostitute’; one that allows sex workers to exceed the narrative of their
own victimisation, emphasising the social freedom that comes with fiscal autonomy: “En
gagnant leur propre argent,” write Löning, “elles ne sont plus forcées de rester dans leurs
familles ou de mener une vie traditionnelle dont font partie le mariage et la procréation.”
407
It is
important to note, however, that theirs is not a problem of excess freedom: Ayouch’s
protagonists are not marginalised because of their desire to participate freely in this sexual
economy instead of becoming wives and mothers; rather, they are pushed to participate as a
result of their marginalisation (as single mothers, sexual minorities etc.). While it would seem

406
Quoted in Scott, The Politics of the Veil, 165.
407
‘By earning their own money…they are no longer forced to stay with their families or lead a traditional life that
includes marriage and childbearing.’ Löning, ‘Un Film Qui « trouble »’, 189 (my translation).

110
there are advantages to life in the margins (the women freely indulge in drink, drugs and partying
in their shared home, and clearly benefit from the alternative kinship that this feminine space
affords them), it is difficult to read these privileges as manifestations of sexual liberty.
In Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, Russel Campbell suggests
that ‘the prostitute’ as a symbol of rebellious agency is not uncommon in cinematic depictions of
sex work:
As sexual object, fucking machine, the prostitute is created and sustained by patriarchal society to service
men’s desires: she is required to make her body available to men on demand, and then condemned for doing
so.

As subject, the independent woman contemptuous of the hypocrisy of the system, she poses a threat to
that society.
408

But while the sex-worker-as-subject presents a radial counterpart to traditional tropes of
femininity in many societies, as Mehammed Mack reminds us in his work on French sexual
nationalism, Westerners attach particular value to narratives of sexual transgression in Islamic
cultures. Thus, we might question the effect of the ‘rebellious prostitute’ on metropolitan
audiences, “in a climate where transgression stands as an integration imperative.”
409
Abidar, for
her part, embraces Much Loved’s narrative of social-sexual rebellion, adopting the subversive
symbolism of ‘the prostitute’ wholeheartedly: “Je suis fière d’être une prostituée tel que vous
l’entendez, messieurs les barbus. Une femme libre est une pute, une femme guerrière est une
pute ? Je vous l’annonce solennellement, droit dans les yeux : je suis une pute."
410
By embracing
the title of pute as a symbol of rebellion and agency, Abidar is clearly challenging the discourses
of purity and shame used by Islamists (“messeurs les barbus”) to discredit and silence those
women who don’t conform to conservative models of femininity. Yet the image she creates of

408
Campbell, Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, 3.
409
Mack, Sexagon, 19.
410
‘Bearded men [Islamists], I am proud to be a prostitute as you understand it. A free woman is a whore, a woman
warrior is a whore? I am solemnly declaring to you, right in the eyes, I am a whore.’ Abidar and Van Renterghem,
La dangereuse, ?? (my translation).

111
the prostitute as “une femme libre” produces a troubling parallel between the displays of
sexuality we see in the film and expressions of autonomy. Anthropologist Carla Makhlouf
Obermeyer’s research shows us that, in Moroccan Arabic, a prostitute is quite literally referred to
as “free” [matluq], or in some regions as belonging to herself [tat’t rasha].
411
However, what
fails to translate in Abidar’s use of the term is that, in a society that emphasises communal will
over that of the individual, to belong to oneself (i.e. to no-one) is not desirable, nor does it
necessarily connote agency. For Abidar, the ‘freedom’ evoked in the figure of the whore not only
corresponds to distinctly Western displays of consumerist femininity (“Je veux être une pute,
comme dans les films que je vois à la télé. Je veux être belle comme les putes, je veux danser
comme les putes, … je veux être habillée et maquillée et bien coiffée comme les putes. …Être
une femme libre comme les putes.”
412
), it places a distinctly secular emphasis on individual
sovereignty. “Chaque fois que tu entends ‘Inch’Allah,’” she writes, “pense plutôt ‘Inch’Ana.’” :
En arabe, ‘Ana’ veut dire ‘Moi.’ Dieu et les hommes n’ont pas le temps ni l’envie de changer le
monde. Mais toi, mon amie, tu peux. Inch’Ana.”
413
In this last piece of counsel – apparently
destined for “les jeunes filles prostituées” Abidar says she hopes to give voice to through her
work and not, as we might assume, the French women she addresses in the book’s opening
chapter (“vous, les françaises”
414
) – Abidar insists on individual autonomy as the key to
women’s liberation, apparently disavowing all possibility of religious and/or communal agency.

411
Obermeyer, ‘Sexuality in Morocco’, 243.
412
“I want to be a whore, like in the films I see on TV. I want to be pretty like a whore, I want dance like a whore,
…I want to dress up and do make-up and have nice hair like a whore. …to be a free woman like a whore.” Abidar
and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, Loc 410. (my translation).
413
‘Each time you hear “Inch’Allah” [God willing], instead think “Inch’Ana.” In Arabic “Ana” means “Me.” God
and men don’t have the time or the desire to change the world. But you, my friend, you can. Inch’Ana.’ Abidar and
Van Renterghem. (my translation).
414
“young girl prostitutes” / “You, French women.” Abidar and Van Renterghem. (my translation).

112
To be fair to Ayouch’s narrative, the women in Much Loved articulate a very different
mode of feminine agency: it is not freedom of sexual expression that Noha dreams of, but escape
to a place where they will “…be beautiful, without any make-up, or sexy clothes. [They]’ll be
decent women. And men will treat [them] like ladies.”
415
This is presumably the slippage that
Ayouch hoped to evoke in the film’s Arabic title, Zin li fik [the beauty in you] – a clear play on
zin (beauty) and zina (sin): the women are forced to use their physical beauty in order to survive
in a world that regards physical attraction as a temptation to sin (sin thus resides in the female
body, a source of fitna [chaos], rather than in the eye of the beholder), while their inner beauty is
ignored. It seems to me, however, that what Noha desires is not to defy this logic but to win
respect within the very logic that – in this world – deprives her of it: she wants to be a “decent”
woman. As Scott notes, in sexular discourse such articulations of agency are virtually illegible:
In definitions of secularism, the matter of equality is often linked to the autonomous agency of individuals,
the preeminent subjects of secularism. They are depicted as freely choosing, immune to the pressures that
traditional communities bring to bear on their members.”
416

Though there is no shortage of examples of feminine agency within religious practice,
Scott argues, the secularist “assumption…that communal pressures are always negative
forces”
417
prevails in French feminist discussions of Islam (this is certainly the message to
emerge most prominently from Abidar’s book). The question is not so much whether communal
pressures can or do impact women negatively (indeed, disproportionately) in Moroccan society,
but what is at stake in presenting religion/community as an obstacle to feminine agency given the
importance of narratives of Muslim gender oppression to the construction of secular (and French
national) discourse. After all, women do not escape marginalisation even in secular societies:

415
Ayouch, Much Loved, ??
416
Scott, ‘Sexularism’, 2009, 9.
417
Scott, 9.

113
Scott’s assertion that French women have yet to achieve “substantive equality”
418
in the family,
marketplace, and political domains despite being granted equal status before the law much
resembles Soumia Boutkhil’s description of “feminine liminal citizenship” in Morocco,
“whereby [women’s] full citizenship is not attained or sometimes denied despite its being fully
recognized in the…constitution.”
419
For Scott, the function of this discourse is not simply to
establish French cultural superiority, but to distract from liberal secularism’s own inability to
deliver equal citizenship to its subjects: “It is precisely the gender (and other) discriminations
which remain in secular societies that are obscured when secularism and religion are
categorically counterposed.”
420
What the film and Abidar’s accompanying narrative fail to
capture in their defense of women’s ‘universal’ right to individual autonomy is the gender
imbalance that is indeed universal to French and Moroccan structurations of subjectivity.
421

2.4 Visual pleasure and sexploitation cinema
If Much Loved’s attempt to expose the reality of sexual exploitation in Morocco is already
tempered by sexular visions of agency, then it is even further obfuscated by form. As Laura
Mulvey first suggested in her study of the male gaze in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
women on screen are necessarily “coded” in adherence with patriarchally structured ways of
seeing and looking “for strong visual and erotic impact,”
422
raising important questions as to the

418
Scott, 5.
419
Boutkhil, ‘Moroccan Women in Limbo: On Liminal Citizenship and the Quest for Equality’, ??
420
Scott, ‘Sexularism’, 2009, 5–6.
421
For Campbell, if there is surprisingly little cross-cultural difference in cinematic representations of sex work it is
precisely because “patriarchy is universal, and its effects in shaping male consciousness and imposing ideological
constraints on expression are very likely similar from society to society.” See Campbell, Marked Women:
Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, 7.
422
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16, no. 3 (1 October 1975): 4,
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.

114
limitations of filmic representation when it comes to sex work. The connection between
consumerist sexuality and sexual exploitation, of course, has already been amply explored – as
Soumia Boutkhil observes, ironically, this is where Western feminists and Islamists actually
agree
423
– but the elision of these two elements is particularly (and problematically) pronounced
in Much Loved. While Ayouch’s protagonists can be said to exceed the role of “erotic object”
424

– after all, it is they, and not the men, who “forward[] the story” and “mak[e] things happen”
425

in the film – there is nonetheless something jarring about the camera’s proximity to the gaze of
their clients: faceless close-ups of the sex workers’ hips and breasts as they dance for leering
businessmen interspersed with voyeuristic glimpses of their pornography-inspired sexual
performances make for uncomfortably uncomplicated viewing, even as the narrative invites
audiences to empathise with the women being objectified. For Madeline Löning, in strategically
reflecting “l’appétit visuel” of both clients and spectators, Ayouch’s camera casts “un regard
sociocritique” on society’s eroticisation of the female form, at once unveiling and replacing the
male gaze.
426
Ultimately, however, the look that he uses to attest to the women’s
commodification and objectification often only succeeds in repeating the violence of such a gaze.
The distinction certainly appeared to be lost on streaming giant, Netflix, who advertised the film
to U.S. viewers as “steamy” and “French.”
427

While it is important not to conflate sex work with sexual violence, there is no doubt that
sex ‘works’ in complicated and often confusing ways in Much Loved, where the visual
distinction between scenes of consensual and non-consensual, pleasurable and non-pleasurable

423
Boutkhil, ‘“The Evil Eye”: Re/Presenting Woman in Moroccan Literature in French.’, 56.
424
Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 5.
425
Mulvey, 5.
426
‘visual appetite’ / ‘sociocritical gaze’ Löning, ‘Un Film Qui « trouble »’, 192 (my translation).
427
Upon the film’s international release on Netflix in 2018. Netflix has since updated its key words for the film to
“understated” and “intimate.”

115
intercourse is often troublingly understated. This ambiguity is perhaps felt most acutely in the
relationship between Noha and her lover Jean-Louis; a married Frenchman we are left to assume
(though it is not confirmed) is either a former or continuing client. According to Abidar, the
duo’s great love scene – also the film’s most controversial, since it contains the most nudity –
represents a moment of real intimacy for her character, but as the camera lingers on Noha’s
torso, her face awkwardly cut off or obscured by the angle of the frame, the audience is left to
wonder what she is taking from the experience. In the conversations preceding this scene, it is
unclear whether the excuses Noha feeds Jean-Louis for not meeting up with him sooner suggest
a genuine desire to keep the relationship going (her brother is sick, she has too many problems at
home to go out), or if she is just catering to a different kind of client: one aroused by pity, and by
pained requests to “take care” of her. In bed, the only indication that Noha is in this for her own
pleasure is the inversion that her position (one of sexual dominance) creates in comparison to
earlier scenes of her at work. Yet Ayouch’s use of the Kourtzer brother’s sombre soundtrack
(often used when the women retreat from the party to reflect on their circumstances or as they
watch the city from the protective bubble of their chauffeur’s taxi) suggests that it is a moment of
interiority. The shots widen as the scene progresses, becoming less fragmented as Noha’s sexual
‘performance’ becomes less frantic and she gives in to Jean-Louis’ attempts to connect with her.
The piano subsequently lingers as the couple caress and stare into one another’s eyes, suggesting
that she has found a way to make herself present in her immediate surroundings. The scene’s
liberation narrative is nonetheless complicated by its proximity to scenes of sexual exploitation
and violence, both inside and outside the film. In her memoir, Abidar describes how shaken she
was by having to confront memories of previous sexual trauma while filming the scene:

116
Je me sens toute rouge, je bous, je transpire. Quand l’acteur s’approche et m’embrasse, je craque. Je me mets
à pleurer. ‘Coupez !’ Une pause. On recommence. À nouveau, je pleure. ‘Coupez !’ Je n’ai que ce mot-là
dans les oreilles. Le tournage de quelques minutes est parti pour durer plusieurs heures.
428

This may go some way to explain the scene’s ambiguous atmosphere, giving context to
Noha’s visible discomfort within a moment of supposed personal fulfilment. However, after
initially defending the scene (in her book she thanks Ayouch for helping her grow not just as an
actress, but as a woman, by teaching her to love her body), the actress told Moroccan media that
Ayouch “destroyed” her life by including cuts she didn’t consent to,
429
raising significant
questions as to the gendered dynamics of Much Loved’s production and what must be done to
appease the “visual appetite” of international audiences.
If there are only subtle differences between the film’s scène d’amour and scenes of sex
work, this is further complicated by the depictions of sexual violence in Much Loved. The fact
that Noha’s love scene is the most explicit in the film suggests that exposure is strongly linked
with sexual emancipation in Much Loved, or at the very least that ‘good’ sex is worthy of
spectacularising. As a result, experiences of sexual assault are kept strictly ‘under wraps’ in the
film: in both of the film’s rape scenes the victims (Soukaina, and later Noha) remain fully
clothed while the camera stays fixed above their shoulders, in stark contrast with surrounding sex
work scenes. Static shots of the women’s anguished faces preclude any chance of identifying
with the perpetrator, while the women’s silence contrasts heavily with the confident banter that
usually accompanies them, highlighting the unspoken risks attached to their daily life. Though
visually distinct from scenes where sex is done for money or pleasure, the film’s two rape scenes
evoke obvious parallels with the exploitative dynamics of sex work. Early in the film, Soukaina,

428
‘I feel all red, I’m boiling, I sweat. When the actor walks up and kisses me, I give in. I start to cry. “Cut!” A
pause. We start again. Again, I cry. “Cut!” I only have that word in my ears. A few minutes’ filming ends up lasting
several hours.’ Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, loc 1410 (my translation).
429
Zoubida Senoussi, ‘Loubna Abidar: “Nabil Ayouch Destroyed My Life”’, Morocco World News, 10 September
2018, https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/09/253247/loubna-abidar-nabil-ayouch-destroyed-my-life/.

117
arriving home from a night of “money, poetry and no sex” with her (homosexual) Saudi client, is
approached by her good-for-nothing boyfriend who reproaches her for her “work” before
violently demanding her services. When he is finished, it is Soukaina who picks up her wallet
and gives Katib some of her hard-earned money, demonstrating that even outside of the realm of
sex work, women continue to receive the raw end of the deal. Though a more blatant abuse of
power, Noha’s assault also forms part of a transaction: the policeman who picks her up for
harassing an abusive client assaults her and then says that he can get her out of her charges if she
just gives him 1000 dirham for the other cops, since he’s “already been paid.” While Ayouch is
evidently careful not to eroticise sexual violence in these scenes, the visual proximity of
portrayals of sexual liberation and sexual exploitation elsewhere in the film is only complicated
by the narrative proximity of sexual violence and sex work. Echoing Abidar’s assertion that, in
Morocco, “toutes les femmes sont des putes,”
430
Ayouch delivers a clear message: sex work is no
worse than the degradation that Moroccan women face on a daily basis.
There is no doubt that rape makes a problematic metaphor for sex work, just as sex work
makes a complex subject for representations of sexual liberty. Nonetheless, there is something to
be said for the ambiguity that surrounds Ayouch’s aesthetic and narrative treatment of ‘the
prostitute.’ As Danielle Hipkins and Kate Taylor-Jones note, “the figure of the female prostitute
is…marked by a profound sense of ambivalence,”
431
in cinematic and socio-cultural discourses
alike. According to Campbell, furthermore, the reason that the fictional prostitute is so
fascinating and yet so threatening to dominant fantasies about women is because “she incarnates
much of patriarchal culture’s ambivalent attitude to sex”:

430
‘Toutes les femmes sont des putes’ is the title of the introduction to Abidar’s memoir. See Abidar and Van
Renterghem, La dangereuse.
431
Danielle Hipkins and Kate Taylor-Jones, eds., Prostitution and Sex Work in Global Cinema New Takes on Fallen
Women, 2017, 3.

118
Because of the contradictory emotions she generates, she has come to occupy an equivocal position in the
male imagination, both valued and vilified. A symbol of eroticism in a sexually repressive society, or of
endurance in the face of intense humiliation and suffering, she attains a positive coloring; but as a symbol of
flesh against the spirit, of the polluted against the pure, of the commercial against the freely offered, or of the
depths of social life against its heights, she is negative.
432

The confusing and sometimes contradictory slippages in Much Loved’s representation of
Morocco’s sex workers, therefore, speaks to the inconsistency which with these women are
treated in a society that both facilitates and profits from the nation’s growing sex industry while
simultaneously condemning their involvement.
According to Löning, it is through this ‘realist’ vision of sex workers’ multifaceted
existence that Ayouch resists the objectification of the female body, “dévoilant…ses fonctions,
ses désirs et souffrances ainsi que sa construction discursive”: “Enfermés dans les valeurs d’une
société patriarcale, les corps féminins filmés sont à la fois beaux et souffrent du mépris, des
humiliations masculines et de la violence physique laissant parfois même des traces visibles.”
433

By exposing these violences, Ayouch underscores the vulnerability of women and sex workers in
a society that condemns their work, while scenes of laughter and sexual pleasure allow them to
speak as ‘more’ than victims. What remains to be explored, however, is how the “visual
appetite” for bodies in suffering can be just as great as the hunger for erotic objects in film,
particularly in a Moroccan film that is widely understood to be a demand “pour une libération de
la sexualité.”
434
What are the race/class dynamics that inflect international spectatorships drawn
to films about Moroccan sex workers’ ‘reality’? What is the Moroccan rape victim to Euro-
American audiences? In her essay, “Distant Suffering, Proper Distance: Cosmopolitan Ethics in
the Film Portrayal of Trafficked Women,” Jane Arthurs questions audiences’ investment in

432
Campbell, Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, 5.
433
‘unveiling...her functions, her desires and suffering as well as her discursive construction’ / ‘Locked in the values
of a patriarchal society, the filmed female bodies are both beautiful and suffer from contempt, male humiliation and
physical violence sometimes even leaving visible traces.’ Löning, ‘Un Film Qui « trouble »’, 192. (my translation).
434
‘for a liberation of sexuality’ Löning, 196. (my translation).

119
victims of sexploitation as “objects of philanthropy,” exploring the “cultural politics of
compassion” that undergird such narratives.
435
Given Ayouch’s frequent attempts to “impact on
the senses through graphic imagery to provoke an emotional response,” Much Loved could be
said to adopt what Arthur calls a “voyeuristic approach” to sexual suffering, wherein “[t]he
moral righteousness of exposing wrongdoing may be entwined with unacknowledged racism that
manifests in the ‘othering’ of victims and perpetrators.”
436
It is indeed notable that Noha’s
adoring Frenchman is the closest any of Ayouch’s protagonists come to escaping the misery they
suffer at the hands of Arab men. Reflecting on the enduring stereotype of the violent and
hypersexual garçon Arabe, we might question French audiences’ interest in seeing women
‘rescued’ from sexual violence and sexploitation in the Maghreb. A more forgiving spectator
might see Jean-Louis as a conscious parody of Western audiences’ indulgence in the rescue
myth. Though he earnestly offers to look after Noha, professing his love for her and his concern
for her family, Noha refuses his money and promises of financial and emotional support,
choosing instead to keep her autonomy (and her misery). According to Arthurs, this kind of
“reflexive subjectivity,” which decentres Western audiences’ perspectives on “what needs to be
done” from a position of power, making room instead for trafficked women’s “shifting desires
and experiences,” is what “allows truly cosmopolitan ethics to emerge.”
437
Like the endless shots
of sex workers’ disembodied gyrating torsos, however, Ayouch’s call to convention threatens to
overshadow the film’s critical intent.

3 Dry Eyes (2003)

435
See Jane Arthurs, ‘Distant Suffering, Proper Distance: Cosmopolitan Ethics in the Film Portrayal of Trafficked
Women’, in Prostitution and Sex Work in Global Cinema New Takes on Fallen Women, ed. Danielle Hipkins and
Kate Taylor-Jones, 2017, 19–43.
436
Arthurs, 21.
437
Arthurs, 38.

120
3.1 Sex work and national cinema
For a better idea of what a ‘feminine’ gaze on Moroccan prostitution might look like, we
may look to Narjiss Nejjar’s 2003 film, Dry Eyes (Les yeux secs / Al-a3oun Al-jafa), set in the
all-female village of Tizi N’Isly, which opens its doors to men from the surrounding towns and
villages just once a month for “la commerce de la chair.”
438
According to Moroccan scholar Said
Chemlal, Nejjar succeeds in cultivating a look that is “devoid of scopophilia”
439
: the refusal of
protagonist Mina (an old woman returning to the village after years of imprisonment) to engage
the camera, and the familial relationship established between Mina and the film’s only male
character (bus-driver Fahd, who accompanies her back to the village pretending to be her son)
work to disrupt the cinematic gaze, forcing us to view her as “a non-fetishised human being.”
440

Nejjar’s decision to situate scenes of a sexual nature off-screen, only ever alluding to the work
the women do, further ensures a narrative focus on the women’s interiority as subjects. Dry Eyes
is not without its fetishistic elements, however. Leaving aside the obvious scopic emphasis on
Mina’s long-lost daughter Hala, Fahd’s inevitable love interest (the story of saving the village
coincides with his ability to make her fall in love with him), the gaze that follows the Tizi
women is overwhelmingly (and unmistakably) that of Fahd, who is, after all, a sort of voyeur
here; the only man permitted to linger, much to Hala’s discomfort, in this strictly feminine space.
Even more than his masculinity, Fahd’s position as an outsider, who is as baffled by the Tizi
women’s way of life as he is sympathetic to their plight, engenders a look of childlike curiosity
and compulsive concern that extends the impotent gaze of the urban Moroccan or Western
viewer, as well as that of Nejjar herself, as they bear witness to these women’s marginalisation.

438
Boutouba, ‘Femmes d’images et Images de Femmes: Parcours Féminins et Culture Visuelle Au Maghreb’, 160.
439
Said Chemlal, ‘Screening Femininity and Amazighness in Narjiss Nejjar’s Dry Eyes’, The Journal of North
African Studies, 21 May 2018, 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2018.1474740.
440
Chemlal, 4.

121
Though Dry Eyes did not spark the same controversy as Much Loved (the film was rarely
screened and amply criticised, but never banned), Nejjar’s position as an MRE
441
director evokes
familiar questions as to the narratological impact of Western aesthetic and market demands.
Returning from France, where she studied film at the École Supérieure de Réalisation
Audiovisuelle (ESRA) and launched her career as a documentary filmmaker, even setting up her
own Paris-based production company (Terre Sud), Nejjar was accused of “dup[ing] illiterate
female villagers” into working on the film.
442
The facts surrounding Dry Eyes’ production
remain unclear: both Valérie K. Orlando and Jimia Boutouba claim the women in Dry Eyes were
willingly played by the villagers Nejjar’s fiction is based on, while Janis Pallister and Ruth
Hottell suggest the film – originally intended to be a documentary – was only transformed into a
fictional project when the women refused to appear on camera.
443
While Orlando considers these
accusations a mere distraction from the ‘taboo’ topics Nejjar dares to approach in her film, it is
clear that, through her decision to focus on the theme of prostitution in her debut feature project
(and to use a little-known Amazigh community nestled in the picturesque Middle Atlas
mountains as a vehicle for this narrative), Nejjar participates – voluntarily or otherwise – in the
commodification of Moroccan women’s marginality. It is equally important to note, however,
where Nejjar’s work coincides with Moroccan national/ist discourses of femininity and
indigeneity. Known for her commitment to bringing controversial topics such as forced marriage,
prostitution and rape under the public eye, Nejjar is one of a growing number of female directors
to have taken advantage of the Moroccan government’s renewed interest in marginalised

441
Marocain.e résidant.e à l’étranger (Moroccan residing abroad).
442
Orlando, Screening Morocco, 134.
443
See Orlando, Screening Morocco; Boutouba, ‘Femmes d’images et Images de Femmes: Parcours Féminins et
Culture Visuelle Au Maghreb’; Janis L. Pallister and Ruth A. Hottell, Noteworthy Francophone Women Directors:
A Sequel (Madison, NJ : Lanham, Md: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

122
communities and the status of women since the early 2000s. She now enjoys an established
reputation as one of Morocco’s foremost directors, regularly receiving financial support for her
films from the CCM and even serving briefly as Director of the Cinémathèque national. If the
reign of Hassan II was predicated on Morocco’s purportedly ‘unified’ Islamo-Arabic identity, his
successor’s has been marked by a steady campaign of democratisation and diversification, with
profound implications for the (largely state-funded) Moroccan cinema industry. While
Mohammed VI is often criticised for echoing his father’s “dual policy of recognition and
containment”
444
– delivering a slew of empty policy changes in a bid to improve Morocco’s
international image and counter growing Islamism in the region – ostensibly, at least, his
government has taken a marked interest in the promotion of women and Imazighen. One of the
first state-funded productions to feature substantial dialogue in Tamazight, Dry Eyes is testament
to the “new” Morocco’s more eclectic funding policy.
445

Given its alignment with government moves to incorporate Amazigh and women’s rights
into the Moroccan constitution at the time of its release,
446
Dry Eyes cannot be said to disrupt the
“representational sovereignty” of Arab cinema as Petty and Benbouazza suggest of Amazigh
film,
447
nor to counter nationalist discourse in the way that Florence Martin and Valérie Orlando

444
Eva Pföstl, ‘Challenges for Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in Contemporary Maghreb: The
Berber/Amazigh Movement in Morocco and Algeria’, European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online 11, no. 1 (17
November 2014): 11, https://doi.org/10.1163/22116117-90110045.
445
See Roy Armes, New Voices in Arab Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).
446
Notably, the establishment of IRCAM in 2001, the implementation of long-awaited Moudawana reforms in 2004,
and the officialization of Tamazight and the inclusion of a clause on gender equality in the 2011 constitution. It is
important to note that the changes to the Moudawana occurred shortly followed the 2003 terrorist attacks, after
which a reform committee was hastily assembled, giving feminist organisations the long-awaited opportunity to
implement substantial changes to women’s legal rights. Similarly, the 2011 constitution was hastily redrawn in
response to rising protests during the Arab Spring. Both documents have been amply criticised for their ambiguous
wording and lack of education about, thus defacto implementation of, the laws.
447
Sheila Petty and Brahim Benbouazza, ‘Trans-Indigenous Aesthetics and Practices in Moroccan Amazigh Film
and Video’, Expressions Maghrébines 18, no. 1 (2 July 2019): 54, https://doi.org/10.1353/exp.2019.0003.

123
claim is characteristic of women’s cinema in the Maghreb.
448
Though by no means nationalistic,
Nejjar’s is a state-sponsored critique. The film nonetheless presents a provocative and – I will
argue – strategic intervention into ‘official’ Moroccan national/ist discourse. Although Dry Eyes
does not directly address the atrocities of Hassan II’s Years of Lead, during which women and
Amazigh activists were among the many incarcerated, tortured, or simply ‘disappeared,’ some
never to be seen again,
449
the invocation of this violence through Mina’s imprisonment and its
rhetorical alignment with the trapped and tortured existence of the ‘free’

women of Tizi invites
audiences to consider the changing role of women and Amazigh communities at a moment of
vital historical reckoning. Despite international pressure resulting in the gradual release of
prisoners like Mina and the introduction of a number of legal reforms affecting women and
Imazighen long before the death of Hassan II,
450
substantial changes were yet to be seen by the
time of the film’s release, four years into Mohamed VI’s more ‘progressive’ reign. The film can
thus perhaps be viewed as a challenge to the State to deliver on these promises.
451

448
Florence Martin, Screens and Veils: Maghrebi Women’s Cinema, New Directions in National Cinemas
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); Orlando, Screening Morocco.
449
See Laura Menin, ‘A Life of Waiting: Political Violence, Personal Memories, and Enforced Disappearances in
Morocco’, in The Social Life of Memory: Violence, Trauma, and Testimony in Lebanon and Morocco, ed. Norman
Saadi Nikro, Sonja Hegasy, and Springer International Publishing AG, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and
Conflict (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 25–54.
450
Small changes were made to the Moudawana (the Maliki-based Moroccan “Family Code,” which primarily
impacts women) in 1993. See Leila Hanafi and Christina S. Pratt, ‘Morocco’s 2004 Family Code Moudawana :
Improving Access to Justice for Women’, in Women and Knowledge in the Mediterranean, ed. Fatima Sadiqi (New
York: ROUTLEDGE, 2017), 127–43.
451
When, on re-entering the village, Mina and her former jailer are confronted by a field of red flags testifying to the
ritual ‘deflowering’ of every Tizi girl, Fahd asks Mina what they are looking at and she answers simply: “Rien n’a
changé.”

124
3.2 Le regard des hommes me salit
The fact that Dry Eyes only secured state funding once the film was transformed from a
documentary into a fictional project
452
is testament to the government’s limited interest in
exploring the reality of Moroccan sex work, even as ‘the prostitute’ remains a staple of the
nation’s allegorical landscape. Regardless, through a somewhat allegorical depiction of sex work
Nejjar is able to launch a more substantial – albeit largely unspoken – critique of discriminatory
policies and social practices. Though according to Lidia Peralta García and Vanesa Saiz-
Echezarreta some 8% of the CCM archive features characters employed in “sexual or erotic
markets,”
453
Nejjar’s film brings rare attention to sex work in the rural context, where Amazigh
women are disproportionately impacted by poverty and many “see no economic alternative to
becoming a prostitute.”
454
Indeed, so vital is the monthly income that the Tizi women receive
from their clients, the village’s older women, who are no longer able to serve as sexual
commodities, have been ordered (much to Fahd’s horror) to live out of sight in the cliffs that
tower over Tizi. A steep, crumbling path leading down to the older women’s dwellings alludes to
the precarity of their existence, as old friends of Mina’s recount the bridge that led to their
village collapsing fifteen years ago, along with any support they were receiving from the
‘outside’: “The people from health stopped bringing us medicine to stop us getting
pregnant…There’s no more road, so they’ve forgotten us.”
Though Mina tries from the beginning of the film to convince Hala that the village could
escape its reliance on sex work through the introduction of a new vocation, carpet-weaving (a

452
See Armes, New Voices in Arab Cinema, 155.
453
According to Lidia Peralta García and Vanesa Saiz-Echezarreta, ‘Sociodemographic Imagery of Women in
Sexual and Erotic Markets in Moroccan Filmography.Pdf’, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 73 (2018):
1137–62.
454
Bernhard Venema and Jogien Bakker, ‘A Permissive Zone for Prostitution in the Middle Atlas of Morocco’,
Ethnology 43, no. 1 (2004): ??, https://doi.org/10.2307/3773855.

125
skill that has been left to die with the older generation), it is only when she tarnishes the Tizi
brand by announcing to the local men that a sexually transmitted disease has taken hold of the
community that the women are forced to relinquish their trade. However, Hala, whose plan for
ending the monthly ritual depends on getting rid of their unwanted babies until there is no-one
left to inherit the tradition her forebears created (her daughter, Zaïnba, signifying the final
sacrifice to this way of life), only embraces the idea once she is strangled out of her business,
implying that it is more than a mere lack of resources that prevents her from envisaging a
different future for her tribe. This is perhaps best exemplified through Fahd, who – not by any
heroic attempt to rescue the Tizi women from their fate, but in his repeated failure to intervene –
exposes the impossibility of forging a viable future for these women in a society that stigmatises
them for their vocation even as it denies them other options. Fahd’s inability to see to the root of
the problem is underscored by his frequent, futile attempts to ‘help’ around the village: in one
scene, he makes the grandiose gesture of inexpertly chopping down a sapling for firewood, and
Hala rolls her eyes as he ungraciously lugs the tree towards her neatly-bound bundles of wood.
In a rare moment of intimacy, Hala explains that she is gathering extra wood because there have
been winters where they had none; “…and I am always cold.” When Fahd takes his jacket and
places it chivalrously around her shoulders, Hala laughs bitterly, gesturing to the obvious
sunshine: “But today it’s hot!” Though Fahd appears to take a genuine interest in Hala, he is
unable to see beyond the surface of the Tizi women’s problems, and frustrated by their
unwillingness to be saved. When he corners Hala in the bathhouse to seduce her, insisting that he
is “not one of those who pays,” Hala tells him he can have her body but there is no room in Tizi
for romance:

126
Prends-moi, comme ils le font tous. …Le regard des hommes me salit, et tu es un homme. …Dans aucun
regard, je ne me verrai recouverte du voile des vierges. Mes yeux sont secs. Mon cœur est sec. …Retourne à
ta ville. Là-bas, les rêves sont peut-être possibles. Ici tout est sec.
455

For Hala, a man who doesn’t pay is simply a man who takes what he wants by force. Fahd
is no different to all the others, who judge her even as they take advantage of her availability.
Ultimately, Fahd struggles to relinquish the cultural logic that prevents these women, once
tarnished by their trade, from participating in broader society: familiar rhetorics of dishonour and
shame hang heavily in his confrontations with Hala, whom he holds accountable for subjecting
the women, young and old, to the whims of their clients. What he fails to recognise, however, is
that the problem does not lie with Hala, but with the larger social and political conditions that
facilitate her trade. It goes without saying that there would be no sex workers if there no demand
for their services, but the social stigma attached to women known to have already been sexually
active (for example, those who have been divorced or raped) is a significant causal factor in
Moroccan women taking up sex work. According to Venema and Bakker, due to the
commonality of practices such as repudiation in Amazigh communities, the number of sex
workers in the Middle Atlas is particularly pronounced, and continues to grow alongside the
region’s reputation for providing sexual entertainment to tourists and returning émigrés. Just as
clients are drawn to the area in search of sexual services, marginalised women are drawn to the
area in search of sex work. Furthermore, as Dialmy notes, authorities turn a blind eye to the
industry due its economic benefits. Intermittent “cleansing drives” like the one that led to Mina’s
arrest, meanwhile, are conducted to “remind all that the authorities are capable of interfering, and
to make a show of defending Islamic values and of combating debauchery.”
456
In shaming Hala

455
Take me, like they all do…the gaze of men dishonours me, and you are a man…under no gaze will I see myself
recovered by the veil of virgins. My eyes are dry. My heart is dry…Go back to your city. There, dreams might be
possible. Here everything is dry.
456
Dialmy, ‘Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Society’, 2005, 24.

127
for her actions while failing to offer her a viable alternative, Fahd becomes complicit in this
double discourse. It is not until he watches Hala’s daughter, Zaïnba, be initiated to the Tizi trade,
however, that he realises the full violence of his passive compliance. Having lost his battle of
wills with Hala, he gazes on from the shadows disapprovingly, and is only moved to intervene
once it is already too late. When he bursts into the room Zaïnba was taken to, the client who paid
for the privilege of deflowering a virgin tosses his money at a disgusted Fahd, as a sobbing
Zaïnba reproachfully shuts the door on him.

3.3 Becoming-mother
If Nejjar’s film is a call to action, then it is also a call to feminine identification. Over the
course of the film, Fahd undergoes a steady process of feminisation, or what Patricia Pisters
refers to as his “becoming-woman.”
457
Unable to communicate with the women in Tamazight or
keep up with their demanding daily tasks, he is forced to turn his attention to more menial
domestic chores, like washing clothes and entertaining the village’s only child. Finally, on
Zaïnba’s “night,” he strips off his own clothes and replaces them with Hala’s, in what appears to
be both a symbolic attempt to “wear” her pain and an externalisation of his own: “Do I have to
be a woman, to have the right to suffer? To feel hurt? Humiliated?” As Moroccan scholar
Chourouq Nasri suggests, this cross-gender performance “seems the only way for [Fahd] to come
to terms with women’s unfathomable mystery.”
458
Desperate to identify with the Tizi women, he

457
Patricia Pisters, ‘Refusal of Reproduction: Paradoxes of Becoming-Woman in Transnational Moroccan
Filmmaking’, in Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, ed. Katarzyna Marciniak, Anikó Imre, and Áine
O’Healy, Comparative Feminist Studies Series (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007), 86,
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609655_5.
458
Chourouq Nasri, ‘The Repressed Made Public Through Film in Les Yeux Secs by Narjiss Nejjar’, in The World
as a Global Agora: Critical Perspectives on Public Space, ed. Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil (Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 21.

128
is forced to relinquish any attachment to his masculine identity. What is more, according to
Pisters, his position as an urban outsider means that “Fahd’s becoming-woman also implies a
becoming-minoritarian of the Arab part of Morocco”
459
– or as Said Chemlal puts it, a
“becoming-majoritarian,”
460
since women and Imazighen constitute a demographic majority in
Morocco. Indeed, Fahd’s feelings of alienation and disempowerment in the Middle Atlas recall
the reverse trajectory of many Imazighen who migrate to major cities (like Fahd’s native
Casablanca) in search of work. In particular, his inability to speak the dominant language
(Tamazight), which forces him to rely on Mina and Hala (who are both fluent in Darija,
presumably due to its necessity for trade), reflects many rural Amazigh women’s experiences on
the margins of Moroccan society.
461
But if, as Pisters points out, a “major problem” feminists
have with the concept of ‘becoming-woman’ – a concept that separates being woman from the
fact of female embodiment – is “the fear of a male appropriation and the recuperation of
women’s positions and struggles” that would render them invisible,
462
then what are the
implications of Fahd’s ‘becoming minoritarian’?
The literal absence of Amazigh men in Dry Eyes (“those who pay” are barely featured in
the film, and do not appear to speak Tamazight) produces an obvious alignment between
femininity and Amazighté, made all the more complicated by the fact that all the women are sex
workers. Indeed, Nejjar was criticised in the Amazigh community for reducing Berber identity to
prostitution in the film, and the women of Tizi and Aghbala even filed a defamation suit against

459
Pisters, ‘Refusal of Reproduction’, 86.
460
Chemlal, ‘Screening Femininity and Amazighness in Narjiss Nejjar’s Dry Eyes’, 14.
461
See Katherine E. Hoffman, We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco, Blackwell Studies
in Discourse and Culture 2 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2008), 77.
462
Pisters, ‘Refusal of Reproduction’, 78.

129
the director,
463
declaring: “This film has nothing to do with our region; we are not the
whorehouse of Morocco.”
464
But if Dry Eyes evokes a somewhat problematic comparison
between experiences of sexual exploitation and indigeneity (or indeed Moroccan womanhood),
then it also speaks to a genuine and meaningful link between the suppression of Amazigh
‘culture’ as well as feminine knowledges and practices. As Fatima Sadiqi, points out, in contrast
with the Arabo-Islamic emphasis on written authority (access to which is traditionally reserved
for men), Amazigh women have long been recognised (and traditionally respected) as producers
of culture and history. Skilled work like weaving and embroidery, in addition to oral literature
such as poetry, storytelling and song, considered women’s domain, are traditionally valued just
as highly as men’s contributions to Amazigh society. Thus, “[t]hroughout Morocco’s modern
history,” writes Sadiqi,
…the fate of Amazigh has been closely linked with the fate of women, and it is no coincidence that Amazigh
and women were pushed into the background during the years following independence, nor that the current
sensitivity towards cultural and linguistic rights is matched by a new sensitivity towards women’s rights.
465

Moreover, it would seem that this natural affinity between causes has carried over into the
realm of cinema, where women filmmakers, in particular, are increasingly focused on questions
of Amazighté.
466

There is, however, another side to Amazigh women’s social and rhetorical positioning as
Morocco’cultural guardians. In her research on Ishelhin communities in southern Morocco,
anthropologist Katherine Hoffman asserts that the feminisation of Amazigh languages and

463
A gesture, it should be noted, Noufissa Sbaï (Nejjar’s mother and the film’s producer) claims was politically
orchestrated by men in the region, and was later dropped when it was shown that profits from the film had helped
fund education and health services for women in the area Orlando, Screening Morocco, 137..
464
Orlando, 137 Orlando’s translation.
465
Fatima Sadiqi, ‘The Role of Moroccan Women in Preserving Amazigh Language and Culture’, Museum
International 59, no. 4 (1 December 2007): 27, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0033.2007.00620.x.
466
See Pisters, ‘Refusal of Reproduction’; Sandra Gayle Carter, What Moroccan Cinema? A Historical and Critical
Study, 1956-2006, After the Empire (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009).

130
cultures is a consequence of “gendered spatial practices” that restrict women’s authority to the
domestic sphere; and “[w]hen women are kept monolingual and unschooled for the perceived
good of the community, in part because their illiteracy is understood to guarantee the
maintenance of an ancestral language, their human rights are compromised”
467
With Amazigh
men overwhelmingly leaving their native homelands and languages behind to find work in urban
centres (or abroad, as explored in Yasmina Kassari’s L’enfant endormi [2005]), Hoffman asks
who stands to benefit from making rural, illiterate women the embodiment of ‘authentic’ culture.
Here, it seems the “unfathomable mystery” of woman
468
collapses into the unfathomable mystery
of ‘the native,’ echoing centuries of colonially-derived (and contradictory) discourse about la
femme berbère as headstrong yet vulnerable, primitive yet wise, and rich in culture although
materially poor.
469
As Hoffman notes, through the romanticisation of rural Amazighté, even the
elderly mountain woman becomes “strangely eroticised.”
470
This problematic is crucially
reflected in the older generation of women depicted in Dry Eyes. Only a baby when Mina was
arrested, Hala blames the elders for failing to come to her mother’s aid on the night of the raid,
which we are to understand is her reason for relegating them to the mountains. There, they live
together in the granaries; small holdings cut into the rock which were presumably once used to
store supplies: a sign of Hala’s disregard for the future as well as the ancestral knowledge
preserved in them. Without their mothers, the younger women are left without repertoire crucial
to the survival of the tribe such as midwifery and weaving, which the older women used to fall
back on in hard times.

467
Hoffman, We Share Walls, 78.
468
Nasri, ‘The Repressed Made Public Through Film in Les Yeux Secs by Narjiss Nejjar’, 21.
469
See Dialmy, Féminisme, Islamisme, Soufisme; Hoffman, We Share Walls.
470
Hoffman, We Share Walls, 50.

131
An important source of income for Amazigh communities and an expression of women’s
economic independence, Sadiqi asserts that carpet-weaving, or aSTTa, is also a dynamic
expression of women’s individual and communal identity: that of the individual weaver and that
of her tribe. Over the course of the film, weaving, which art historian Cynthia Becker asserts is
heavily associated with fertility in Amazigh communities, comes to stand in for both cultural and
biological reproduction in Dry Eyes. According to Becker, “[i]n some areas of Morocco, weavers
physically straddle the warp threads and beams of the loom before they are raised, symbolizing
the metaphoric birth of the textile,” which then

“moves through youth, maturity, and old age as it
is woven” and – when it is finished – is “ believed to die.”
471
Women’s role in the propagation of
tribal identity and the preservation of the tribe “as a people” is thus enacted symbolically through
their “the power of life over the textile.”
472
But if Amazigh women are afforded a degree of
authority by their “reproductive and creative powers,” it is equally important to note how this
naturalised association between female fertility, art and ethnic identity “also limits their life
options and results in the control of their sexuality.”
473
Becker observes that while older women
still take pride in their artistic production, younger women have become increasingly resistant to
the burden of this reproductive role. This is exemplified in Hala, who, just as she rejects the
prospect of teaching Tizi to weave by reintegrating their mothers to the tribe, has the women
give away their offspring to ensure that history will not repeat itself. Their eventual salvation will
depend on her dual acceptance of this new trade and the prospect of reproductive futurity.
Hala’s ‘becoming-woman’ thus coincides with her ‘becoming-mother,’ to both the cultural
legacy and possible future generations of the Temsamane tribe (which, incidentally, is only

471
Cynthia J. Becker, Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity, 1st ed (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2006), 34.
472
Becker, 34.
473
Becker, 45.

132
named once Hala agrees to participate in this rebirth). Through her relationship with Fahd, who
provides a path to heteronormative domesticity as well as the urban/economic centre (quite
literally, since he is a provider of transport), she is finally able to escape a life of poverty and
sexual exploitation, while simultaneously forging a future for the Tizi community. We cannot
ignore the biological allegory of this romantic union, however, which points to the metaphorical
marriage (and, presumably, offspring) of urban/Arab and rural/Amazigh communities in
Morocco’s future. As Fahd’s dreams of a relationship with Hala finally come to fruition, so too is
the promise of economic growth and material re/production delivered to the previously
inhospitable terrain of Tizi, where “everything is dry.” Hala’s change of heart thus goes some
way to reinscribe cinematic woman in her traditional role as “safeguard of the nation.”
474
That
her ‘becoming-woman’ is precipitated by that of the only male character in Dry Eyes is
nonetheless significant. Though their mutual feminisation manifests somewhat heavy-handedly
in their newfound ability to feel (by the end of the film, nobody’s eyes are dry any longer), just
like Fahd’s, Hala’s ‘becoming-woman’ entails a softening, a re-evaluation of hard-held
principles and a profound reckoning with her own complicity in the everyday violence of
gendered practices. In relinquishing the patriarchal value placed on female honour in order to
forge a new life for Tizi’s ‘fallen’ women even after social death, together they invite a radical
re-envisioning of national culture.

3.4 Je veux parler aux hommes
While the alignment between female and Amazigh identity sometimes risks reducing
Amazighté to an allegory for female oppression in Dry Eyes, Nejjar’s reliance on popular motifs

474
Pisters, ‘Refusal of Reproduction’, 71.

133
of femininity such as ‘the mother’ and ‘the prostitute’ can perhaps be viewed as a necessary
strategy for drawing genuine attention to Morocco’s very real structural inequality. As Much
Loved has shown us, there are limits as to what can be presented in national cinema even in
Mohamed VI’s more ‘open’ democracy (even, or especially, thirteen years after the release of
Nejjar’s film). Where Nejjar perhaps succeeds (and Ayouch perhaps does not) is in producing a
narrative of feminine subjectivity and sexual ‘freedom’ that is marketable, for the most part, to
both French and Moroccan audiences: even as it empathises with victims of sexual stigma, Dry
Eyes nonetheless echoes palatable logics of sex work as dehumanising; and rather than launching
a wholesale attack on Moroccan patriarchy, Nejjar is careful to offer a positive model of
masculinity (through Fahd) to offset the violence Hala has experienced at the hands of other
men. Meanwhile, Fahd’s deep concern over the ‘deflowering’ of Zaïnba allows the film to
maintain a traditional emphasis on female honour and purity while inviting Western audiences to
lament the loss of innocence through the symbolic figure of the child. For the international
spectator, the film’s interest in eradicating sex work may therefore stem just as easily from an
interest in preserving Islamic patriarchal values as an interest in protecting women from them.
Finally, the parallel trajectories of Hala (whose growing acceptance of Fahd, the cinematic
embodiment of ‘soft’ patriarchy and urban society, opens up the possibility of a different future)
and her village (whose survival is ensured by this opening) allows Nejjar to explore modes of
both individual and communal agency while referring to neither as the Tizi women’s salvation.
Instead, Nejjar appeals to the (perhaps more ‘universal’) language of economic progress, the
moral and political dimensions of Moroccan sex work (and the social and economic failings that
create a market for it in the first place) giving way to the power of tradition-as-merchandise. In
line with the government’s rhetoric of Amazigh inclusivity at the time, the reintroduction of

134
carpet-weaving is framed as both a return to the Tizi women’s Amazigh origins and the key to
their socioeconomic reintegration, the promise of which is echoed in Fahd and Hala’s unlikely
union.
While Nejjar’s focus on economic integration as the path to women’s self-actualisation
may seem a little reductive (as if vocational training alone can undo the misogynist legal and
social structures that have marginalised women in urban as well as rural space, in Morocco and
elsewhere, for centuries), it does allow her to formulate a gender critique outside the highly
politicised terms of ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’ by offering a somewhat less controversial
critique of rural poverty (a problem which, as Ennaji and Sadiqi point out, is nonetheless
distinctly gendered
475
). For Saïd Chemlal, this non-binary approach to controversial topics like
sex, gender and identity is typical of MRE directors, whose work is “usually marked by a
diasporic touch,”
476
but if MRE directors benefit from the freedom to broach such issues then
they often do so – like Ayouch and Nejjar – “under suspicion of putting into place the agenda of
their…Western co-producers.”
477
In Nejjar’s case, it is important to remember where the film
aligns with mainstream Moroccan politics, even as Moroccan critics tend to attribute the film’s
subversive content to its foreign influences. If Dry Eyes appears to present a somewhat
orientalising vision of Amazigh sex workers’ reality, furthermore, it is worth grounding this
expression in the context of Morocco’s Amazigh activism, which anthropologist Paul Silverstein
suggests bears a strategic reliance on “self-primitivism.” The romanticisation of rural life and the
depiction of ‘true’ Amazighté as incompatible with urbanity, as well as the mobilisation of
colonially-derived discourses of “tradition” and “authenticity,” have been instrumental in the

475
See Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi, Migration and Gender in Morocco: The Impact of Migration on the Women
Left Behind (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2008).
476
Chemlal, ‘Screening Femininity and Amazighness in Narjiss Nejjar’s Dry Eyes’, 9. Women left behind?
477
Chemlal, 11.

135
promotion of Amazigh rights in Morocco, where, until recently, the political demands of
Imazighen were actively suppressed by the government (though expressions of ‘culture’ were
largely tolerated).
478
Perhaps the most radical of Nejjar’s appeals, however, is her appeal to men
in the ‘new’ Morocco to embrace a new kind of masculinity. Though Moroccan women’s legal
rights and social mobility were on the rise when Dry Eyes was released, Moroccan men had yet
(some have yet still) to adjust to this “shift in in social reality,” which anthropologist Don
Conway-Long asserts was felt by many as a form of male “oppression.”
479
Through Fahd’s
immersion in the all-female village of Tizi, Nejjar addresses masculine anxieties about “the
emergence of women and the disappearance of men”
480
at a moment of intense national self-
reckoning and renegotiation. The ‘becoming-woman’ of the former prison-guard emphasises the
ubiquitous violence of a society that punishes weakness and celebrates force, alluding to the
feminisation of public space as a unique opportunity for national unity and healing. You do not
have be a prisoner to understand freedom, nor a woman to understand hurt. But just as Mina,
when she fails to convince the Tizi women that they can choose another life for themselves,
takes her rallying cry to the clients, calling on them to put an end to their business and to the
“sickness” that started with them, Nejjar knows that change must start with those in power: “Je
veux parler aux hommes!”

4 Conclusion

478
Paul Silverstein, ‘The Cultivation of “Culture” in the Moroccan Amazigh Movement’, Review of Middle East
Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 168–77.
479
Don Conway-Long, ‘Gender, Power and Social Change in Morocco’, in Islamic Masculinities, ed. Lahoucine
Ouzgane, Global Masculinities (London ; New York : New York: Zed ; Distributed in the USA by Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), 148.
480
Interviewee cited in Conway-Long, 156.

136
As Valérie K. Orlando notes, MRE filmmakers bear a privileged and influential role in the
Moroccan film industry and the broader economy,
481
and many bring much-needed attention to
issues that the Moroccan authorities (for various reasons) are not interested in presenting to
national or international audiences. Yet the pressures of international funding and market
demands – as well as the social and cultural influences on Moroccan directors living abroad – no
doubt steer MRE filmmakers towards subjects such as sex work for its continuing symbolic
value in Moroccan national/ist discourse as well as its ‘sexular’ appeal among European
spectators. What is more, regardless of their motivations in making sexual exploitation in the
Maghreb known to a national and international audience, the power dynamics inherent to the
telling and re-telling of these stories means that they inevitably capitalise on the marginalised
subjectivities they supposedly defend. As Jimi Boutouba writes on earlier representations of
“woman” in Moroccan cinema,
Si l'idée est louable, voire essentielle, son traitement à l'écran masque parfois d'autres systèmes de
représentation qui, loin de promouvoir la rhétorique libératrice dont les cinéastes…se font pourtant les
chantres, finissent par l'obscurcir, et même l'effacer, au profit d'une représentation symbolique.
482

What is perhaps required, then, is a more tactical approach to representations of sexual
freedom; one that, as Rey Chow suggests, rather than conceiving of “agency of the native…in
terms of a resistance against the image,” can “be rethought as that which bears witness to its own
demolition.”
483
What would a diasporic cinema look like that, to use Chow’s words, “is at once
image and gaze”
484
? How can the ‘image’ be manipulated to reflect its own politics? Though, as
we have seen, the complicated and contradictory motifs of gender oppression and sexual freedom

481
Orlando, Screening Morocco, 39.
482
‘If the idea is laudable, even essential, her treatment on the screen sometimes masks other systems of
representation which, far from promoting the liberating rhetoric of which the filmmakers ... are nevertheless the
champions, end up obscuring it, and even erase it, in favor of a symbolic representation’ Boutouba, ‘Femmes
d’images et Images de Femmes: Parcours Féminins et Culture Visuelle Au Maghreb’, 146. (my translation).
483
Chow, Writing Diaspora, 51.
484
Chow, 51.

137
that undergird cinematic depictions of ‘the prostitute’ can be problematic, in many ways the
ambivalent status of the sex-worker-as-subject succeeds in troubling structurations of feminine
agency. Even where, as in the case of Ayouch, directors attempt to capture the “reality” of sex
work, in an industry dictated by complex dynamics of sex, race, class and cultural imperialism
(dynamics that, it should be noted, also dominate the Moroccan sex industry), it proves very
difficult to produce a cinematic narrative that resists the inter/national image of ‘the (Moroccan)
prostitute.’ What he does capture, however, is the inescapable violence of the cinematic gaze on
Moroccan women. Ayouch’s failure to disengage the camera from the objectifying look of the
sexual consumer, coupled with the Moroccan government’s reading of the film as an ‘attack’ on
Morocco’s national image, reveal the impossibility of extricating representations of Moroccan
sex work from competing national/ist discourses surrounding Muslim and Maghrebi sexuality.
Nejjar’s film, meanwhile, makes no effort to dispel with rhetorical positioning of ‘the prostitute.’
By mobilising familiar tropes of Amazighté and femininity in Moroccan national/ist cinema,
Nejjar makes a strategic appeal to multiple spectatorships (national and international, feminine
and masculine, Arabo-Islamic and Amazigh) in her critique of contemporary Moroccan society.
As with many “women-made images of women”
485
in the Maghreb, however, these tropes are
“always under negotiation.”
486
Displaying the tactical “interdiscursivity” that Florence Martin
says is characteristic of Maghrebi women’s cinema, not just femininity but masculinity,
ethnicity, and Moroccan national identity take on a new ambivalence in Dry Eyes; forging a
world wherein ‘the prostitute’ can also be ‘the mother,’ Imazighen can choose a future that is
both connected to the ‘centre’ and remains Amazigh; and men can reject patriarchal violence,
choosing instead to grieve and help heal Morocco’s wounded society.

485
Martin, Screens and Veils, 2.
486
Martin, 23.

138

CHAPTER THREE

Moroccan women writers in the quest for unmarked authorship

I’m not sure that Morocco or France are my countries. I’m always very surprised when
people say, ‘I’m proud to be French,’ or ‘I’m proud to be Moroccan.’ No, my country
is language. My country is a library. In a library, I feel at home anywhere, it can be
New York, Paris, Morocco, anywhere. Yeah, so my hometown, my land, is this world of
languages, libraries, books, and that’s what I want to transmit, to convey to people that
culture and reading and literature emancipates you. I think I became a free woman
thanks to this, to culture.
- Leïla Slimani
487

In the ambivalent world of the ‘not quite/not white’, on the margins of metropolitan
desire, the founding objects of the Western world become the erratic, eccentric,
accidental objets trouvés of the colonial discourse – the part-objects of presence. It is
then that the body and the book lose their part-objects of presence. It is then that the
body and the book lose their representational authority.
- Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture
488

1 Introduction
If the films discussed in Chapter Two reveal the readiness with which Maghrebi women’s
bodies are coded, visually and discursively, as symbols of sexual-national 'truth' (making
cinematic woman once again the “bearer” and not the “maker” of meaning
489
), then the vigour
with which MRE actors and directors are commended and criticised for their portrayal of
Moroccan women’s realities speaks to the difficulty these artists have escaping their position as
“representers of a culture.”
490
Even in the supposedly transcendent realm of literature, the work
of Franco-/Maghrebi writers is inevitably read in conjunction with their national/cultural identity

487
Quoted in John Freeman, ‘Leila Slimani Doesn’t Care If You’re Uncomfortable’, Literary Hub (blog), 29 April
2019, https://lithub.com/leila-slimani-doesnt-care-if-youre-uncomfortable/.
488
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 92.
489
Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 2.
490
Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic, 26.

139
(an identity, it should be added, that artists themselves may or may not identify with). According
to Graham Huggan, this “representativeness” is a burden commonly placed on postcolonial
writers, whose audiences consist primarily of metropolitan markets in search of “an ‘authentic’,
but readily translatable, marginal voice.”
491
However, it is also a burden that we have seen falls
disproportionately on Muslim and (especially) “secular Muslim”
492
women in France, where
autobiographers like Loubna Abidar
493
gain intellectual celebrity with the publication of their
reveal-all témoignages, transforming them into sought-after authorities on the cultural and sexual
reality of women in Islam. There is, by now, a long line of what Elora Shehabuddin refers to as
“native informant” literature in France – personal stories of gender violence that perform a
“disingenuous blending of facts and misstatements about the very real problems in the lives of
Muslim women” at the expensive of real scholarship on the subject.
494
But if the MRE film
industry relies on the female body to present European audiences with palatable displays of
sexual agency, it would appear that the demand for Maghrebi women to embody sexular ideals is
no less urgent in the context of the French literary market, which thrives on narratives of Muslim
women’s sexual misery.
Perhaps more remarkable is the way in which Franco-/Maghrebi women writers who
refuse to take on such subjects in their work still find themselves at the centre of discussions
about sexual-national politics. For Paris-based Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani, whose work I

491
Huggan, 26.
492
For Fernando, ‘la musulmane laïque’ is instrumental in the discourse attacking ‘la musulmane voilée,’
quintessential symbol of gender oppression in the Muslim community. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 186.
493
Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse; Though we have studied the political implications of Abidar’s
autobiographical work in Chapter 2, there are a number of self-proclaimed ‘secular’ and ‘former’ Muslim writers
who have assumed an active role in French politics as a result of their ‘témoignages.’ See, for example Amara, Ni
Putes Ni Soumises; Samira Bellil and Josée Stoquart, Dans l’enfer des tournantes (Paris: Gallimard, 2009); Djavann,
Bas les voiles!; Ayari, J’ai choisi d’être libre; and Plus jamais voilée, plus jamais violée.
494
Elora Shehabuddin, ‘Gender and the Figure of the “Moderate Muslim”: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century.’,
in The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism, ed. Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed, 21st Century
Studies, v. 4 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 104.

140
will analyse in this chapter, the author is the universal subject par excellence: “[W]hen I put
myself at my desk,” writes Slimani, “I’m no longer really me. I’m no longer a woman, I’m no
longer Moroccan or French…I’m free of everything.”
495
It would seem her readers, however, are
more reluctant to separate her work from her identity. In a televised “conversation” with the
Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, Slimani complains of journalists approaching her to comment on
topics such as veiling, which she knows next to nothing about, and recalls – bemusedly, if a little
irate – a colleague who implied that the success of her debut novel (Dans le jardin de l’ogre) was
only due to her being “Arabe.” When it comes to writing about topics she is passionate about,
such as terrorism and sexuality, she does not hesitate to mobilise her positionality: as a woman,
as a Moroccan, and as a (secular) Muslim living in France. As a writer of fiction, however, she
insists on her autobiographical absence from the text; a stance she shares with emerging author,
Meryem Alaoui, whose debut novel, La verité sort de la bouche du cheval [Straight From the
Horse’s Mouth] (2018 [2020]), I will begin by discussing in this chapter. Like many of her
predecessors, Alaoui has been commended for bringing a frank portrayal of Moroccan women’s
reality before metropolitan audiences, and for daring to broach such controversial topics as
prostitution, drugs, domestic abuse, and single motherhood in her work. In interview, however,
the author persistently resists the assumption that, as a Moroccan woman writing about
Moroccan women, she is necessarily writing about ‘real’ life. Echoing Slimani, Alaoui staunchly
denies any biographical relation to her characters, insisting that the only ‘truth’ about La vérité
is that it is entirely fictional. As with Slimani, however, Alaoui finds her readers less willing to
separate the work from its origin.

495
"…lorsque je me mets à la table de travail, je ne suis plus vraiment moi. Je ne suis plus une femme, je ne suis
plus marocaine ou française…je suis affranchie de tout." Slimani in a published interview in Leïla Slimani and Éric
Fottorino, Comment j’écris: conversation avec Éric Fottorino, 2018, 13. (my translation)

141
In a market that looks to North African intellectuals for answers to some of France’s most
divisive debates (namely: immigration, sex, and secularism; neatly encompassed under Joan
Scott’s term: ‘sexularism’
496
), the pressure on authors like Slimani and Alaoui to offer some sort
of cultural insight is pronounced, and their literary contributions readily absorbed into existing
discourses about Muslim and Maghrebi ‘reality.’
497
How, then, might women authors from the
Maghreb resist the burden of representation so pervasively attached to their identity? For self-
identified ‘Chicana, tejana, working-class, dyke-feminist poet,’ Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘unmarked’
writing is the unique privilege of the dominant elite: ‘If the writer is middle class, white, and
heterosexual s/he is crowned with the “writer” hat—no mitigating adjectives in front of it.
Adjectives are a way of constraining and controlling…Marking is always “marking down.”’
498

Since a writer’s identity, Anzaldúa argues, resides as much in the reader as in does in the body
that writes, it is impossible to produce a writing that resists being ‘marked.’ But if identities have
multiple origins, then there is scope even within ‘marked’ writing to forge new ways of reading,
and thus new ways of writing and identifying. This is where Leïla Slimani and Meryem Alaoui, I
will argue, make a strategic and necessary intervention into the performative and narrative
expectations placed on women authors from the Maghreb. Though their work very clearly
(perhaps even consciously) appeals to the metropolitan market’s desire for ‘authentic’ narratives
of Muslim women’s sexual misery, the authors' persistent ambiguisation of authorship both
inside and outside the text shines a revealing light on the commodification of marginal voices in

496
Scott, ‘Sexularism’, 2009; See also Scott, The Politics of the Veil; Fernando, The Republic Unsettled; Mack,
Sexagon.
497
In addition to Leïla Slimani, authors Kamel Daoud, Abdellah Taïa, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Sonia Terrab are
frequently asked to speak on issues of gender and sexual equality in the Maghreb and France’s Muslim community.
498
Anzaldúa, ‘To(o) Queer the Writer - Loca, Escritora y Chicana’, 164.

142
the international culture industry, and on the complicated dynamics of literary representation in
France.

2 Renegotiating the misery market; or: Why no-one’s buying the happy
ending in Meryem Alaoui’s La vérité sort de la bouche du cheval

2.1 Straight from the horse’s mouth
First-time novelist Meryem Alaoui is one of a growing number of francophone Moroccan
authors and artists to gain international popularity in recent years, releasing her debut novel, La
vérité sort de la bouche du cheval, to broad (though brief) acclaim in 2018. Hot on the heels of
2016 Goncourt prize-winner, Leïla Slimani, Alaoui went on to receive a flurry of awards
nominations and to spark lively debate with her book, which reached anglophone audiences last
year. A confessional monologue written from the perspective of a Casablanca sex worker who is
recruited by a Dutch-Moroccan filmmaker to lend her script a little ‘authenticity,’ La vérité was
widely believed to be a literary take on the Much Loved affair, though Alaoui remains adamant
that the book was written before the film’s release.
499
Whether this is true, or if the
entrepreneurial Alaoui (founder of TelQuel magazine’s in-house advertising agency and
Morocco’s largest content marketer) wanted to cash in on the “thème vendeur”
500
of Moroccan
sex work, the book serves as a timely interlocutor. Casting a wry eye on the MRE cinema
industry, Alaoui good-naturedly pokes at the power dynamics of international co-production and
the misguided quest for authenticity while offering an alternative vision of truth and storytelling

499
Interview?
500
‘selling theme’ ‘Meryem Alaoui : naissance d’une romancière’, Challenge, 21 September 2018,
https://www.challenge.ma/meryem-alaoui-naissance-dune-romanciere-98979/. (my translation).

143
through the candid yet affable Jmiaa.
501
The title itself performs a destabilising deception,
inviting readers to delve into the diary of a prostitute for the ‘truth from the horse’s mouth,’ only
to discover that the ‘horse’ is not Jmiaa but the toothy European director who has come all the
way to Morocco to make a film about ‘la vraie vie.’
502
The Dutch-born niece of one of Jmiaa’s
neighbours, Bouche de Cheval (as she is known until the end of the book; her real name is
Chadlia) arrives in search of a sex worker to help her finish her script: a dramatic story about
poverty, violence and crime that ends in the death of her heroine. “J’ai presque fini d’écrire mon
histoire,” Bouche de cheval tells Jmiaa, “Mais je voudrais m’assurer que ce n’est pas à côté de la
réalité."
503
Baffled by this glamorous outsider’s interest in hearing what she has to say, Jmiaa
gladly accepts the money, but she soon finds that Bouche de cheval is the one who will do the
talking: “Quand j’y pense, finalement, je n’ai presque pas parlé ce soir.”
504

Bouche de cheval never visits the apartment Jmiaa lives in or the bar that she frequents;
instead they spend their sessions driving around parts of the city Jmiaa has never been to while
the aspiring director chain smokes marijuana and rambles at length about her script. When
Bouche de Cheval does eventually visit Jmiaa’s neighbourhood, it’s to shoot a scene for her film
(in which Jmiaa will now star), but the crew’s quest for an authentic setting has a destabilising
effect on Jmiaa’s everyday landscape. Finding herself outside of a jewellery store that ordinarily
sells cheap clothing, Jmiaa is perturbed by the unfamiliar order that the set brings to her streets:
while some of the usual mess has been preserved for effect, a closed set brings a peculiar

501
‘Jmiaa’ refers to plurality, suggesting that, even though it is her job to be available to anyone, she may also be
many things. JmaA refers to gathering (and the mosque as a place of gathering), but in the Qur’an is used to refer to
sex.
502
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 165; ‘When I think about it, in the end, I hardly spoke that
night.’ Meryem Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, trans. Emma Ramadan (New York: Other Press, 2020),
122.
503
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 103.
504
Alaoui, 111.

144
stillness to the hustle and bustle of the local market, and an overabundance of security naturally
places the sex worker on edge. That police have been summoned to put the Dutch film crew at
ease following a recent bombing in Marrakesh – a real event which took place in 2011 and was
widely (though inconclusively) attributed to Al-Qaida, with huge consequences for the Moroccan
tourist industry – further suggests that, for Bouche de Cheval’s purposes, Jmiaa’s neighbourhood
could be anywhere in Morocco. For Jmiaa, on the other hand, the threat feels quite distant:
Il y a deux jours, il y a un taré qui s’est fait sauter dans un café à Marrakech. Le gars, il s’est levé un matin, il
a mis une bombe dans son sac, il est entré dans un café et boum ! C’est ce que lui a dicté son cerveau
dérangé. Va comprendre. C’était dans cet endroit très connu qu’ils appellent Jemaa el-Fna. Moi, je n’y ai
jamais été mais ils le montrent souvent à la télévision. Il y a des charmeurs de serpents, des voyants, des
vendeurs de jus d’orange, d’escargots, plein de choses. Je ne sais pas combien de touristes y sont passés.
Depuis ce jour, les Hollandais n’ont pas changé de sujet. Maaizou a dit qu’ils ont peur de se faire exploser
eux aussi.
505

Attributing the bombing to the mental instability of an individual in a city she has only
ever seen on TV, Jmiaa cannot comprehend the crew’s perceived proximity to the situation. But
if Jmiaa is unsettled by the crew’s attempts to secure and sanitise her neighbourhood (an image
strangely evocative of Moroccan cities’ colonial occupation), she is equally bemused by their
fascination with those aspects she would rather turn a blind eye to. As Jmiaa’s friends and
neighbours gather behind the barriers to watch the shoot, a local madwoman named Mbarka
506

wanders obliviously onto set, but when the police try to move her out of the way, Bouche de

505
Alaoui, 203–4; ‘Two days ago, some crazy guy blew himself up in a café in Marrakech. The guy got up one
morning, put a bomb in his bag, walked into a café and boom! That’s what his deranged brain told him to do. Who
knows why. It was in that super famous square, Jemaa el-Fnaa. I’ve never been before but they show it on TV all the
time. There are snake charmers, fortune-tellers, orange-juice sellers, snails, all sorts of things. An insane amount of
tourists have gone there. Since that day, the Dutch haven’t shut up about it. Maaizou said they’re afraid of being
blown up too.’ Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, 228.
506
Perhaps coincidentally, Mbarka Bouaida was one of the first women to join Moroccan parliament, under the
women’s quota introduced in 2007, and subsequently chaired the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Bouaida became
the first woman elected to lead a Moroccan region in 2019. Alaoui’s appropriation of the name for the local
madwoman is therefore perhaps a playful gesture towards the freedoms opened up to women when they refuse to
observe social boundaries (though Soumia Boutkhil notes that this is a problematic, if not uncommon, trope). Jmiaa
seems to think Mbarka’s madness is purely performative, and she is resentful of the privileges it appears to entail :
“Comme elle est folle, elle peut faire ce qu’elle veut. Mais moi je pense qu’elle fait semblant pour que les gens la
laissent tranquille.” (106).

145
cheval leaps to her defence, refusing to resume filming until she is released. Mbarka’s
interruption reveals a significant disparity in what the Dutch and Moroccan spectators take from
the scene that unfolds: while the film crew hurl accusations of police brutality, the Moroccan
onlookers simply laugh at Mbarka as she shouts and flails her arms, stumbling to the floor when
the police go to put their hands on her. Jmiaa, meanwhile, decides to light a cigarette and
“profiter du spectacle,”
507
letting us know she is unconvinced by the old lady’s performance:
Et voilà, ils lui donnent une chaise maintenant. Et ils lui apportent un Fanta à elle aussi. N’importe quoi ! Et
regarde-la ! Maintenant, elle fait la victime devant eux. Elle montre ses cicatrices aux jambes à Bouche de
cheval. Et ses cicatrices aux coudes. Et le bouton de fièvre sous son rouge à lèvres qu’elle essuie sur la
manche de sa jellaba. Cinglée ! Et cinglés vous aussi qui faites attention à elle et à son cirque ! C’est à vos
poches que vous devriez faire attention. Elle peut vous les nettoyer avant que vous ayez eu le temps de dire «
aïe ». Mais je vais me calmer parce que ce n’est pas mon problème. Et puis cette folle, laisse-la faire son
cinéma tant qu’elle le peut encore.
508

This is not the first instance in which Jmiaa appears suspicious of Mbarka’s performance, and
resentful of the privileges that her ‘madness’ apparently entails : “Comme elle est folle, elle peut
faire ce qu’elle veut. Mais moi je pense qu’elle fait semblant pour que les gens la laissent
tranquille.”
509
Throughout the novel, Jmiaa appears similarly unsympathetic to the misfortune of
others, and refuses to display her own grief for fear of “making a show of herself.”
510
Having
begrudgingly accepted the ill-fated role given to her by Bouche de cheval, however, she begins
here to realise what Mbarka has apparently known all along: that ‘playing the victim’ comes with
certain benefits.

507
‘enjoy the show’ Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 210 (my translation).
508
Alaoui, 211–12; ‘They’ve even given her a chair now. And they brought her a Fanta too. Bullshit! And look at
her! Now she’s playing the victim in front of them. She’s showing the scars on her legs to Horse Mouth. And the
scars on her elbows. And the cold sore underneath her lipstick which she wipes off on the sleeve of her djellaba.
She’s out of her mind! And all you people who fuss over her and her antics are out of your minds too! It’s your
pockets you should be fussing over. She’ll clean you out before you can even say “aye.” But I’m going to let it go
because it’s not my problem. And let that crazy woman live it up while she still can.’ Alaoui, Straight from the
Horse’s Mouth, 236–37.
509
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 106; ‘Since she’s crazy, she can do what she likes. But I have an
inkling she only pretends so that people leave her alone.’ Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, 117.
510
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 75.

146
2.2 Going off script
Part of what is so captivating about Jmiaa as a narrator is her ability to recount even the
most troubling experiences (rape, physical abuse, abandonment by her husband who tricked her
into prostitution, raising a daughter alone in abject poverty) with an indefatigable sense of
humour Alaoui claims is “tout simplement Marocain.”
511
Alaoui nonetheless gestures to the
darker dynamics at work in the international film industry. One such moment is when,
reminiscent of Abidar’s experiences on the set of Much Loved, Jmiaa is asked by Bouche de
Cheval to act out a violent confrontation with her on-screen boyfriend, and, feeling the pressure
to perform, is forced to repeatedly rehearse the scene. Only when Jmiaa snaps at her co-star after
hours of being knocked around (“Pédé! Ce n’est pas comme s’il n’y avait plus d’hommes sur
terre pour que j’endure ça!”
512
) does Bouche de cheval achieve the realism she is looking for,
and while the three laugh it off over a few beers and Jmiaa leaves feeling pleased with her work,
the scene’s proximity to Jmiaa’s own experiences of physical abuse lead the reader to question
its real impact on her. Jmiaa’s self-awareness is again put into question towards the end of the
book, when she travels with Bouche de Cheval to San Francisco to attend an awards ceremony.
As Jmiaa balks at the size of the food portions and refuses to let any homeless people in her
photos,
513
the trip presents an amusing countershot of the Dutch film crew’s exoticising gaze on
Morocco, but one encounter exposes her vulnerability, even amid her success. Donning a
headscarf and jellaba one day so she can go to the store without getting done up, Jmiaa catches

511
“simply Moroccan." Interview ?
512
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 189; “Asshole! It’s not like there are no other men left on earth,
I don’t have to put up with this shit!” Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, 211.
513
“Il n’y a qu’un seul truc que je n’ai pas pris en photo. Mais ça, c’était volontaire. C’est les clochards. Putain, cette
ville est pleine de clochards. Pire que Casa. Je ne sais pas la putain de leur race d’où ils sortent. Comme c’est
Bouche de cheval qui prend les photos, je lui ai bien dit dès le début : ‘Prends-moi où tu veux, quand tu veux, mais
pas de clochards sur mes photos. C’est l’Amérique ici.’” Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 233.

147
the attention of a tattooed skinhead who rolls down his car window and simulates shooting her
with his hand. Clearly missing the signifiers that Alaoui is nonetheless keen to communicate,
Jmiaa fails to realise that she has been the victim of racial abuse, and instead of reacting in fear
or anger she finishes the scene that the skinhead initiated by immediately dropping to the ground
as if she had really been injured. Once again, Jmiaa leaves pleased with her work (“Il n’y a pas à
dire, si je gagne un prix à ce festival, c’est parce que je suis trop forte.”
514
), but her eagerness to
play the victim (quite literally this time) is jarring even as it makes a farce of the delivered threat.
As readers, we are all too aware of the dangers of white supremacy and the risks posed to bodies
that fail to ‘pass’ in white space, yet for Jmiaa the attack is an interpellation to resume the role
that has afforded her access to it.
This comic play on the violence of narrative and social convention is characteristic of
Alaoui’s larger intervention into the scripts that shape ‘third-world’ narratives. While Alaoui’s
decision to situate her novel against the backdrop of working-class prostitution could be seen as
an investment in what Sara Ahmed terms the “fetishisation of the wound” (whereby subaltern
pain is cut off from a history of “getting hurt” even as it is transformed into “media
spectacle”
515
), she is also clearly invested in exposing the exploitative dynamics of the misery
market. If Bouche de cheval is drawn to Jmiaa out of a fascination with the pain that she
embodies, Jmiaa does not define herself in these terms, nor does she express any interest in
having her experiences of violence and oppression heard. In fact, she struggles to understand
why anybody would be interested in such a tale, and she routinely balks at Bouche de Cheval’s
narrative choices, even if she is happy to ‘play along’ for the money. Confronted by a market
that is driven by narratives of (especially Muslim women’s) oppression and marginality, Jmiaa

514
Alaoui, 233.
515
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 32.

148
represents a different kind of consumer: while Bouche de cheval sees cinema as a means of
representing ‘real life’ (“Il faut que ce soit comme dans la vraie vie. C’est du cinéma mais il faut
que ce soit comme la vie. Pour que les gens y croient. Qu’ils pensent que c’est vraiment
arrivé.”
516
), for Jmiaa, who is drawn to the glamour and romance of Mexican telenovelas, it is
about the freedom to fantasise; about creating an alternative reality. Bouche de cheval, of course,
ignores Jmiaa’s pleas to spare her two protagonists the car crash that tragically kills them at the
end of the film, instead allowing them to ride off into the sunset. However, Jmiaa does
eventually find happy ending she is looking for: in an unexpected coup de kitsch, Alaoui stages
what is perhaps her most radical narrative intervention by having Jmiaa scouted by an
international agent to star in a telenovela in Mexico, where she now lives with her daughter and a
kindly member of the Dutch film crew who has fallen in love with her. Against all narrative
expectations, Jmiaa escapes a world of misery through pure opportunism, while her good-for-
nothing husband is left to suffer the fate that was written for her: dying in a car crash in
Morocco.
If this plot resolution seems a little convenient, then it would appear that Alaoui is
conscious of the fact. When Jmiaa first begins reading Bouche de cheval’s script (dimissing it as
“un bordel pas possible”
517
), she starts to get the feeling that perhaps her life, too, is scripted:
“Peut-être qu’il y a des choses qui arrivent pour rien dans la vie. Et peut-être aussi que tout ce
qui se passe, c’est déjà prévu, planifié, tracé, tout. Comme dans un film.”
518
This is not the only
time that Jmiaa draws a parallel between narrative structure and religious destiny, remarking
that, on set, Bouche de cheval is invested with a god-like power:

516
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 165.
517
‘un unbelievable mess’ Alaoui, 175. (my translation).
518
Alaoui, 174; ‘Maybe there are things that happen in life for no reason. Or maybe everything that happens is
already foreseen, planned, outlined, all of it. Like in a film.’ Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, 192.

149
Toute la journée, elle est planquée derrière sa boîte noire qui ressemble à la Kaaba et elle fait la chef en
regardant son écran. Tu ne vois que ses jambes qui dépassent par en bas. Et comme ses oreilles sont
encerclées par des écouteurs énormes, elle parle fort. Si tu as fumé du shit ou si tu n’es pas sobre, tu pourrais
la confondre avec Dieu, qui donne des ordres et qu’on ne voit jamais.
519

Over the course of the novel, however, Jmiaa begins to realise that there are multiple ‘scripts’ to
choose from. Dancing alone in her apartment to a song by her favourite Moroccan singer, Najat
Aaatabou,
520
Jmiaa is washing her clothes to rhythm of the music and singing along to the lyrics
– about a young woman begging God to forgive her for giving herself to a man who betrayed her
– when, realising that the story no longer relates to her life, she is overcome by laughter and
begins dancing like a woman possessed: “Moi, à ce moment, j’ai décollé. Toute cette histoire, ce
n’était plus mon problème.”
521
Divorcing herself from this narrative, she is gripped by a state of
euphoria akin to jedba, the trance-like dance traditionally performed at Gnawa ceremonies.
522

According to ethnographer Meriem Alaoui Btarny, the word jedba, which has connotations of
joy and rapture, is thought to be therapeutic as well as deeply transformational for the possessed,
their dancing bodies becoming ‘un tourbillon de codes’
523
in an ever-evolving language of signs.
Jmiaa’s movements, and her proximity to water when she is overcome by her folie, would
suggest that she has been possessed by the legendary Aïcha Qandisha: a beautiful woman with
goat legs known to steal men’s hearts and minds while bestowing generous gifts on womenfolk,

519
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 194; ‘All day, she hides out behind her black box that looks like
the Kaaba* and she does the director thing, staring at her screen. All you can see is her legs sticking out of the
bottom. And since her ears are covered with enormous headphones, she talks loudly. If you’ve been smoking hash or
drinking, you might confuse her with God, giving orders, always unseen.’ Alaoui, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth,
218.
520
This may be a reference to female Moroccan director, Farida Benlyazid’s film, A Door to the Sky/Une porte sur
le ciel. According to Sarah Gayle Carter, Najat Atabou is the Amazigh singer the protagonist listens to when she
decides to leave her abusive husband in this film. See Carter, What Moroccan Cinema?, 305 (footnote 174).
521
"And then I really took off. That story wasn’t my problem anymore." Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du
Cheval, 119 [131].
522
See Meryem Alaoui Btarny, ‘Entrer Dans La Danse Avec Les Gnawa’, in Penser Le Corps Au Maghreb, ed.
Monia Lachheb, Hommes et Sociétés (Paris : Tunis: Karthala ; Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain,
2012), 68.
523
Alaoui Btarny, 72.

150
and now a popular figure in Moroccan feminist folklore. In contrast with the religious coding of
Aatabou’s song, Jmiaa’s embrace of these signs of spiritual possession imply a rejection of
religious authority:
Les gens, ils disent que ce n’est pas bien de rire autant. Ils disent que si tu ris comme ça, c’est que Satan n’est
pas loin.…Moi, ce que je dis, c’est que ceux qui racontent ça, ce sont des complexés à deux balles. Ils font ça
parce qu’ils s’emmerdent dans leur vie et qu’ils veulent que tout le monde vive comme eux, dans la misère.
524

Thus, while Jmiaa might reject the script that Bouche de cheval offers her, it appears that she is
equally resistant to those scripts that keep her beholden to her abusive husband and ashamed of
the profession he forced her into. Refusing to embody her misery, she embraces radical
happiness.
2.3 The truth about happiness
Jmiaa’s desire for a happy ending is echoed in Fatima Sadiqi’s work on Moroccan media,
which Sadiqi asserts is fundamentally “dictated by larger political and economic ideologies.”
525

According to Sadiqi, women are continually overreported in the criminal news and the huge
strides that Moroccan women have made in terms of access to healthcare, education,
employment, and public engagement since the 1960s are routinely downplayed to make way for
more conservative visions of femininity: “In focusing on the traditional roles of women and
neglecting the new roles that women have gained at a high price, the media in Morocco
marginalizes women and their efforts.”
526
However, while Sadiqi condemns the mis- and under-
representation of Moroccan women in the media, she is not necessarily interested in promoting

524
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 120–21; ‘People say it’s not good to laugh so much. They say
that when you laugh like that, Satan isn’t far off. That he’s taking advantage of your distraction to approach you.
That he’s ready to pounce. What I think is that the people who say such things are just incredibly insecure. They do
it because they’re bored with their lives and want for everyone else to be like them: miserable.’ Alaoui, Straight
from the Horse’s Mouth, 133.
525
Fatima Sadiqi, ‘The Marginalisation of Moroccan Women in Society and the Media’, in Femmes marginalisées
et insertion sociale, ed. Fatima Sadiqi and Ford Foundation, 1ère éd (Fès: Centre ISIS pour Femmes et
Développement : GTZ ; La Fondation Ford, 2010), 87.
526
Sadiqi, ??

151
an image that reflects Moroccan women’s reality. Rather, given the power of the media to
influence lives, Sadiqi believes it is important to focus on creating more role models, even if that
means, for example, “portray[ing] Moroccan educated women significantly more than illiterate
women”
527
despite the latter vastly outnumbering the former. Sadiqi is not the first to suggest an
aspirational politics of feminine representation: according to Roy Armes, women directors such
as Farida Bourquia and Farida Benlyazid are known for shedding a more positive light on
women’s issues in their work, in comparison with their male counterparts.
528
By offering light-
hearted narratives that identify “opportunities as well as difficulties for women in the Islamic
context,”
529
these women counter domestic as well as foreign demands for “stereotypical images
of [Moroccan] women as subservient, docile and weak.”
530
This opens up their films to a new
kind of consumer: consumers like Jmiaa, who would rather watch movies to “changer d’air et
rigoler un peu.”
531

Yet, as Sara Ahmed reminds us in The Promise of Happiness, happy endings are also
political, and the “happiness scripts”
532
that circulate in public and popular discourses cannot be
thought separately from the misery market. Ahmed argues that happiness functions as a social
device for “making certain forms of personhood valuable”
533
: “…by finding happiness in certain

527
Sadiqi, 93.
528
Benlyazid’s À la recherché du mari de ma femme (al-Baht al-zowj mrati) is an enduring favourite in in Moroccan
cinema history (1995). The story centres on a wealthy jeweller from Fez who, in a fit of jealousy, makes the mistake
of verbally repudiating his young wife (the youngest of a tight-knit group of four) for smiling at the man delivering a
sacrificial sheep for Eid al-Adha. According to Moroccan law, a man could repudiate his wife verbally and
instantaneously up to three times before the motion became irreversible – with the legal caveat that if the divorced
woman then remarried and her new husband also repudiated her, her first husband would be permitted to marry her
again. The film thus follows the jeweller with equal affection and derision as he suffers the (hilarious) consequences
of his pig-headedness, searching for a suitable second husband for his wife.
529
Armes, ‘Cinemas of the Maghreb’, 13.
530
Sadiqi, ‘The Marginalisation of Moroccan Women in Society and the Media’, 91.
531
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 109.
532
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010), 59.
533
Ahmed, 11.

152
places, it generates those places as being good, as being what should be promoted as goods.”
534

Happiness scripts thus bear a significant “regulative power”
535
: by attaching the promise of
happiness to certain modes of being, they orientate us towards certain objects while threatening
us with “the unhappy consequences of deviation.”
536
For Ahmed, revolution lies not in happy
endings but in narratives that resist happiness and “kill joy.”
537
Feminist archives are “unhappy
archives” because they “expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under
public signs of joy.”
538
There can perhaps, then, be no radical happiness, for if third-world
misery functions as a mechanism of cultural imperialism, then it surely pivots on the assumption
that happiness lies elsewhere. If Alaoui’s happy ending surprises readers in its defiance of third-
world narrative expectations, then it is precisely because we find happiness where we do not
expect it to be: “Happiness and unhappiness become newsworthy when they challenge ideas
about the social status of specific individuals, group, and nations, often confirming status through
the language of disbelief.”
539
It is not insignificant that Jmiaa finds her happy ending far away
from Morocco, and the fact that Jmiaa’s characteristic optimism is coded as resilience here (the
meta-commentary Jmiaa provides when describing her telenovela role in the novel’s “Epilogue”
confirms this: “…mon personnage, comme il est futé, il esquive les coups qui viennent de tous
les côtés.”
540
) only reinforces assumptions about the Maghreb as a place where happiness is not.
This in mind, we might question the extent to which Jmiaa’s initial happiness is scripted as
‘false.’ To what extent is La vérité a story of Jmiaa realizing her own unhappiness? If we
consider Ahmed’s assertion that “colonial knowledges constitute the other not only as….a truth

534
Ahmed, 11.
535
Ahmed, 199.
536
Ahmed, 91.
537
Ahmed, 20.
538
Ahmed, 65.
539
Ahmed, 3.
540
Alaoui, La Vérité Sort de La Bouche Du Cheval, 250.

153
to be discovered, but as being unhappy,”
541
then we may begin to understand Jmiaa’s
unhappiness as “la vérité” that emerges courtesy of Bouche de cheval.
2.4 A writer without origin
When asked if her novel was intended as a message of hope for those women who, like
Jmiaa, practice “des métiers difficiles,” Alaoui responded: “Absolument pas. L’histoire de Jmiaa
ne porte aucun message et n’a d’autre ambition autre que celle de divertir. Que les lecteurs
passent un bon moment, qu’ils voyagent dans Casa, qu’ils oublient leur quotidien le temps de la
lecture suffit amplement à mon bonheur. ”
542
In fact, Alaoui claims she played no part in forging
the narrative of the book. Fascinated by the working girls in the Casablanca neighbourhood
where she lived for eight years, she would observe their comings and goings, quizzing locals on
how they conducted their trade, but all this was not, Alaoui claims, “pour écrire une histoire.”
543

Rather, after a couple of beers one evening in June, Alaoui sat down at her computer, Jmiaa took
over, and the story wrote itself: “Il n’y a rien de ce que je pense dans ce livre, il n’y a rien de ma
manière de percevoir le monde ou Casablanca. Ce livre n’est absolument pas à propos de moi, il
me traverse pas, et à la limite quand j’ai relu…je me suis dit ‘d’où c’est sorti ?’"
544
Like Jmiaa, it
seems Alaoui sees fiction as a means of escape, a space away from reality. Despite these
protestations, however, Alaoui’s insistence that she left no authorial trace on the novel proves a

541
Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 125.
542
‘difficult jobs’ / ‘Jmiaa’s story carries no message and has no other ambition other than to entertain. That the
readers might have a good time, travel to Casa, forget their daily life, while they are reading is more than enough for
my happiness.’ In interview with Caroline Delajoux, ‘Histoires de femmes: rencontre avec Meryem Alaoui’,
Plurielle, 12 November 2018, https://www.plurielle.ma/people/interview/histoires-de-femmes-rencontre-avec-
meryem-alaoui/. (my translation).
543
‘to write a story.’ In interview on ‘L’invité - Meryem Alaoui’, L’invité, 15 December 2018,
http://www.tv5monde.com/emissions/episode/l-invite-meryem-alaoui. (my translation).
544
‘There is nothing about what I think in this book, there is nothing about my way of perceiving the world or
Casablanca. This book is absolutely not about me, it doesn’t cross my mind, and ultimately when I reread it… I said
to myself, where did this come from?’ In interview with Olivia Gesbert, ‘Femme, mode d’emploi, avec Meryem
Alaoui’, La Grande Table Culture, [19:52], accessed 17 December 2018, https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-
grande-table-1ere-partie/femme-mode-demploi-avec-meryem-alaoui. (my translation).

154
difficult pill for critics to swallow: “C’est difficile en fait à faire passer comme message mais je
n’existe pas en tant que romancière. Je n’existe pas.”
545
This self-positioning (or depositioning)
is rooted in a very French understanding of the writer, canonised in Roland Barthes’ La mort de
l’auteur. In place of littérature, which he views as “tyranniquement centrée sur l’auteur, sa
personne, son histoire, ses goûts, ses passions,"
546
Barthes asks for a kind of writing that
“desacralizes” l’Auteur-Dieu, allowing only language to speak: “…l’écriture est destruction de
toute voix, de tout origine. L’écriture, c’est ce neutre, ce composite, cet oblique où fuit notre
sujet, le noir-et-blanc où vient se perdre toute identité, à commencer par celle-là même du corps
qui écrit.”
547
There can be no work that originates with “le corps qui écrit.” In fact, there can be
no original work at all; rather, a text is made up of “écritures multiples, issues de plusieurs
cultures et entrent les unes avec les autres en dialogue, en parodie, en contestation.”
548
The text,
then, does indeed write itself in Barthes’ écriture, and the author does no longer exist.
La vérité is perhaps best read as such a “tissu de citations”;
549
a text that contests and
parodies the tropes so often found in narratives of Maghrebi sexual misery, even if it fails to
divest itself of them fully. The distortive pressures of authenticity and representation are
constantly called into question in the book; through the purposeful layering of fiction and
fantasy, Bouche de cheval’s familiarly misguided vision of Moroccan ‘reality,’ and Jmiaa’s own
sardonic meta-commentary. But what if “the body that writes” itself functions like a citation,

545
It’s actually difficult to get this message across but I don’t exist as a novelist. I don’t exist." Gesbert, ?? (my
translation).
546
Barthes, ‘La Mort de l’auteur’, 64; ‘tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions’
Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), 143.
547
Barthes, ‘La Mort de l’auteur’, 63; ‘writing is the destruction of every voice, of every paint of origin. Writing is
that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative· where all identity is lost, starting
with the very identity of the body writing.’ Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 142.
548
Barthes, ‘La Mort de l’auteur’, 69; ‘multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual
relations of dialogue, parody, contestation’ Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 148.
549
Barthes, ‘La Mort de l’auteur’, 67; ‘tissue of quotations’ Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 146.

155
invested with myriad readings? What could it mean for the Maghrebi author to write without
identity, without origin? As Huggan points out, “however vehemently some [postcolonial
writers] might wish to deny it, [they] still remain subject to powerful forces of metropolitan
mediation” and “may still be seen, in spite of themselves, …as both translators and exemplars of
their own ‘authentically’ exotic cultures.”
550
This is not to say, of course, that ‘identity’ does not
bear its own capital. Indeed, MRE artists’ ‘origins’ afford them a certain license to explore
marginalised subjectivities in their work and some – like Much Loved star Loubna Abidar, who
draws numerous parallels between her character’s plight and the broader mistreatment of
Moroccan women in her autobiography
551
– actively embrace their representative role. However,
as Gloria Anzaldúa suggests and Alaoui’s inability to assert herself as an ‘unmarked’ writer
reminds us, to write without origin is a privilege afforded to few.
2.5 Metropolitan mediation
Ironically, it is in her resistance to representation that Alaoui’s authorial presence is most
strongly felt in La vérité . Given the novel’s overwhelming focus on the biases of the MRE
culture industry, readers could be forgiven for assuming Alaoui is drawing from her own
experiences as an ex-pat searching for artistic fuel in Casablanca’s backstreets, but even as her
text appears to problematise this dynamic, Alaoui is keen to dissimulate the hold it has on her
work. Alaoui is quick to rebuff interviewers who assume that Bouche de cheval somehow
represents her, reminding them that, unlike her character, she grew up in Morocco and knows
what she’s talking about.
552
The fact that Bouche de Cheval comes from Holland when Alaoui
lives in New York is presumably intended to dissuade such a conflation, but neither the

550
Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic, 27.
551
Abidar and Van Renterghem, La dangereuse, See.
552
Gesbert, ‘Femme, mode d’emploi, avec Meryem Alaoui’.

156
director’s Dutch origins nor Jmiaa’s colourful idiosyncrasies are sufficient to distract from the
biggest elephant in the room: the fact that, despite Alaoui’s insistence that the book is narrated
by Jmiaa in all the cadences of Moroccan Arabic (“J’ai pensé en arabe parce qu’elle pense en
Arabe”
553
), the novel is clearly written in French. Indeed, it seems what struck critics about La
vérité (published by Gallimard) was not its artful representation of darija so much as what this
Arab inflection brought to the French – alongside the Goncourt, Stanislas, and the Prix de Flore,
La vérité was nominated for the 2018 Prix littéraire patrimoines, which rewards books ‘qui
portent un regard solidaire sur la société et dont le style d’écriture célèbre la langue française.’
554

One journalist goes so far as to describe the novel as a linguistic ‘coup de maître’ that will
‘enrichir, ô combien, la littérature dite francophone’
555
: "Une romancière est née,’ she writes,
‘bienvenue dans la République…des Lettres !"
556

If Alaoui refuses the role of porte-parole, it appears she has no such qualms about
translation, which she views as immune to authorial intervention: "...il y a un méchanisme de
traduction simultané qui s’est mis en place de l’arabe au français et qui s’est fait sans filtre, sans
le filtre de ma personne. …Ça s’est imposé.”
557
Like the laughter that takes hold of Jmiaa in her
Gnawa-like trance, it seems La vérité burst forth from some other origin, taking possession of
the writing body, and inscribing it with its own language, or code. Alaoui, then, does not see
herself as a mediator but a medium; a mere conduit. The problem with this dislocation of
authorship, however, even if it alleviates the burden of representation placed on authors like

553
‘I thought in Arabic because she thinks in Arabic.’ ‘L’invité - Meryem Alaoui’. (my translation).
554
‘which have a united outlook on society and whose writing style celebrates the French language’ ‘Prix littéraire
Patrimoines 2019’, accessed 22 August 2019, https://www.bpe.fr/banque-privee/public/web/c_14177/prix-litteraire-
patrimoines-2019?prevCat=pm_7248&portal=pm_7272. (my translation).
555
‘Meryem Alaoui’.
556
‘Meryem Alaoui’.
557
“.. there was a simultaneous translation mechanism that was set up from Arabic to French and that was done
without a filter, without the filter of me. ... It just happened.” [ref]

157
Alaoui by announcing the text as pure écriture, is that it assumes the neutrality of both language
and translation (when we know, thanks to literary theorist like J. Hillis Miller, that ‘the medium’
is also ‘the maker’
558
). Since Jmiaa’s story (like Jmiaa herself) is a fiction, we cannot say
whether it is altered by the process of Alaoui’s ‘translation,’ but Alaoui and her publishers are
nonetheless clearly conscious of the need to cater La vérité to its receiving audience – the novel
even includes a glossary of Moroccan terms and cultural references for the convenience of the
metropolitan reader. The persistent invisibilisation of French in the novel’s marketing (“C’est de
la darija!”
559
), furthermore, works to disguise the politics and processes of representation
attached to narratives of ‘otherness,’ inviting readers to feel at ease in their consumption of the
text and its assimilation into French cultural capital. Gnawa itself is an excellent example of how
global markets demand access to untouched cultural artefacts, even as that demand brings about
the incorporation into mass capital of what is marketed as outside of its reach. As Alaoui Btarny
points out, it also demonstrates the extent to which market demands for ‘authentic’ cultural
performances impact the language of their expression:
Cette logique du capitalisme qui se reproduit par la production de la différence, nous engage à réfléchir sur la
manière dont les acteurs sociaux vont négocier une situation paradoxale. …La difficulté étant que la
dimension identitaire du corps ne prend son sens que dans le contexte au sein duquel elle est produite. Les
acteurs vont donc selectionner et mettre en avant des traits culturels faciles à repérer…cheveux épars,
tournoiement, balancement du corps et trépignement des pieds. Cette mise en jeu des corps sur les scènes de
spectacles est bien sûr travaillée pour ne pas choquer par une altérité trop radicale.
560

558
See J. Hillis Miller, The Medium Is the Maker: Browning, Freud, Derrida and the New Telepathic
Ecotechnologies, Critical Inventions (Birghton [England] ; Portland, Or: Sussex Academic Press, 2009).
559
‘It’s darija!’ ‘L’invité - Meryem Alaoui’. (my translation).
560
‘This logic of capitalism, which reproduces itself through the production of difference, prompts us to reflect on
the way in which social actors will negotiate a paradoxical situation. …The difficulty being that the identitary
dimension of the body only takes on its meaning in the context in which it is produced. Actors will therefore select
and highlight cultural traits that are easy to spot… splayed hair, twirling, swaying of the body and stamping of the
feet. This bringing into play of bodies on the stages of shows is of course worked on so as not to shock with an
otherness that is too radical.’ Alaoui Btarny, ‘Entrer Dans La Danse Avec Les Gnawa’, 74–75. (my emphasis and
my translation).

158
Though the message may not originate with the body in jedba, it nonetheless comes to be
articulated differently in different contexts, translated into something more accessible for those
audiences who gather in search of ‘authenticity.’ Gnawa dancers are not simply conduits, but
‘social actors’ forced to negotiate the paradoxes of the alterity industry. Alaoui’s denial of her
own authoriality, then, does not necessarily divest her of her mediatory role.

3 Metropolitan monsters and queer domesticity in Leïla Slimani’s Le jardin
de l’ogre and Chanson douce

3.1 The new face of francophonie
It would seem that no-one is more adept at navigating the complexities of France’s
metropolitan market than best-selling author and official face of francophonie, Leïla Slimani.
Since making headlines in 2016 as the first Moroccan – and pregnant – woman to be awarded the
Goncourt prize (for Chanson douce; known in the U.K as Lullaby, The Perfect Nanny on the
U.S. market), Slimani has published numerous short stories and essays in addition to a book-
length study and graphic novel on sexuality in Morocco (Sexe et mensonges: la vie sexuelle au
Maroc [2017] and Paroles d’honneur [2017], respectively), while her three novels (Dans le
jardin de l’ogre [2014], Chanson douce [2016] and Le pays des autres [2020]) have been
translated into dozens of languages. Noted for her incisive literary style and her fearless
exploration of ‘taboo’ subjects such as infanticide, rape and female sexuality, Slimani has
quickly become one of the most influential figures on the French literary scene (the second most
influential woman in France, according to Vanity Fair), and in 2018 she was appointed President
Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for “la Francophonie” – a position generally

159
reserved for career politicians.
561
Recalling francophonie’s ideological origins in French colonial
expansion,
562
some have criticised Slimani’s appointment as part of a neo-imperialist “linguistic
crusade,”
563
and others still have questioned what qualifies her for the role ("Promouvoir la
langue de Molière, la diversité culturelle, mobiliser les amis de la France sur des thématiques
telles que l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes... Pourquoi elle, qui vient de publier un
ouvrage sur la sexualité au Maroc?"
564
). Slimani, however, has staunchly defended her newfound
position, emphasising a personal love of French and the power of language to break down
barriers: “Merely commanding a language opens the doors of its literature, horizons, culture, and
films, allowing us, through this common language, to laugh together, and play with the language,
enabling us to understand each other.”
565
For Slimani, who describes literature as “a space of
absolute freedom,”
566
language is not a representation of cultural identity so much as a means of
escaping it, and like Alaoui, she is keen to separate her writing from her personal identity and her
Moroccan origins.
It might seem perplexing, then, that Slimani would agree to represent France in an
institution founded on the promotion of cultural as well as linguistic values – indeed, she turned

561
Ava Djamshidi, ‘Emmanuel Macron nomme l’écrivaine Leïla Slimani à la Francophonie’, leparisien.fr, 6
November 2017, http://www.leparisien.fr/politique/emmanuel-macron-nomme-l-ecrivaine-leila-slimani-a-la-
francophonie-06-11-2017-7374876.php.
562
As Congolese author Alain Mabanckou writes in an open letter to Macron, "Au XIXème siècle, lorsque le mot
‘francophonie’ avait été conçu par le géographe Onésime Reclus, il s’agissait alors, dans son esprit, de créer un
ensemble plus vaste, pour ne pas dire de se lancer dans une véritable expansion coloniale. …Qu’est-ce qui a changé
de nos jours ? La Francophonie est malheureusement encore perçue comme la continuation de la politique étrangère
de la France dans ses anciennes colonies."
563
Kim Willsher, ‘Emmanuel Macron Launches Global Campaign to Promote French Speaking’, The Guardian, 20
March 2018, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/20/emmanuel-macron-campaign-
french-speaking.
564
“Promote the language of Molière, cultural diversity, mobilise France’s friends on themes such as gender
equality... Why her [Slimani], who has just published a book on sexuality in Morocco?” Djamshidi, ‘Emmanuel
Macron nomme l’écrivaine Leïla Slimani à la Francophonie’. (my translation).
565
Quoted in Naomie Pham, ‘Leila Slimani: Demolishing Barriers with Literature and Francophone Values’, Al
Jadid, accessed 30 August 2019, https://www.aljadid.com/node/2132.
566
In interview with Lauren Bastide, ‘Leïla Slimani’, La Poudre, [32:00], accessed 17 December 2018,
https://soundcloud.com/nouvelles-ecoutes/la-poudre-episode-4-leila-slimani.

160
down the role of Culture Minister initially offered to her by Macron. However, the ‘freedom’
that Slimani identifies in literature is precisely what francophonie, as an extension of the French
universalist principle, promises: though it is undeniably rooted in French colonisation, the all-
encompassing “humanist values”
567
that are attributed the language itself, and not the political
context that makes it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world today, effectively
remove it from this history. As Mayanthi Fernando points out in The Republic Unsettled, French
universalist politics are historically reliant on the ability of exceptional Others like Slimani to
“overcome” their racial/cultural difference.
568
In order to do so, however, they are required to
maintain an ongoing relation to their particularly, perpetually alluding to their originary
difference in order to attest to the French republicanism’s universalist promise by performing
(and re-performing) its erasure. But if Slimani’s ‘difference’ is used to shore up the contours of
the universal subject, then – I would argue – it also serves to redefine them, exposing the
inconsistency and ambiguity of France’s colour-blind discourse. Slimani’s emphatic embrace of
universal authorship also reveals an enduring fascination with Franco-Maghrebi writers’
marginality, which proves crucial to understanding the dynamics of French literary
representation and Slimani’s own trajectory as a literary “citizen.”
569

567
‘Organisation Internationale de La Francophonie’, Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, accessed 31
August 2019, https://www.francophonie.org/.
568
Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 216–17.
569
For Slimani, literature (and, by extension, francophonie) offers a path to a kind of "world" citizenship, beyond
national/cultural borders : "Je ne crois pas que la littérature change le monde…Mais j’ai vécu moi-même le fait que
la littérature m’a changée, et je suis totalement consciente que si je n’avais pas été la lectrice que je suis, je ne serais
pas la personne que je suis. Cela a été fondamentale dans la construction de ma morale, de ce que je suis en tant que
citoyenne, en tant que femme." (Comment j’écris 27)

161
3.2 A Moroccan woman who dares
According to Slimani, the time for writing about identity has long passed.
570
Rather than
dwelling on the “crisis” of belonging that so many postcolonial authors have grappled with over
the years, Slimani welcomes the possibilities opened up by this plurality, seeking refuge in the
borderless world of literature: “… my country is language. My country is a library. In a library, I
feel at home anywhere, it can be New York, Paris, Morocco, anywhere. Yeah, so my hometown,
my land, is this world of languages….”
571
One gets the feeling, however, that it is precisely
Slimani’s being-at-home in the French literary landscape – even more than the extraordinariness
of her literature – that has so shaped her success in the French literary market. While there are
no doubts as to Slimani’s accomplishments as a writer, the branding of her success as a
Moroccan woman writer has certainly contributed to her notoriety. Indeed, the fact that her
novels do not reflect her Franco-Maghrebi identity, centring instead on the banalities of French
bourgeois life, seems only to highlight the reading public’s fascination with her origins, which
are made all the more prominent by their apparent irrelevance. Upon the publication of her first
book, Dans le jardin de l’ogre [Adèle] (2014), a novel written from the perspective of a Parisian
sex addict, Tahar Ben Jelloun (the only other Moroccan author to win the Prix Goncourt, in
1987) commended Slimani for “breaking with tradition” by not succumbing to autobiography,
opting instead to create a story about French characters, in France, and dealing with “a subject
that could be found anywhere [addiction]”
572
:
Une Marocaine ose et ne prend aucune précaution. Elle y va sans filet et sans pudeur, en même temps, c'est
ce qui fait l'intérêt du livre. Je la connais à peine, je ne sais pas grand-chose de sa vie, ni son passé, ni son

570
See Pham, ‘Leila Slimani: Demolishing Barriers with Literature and Francophone Values’.
571
Quoted in Freeman, ‘Leila Slimani Doesn’t Care If You’re Uncomfortable’.
572
Tahar Ben Jelloun, ‘Le livre du sexe et des plaisirs’, Le Point, 19 August 2014, https://www.lepoint.fr/invites-du-
point/tahar-ben-jelloun/ben-jelloun-le-livre-du-sexe-et-des-plaisirs-19-08-2014-1854818_1921.php.

162
présent. Ce n'est pas important. Le livre s'impose et nous met dans une situation où il nous est décemment
interdit de juger l'auteur.
573

Like Alaoui’s Barthesian écriture, the book supposedly speaks for itself, independently of
its author. Yet the fact that the author, still marked by her origins, was able to produce a text that
passes unmarked, seems to be precisely what makes the text (and its author) so remarkable.
Predictably, Ben Jelloun was not the only critic to remark upon Slimani’s lack of
“pudeur”
574
following the novel’s release. In interview, Slimani jokes that her metropolitan
readers must have been shocked to learn that Muslim women also have sex,
575
and in her
introduction to Sexe et Mensonges, she writes that…
…certains journalistes français se sont étonnés qu’une marocaine puisse écrire un tel livre. …Comme si,
culturellement, j’aurais dû être plus pudique, plus reservée. Comme si j’aurais dû me contenter d’écrire un
livre érotique aux accents orientalistes, en digne descendante de Shéhérazade.
576

If Slimani resists the expectations placed on her as a writer of Muslim-Maghrebi origin, it
seems it is more out of disinterest than defiance. There are times, however, where it appears
Slimani not afraid to embrace this positionality. In contrast with her fictional work, Slimani’s
essays and journalistic articles often pivot on her national/cultural identity. In an open letter to
Parisians following the November 2015 attacks, for example, she calls on her heritage in her
condemnation of fundamentalist Islam (“Moi, née musulmane, Marocaine et Française, je vous
le dis: la charia me fait vomir.”
577
). This is not to say that Slimani’s claims to unmarked

573
“A Moroccan woman dares and takes no precautions. She goes without barriers and without modesty, at the same
time, that's what makes the book interesting. I hardly know her, I do not know much about her life, neither her past
nor her present. It does not matter. The book imposes itself and puts us in a situation where we are decently
forbidden to judge the author.” Ben Jelloun. (my translation)
574
Literally ‘modesty,’ or ‘reserve.’ La pudeur is frequently used in discourse about Islamic modesty (hijab).
575
In interview with Georgina Godwin, ‘Leïla Slimani’, Meet the Writers, accessed 17 December 2018,
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/meet-the-writers/111/.
576
“... some French journalists were surprised that a Moroccan woman could write such a book. ... As if, culturally, I
should have been more modest, more reserved. As if I should have been content to write an erotic book with
Orientalist accents, a worthy descendant of Scheherazade.” Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 11. (my translation)
577
“I, born Muslim, Moroccan and French, I am telling you: sharia makes me sick.” Leïla Slimani, Le diable est
dans les détails, Le 1 en livre (La Tour-d’Aigue: Éditions de l’aube, 2017), 40. (my translation)

163
authorship are in any way compromised. As the Algerian author, Kamel Daoud, suggests, this
ambiguity merely describes the condition of the diasporic writer: “For a writer to live between
the Maghreb, France and the rest of the world is both a wound and a crack through which one
can look at this world differently….There is no solution. There’s only a huge, beautiful,
permanent doubt.”
578
Though she may reject the narrative expectations placed on her work as a
female writer from the Maghreb, Slimani is nonetheless acutely aware of the cultural capital
invested in her as a result of heated discussions surrounding women and Islam, and does not
hesitate to make use of this platform. Following the publication of Le jardin de l’ogre (which,
much to Slimani’s surprise, was well received in Morocco, winning the 2015 La Mamounia
award), she found herself being approached by numerous women who wanted to share their
stories of sexual oppression, repression, expression and revolt – many of which would later
appear in Sexe et Mensonges: la vie sexuelle au Maroc [Sex and Lies: Sexual Life in Morocco]
(2017), a collection of essays, anecdotes and interviews apparently geared toward a metropolitan
audience; and Paroles d’honneur [Words of Honour] (2017), a graphic novel designed to make
the same texts accessible to young Moroccans. As a writer and a feminist, Slimani claims she felt
compelled to “give a voice” to those Moroccan women still silenced by social pressures and
shame,
579
and while she has received some criticism for exploiting her position as a part of the
“élite occidentalisée”
580
(Slimani herself questioned whether there was “une certaine
condescendence”
581
in publicising her views) she justifies her controversial take on Moroccan
sexuality on the grounds that her critique is founded on the “inalienable” rights of every
individual:

578
Daoud quoted in Freeman, ‘Leila Slimani Doesn’t Care If You’re Uncomfortable’.
579
Godwin, ‘Leïla Slimani’, [15:44].
580
‘western elite’ Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 126 (my translation).
581
‘a certain condescendence’ Slimani, 126.

164
La question n’est ni identitaire ni morale, mais plutôt politique. On peut considérer que si les musulmans
n’ont pas de droits sexuels, c’est parce que la plupart des régimes dans lesquels ils vivent reposent sur une
négation des libertés individuelles. Le croyant-citoyen n’est pas autorisé à penser par lui-même et à prendre
ses décisions en toute conscience.
582

Slimani is careful not to attribute this lack of rights to Islam per se (gesturing, through her
interviews with Islamic feminist Asma Lamrabet and sociologist Abdessamad Dialmy, to more
sexually permissive periods in Islamic history, and pointing an accusatory finger at rising
conservatism in the region), yet the framing of her critique reveals certain assumptions about the
universality of sexular discourse. Anecdotal descriptions of forced marriage and sexual assault,
illegal abortions and reconstructed hymens, gay men fleeing from lynch mobs and professors
fretting over the rising number of burqas they see in their lecture halls certainly do not work to
dissuade assumptions about gender and sexual oppression in the Maghreb. Interviews with
popular spokespersons of sexular emancipation such as Nabil Ayouch (who tells Slimani that
spectators were shocked by Much Loved simply because it was a narrative that centred on
women) and Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy
583
(who likens her and Slimani’s role to that of
Harriet Tubman, convincing slaves that they are enslaved in order to bring about their
emancipation
584
) further suggest that the book was geared for the metropolitan market. But while
Slimani is certainly conscious of her critics, who have accused her of everything from feeding
fundamentalism to perpetuating Islamophobic discourse, she maintains it is “impossible de nier
la réalité de la misère sexuelle comme un fait social.”
585
And she is not wrong – whatever the
range of sociopolitical, religious, cultural and economic reasons at its core, that sexual
harassment, violence and oppression exist – along very gendered lines – in Morocco is widely

582
‘The question is neither identitary nor moral, but rather political. It can be said that Muslims have no sexual
rights because most of the regimes in which they live are based on a denial of individual freedoms. The citizen-
believer is not allowed to think for himself and make decisions consciously.’ Slimani, 126 (my translation).
583
Author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, 2016.
584
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 43.
585
“impossible to deny the reality of sexual misery as a social fact” Slimani, 176. (my translation)

165
supported by numerous scholars and activists working in the field. Nonetheless, Slimani’s
apparent disregard for the discursive dynamics into which her critique will inevitably be entered
(as well as her blind faith in the universal ‘freedoms’ that her position as an educated elite living
in France affords her) raise vital questions as to the role of the Franco-Arab intellectual,
especially when it comes to writing on gender and Islam.
No doubt conscious of the criticism to come, Slimani gestures to the impossibility of this
position at the end of Sexe et Mensonges by way of Kamel Daoud’s incendiary (and somewhat
notorious) 2016 article on “The Sexual Misery of the Arab World” – an article in which Daoud
describes sex in the Muslim world as “sick” and accuses Western liberals of using “exoticism” to
“exonerate[] differences” while the “pathological relationship that some Arab countries have
with women” encroaches on European soil.
586
According to Slimani, who claims Daoud’s article
was “unjustly criticised,”
587
she and Daoud hold similar positions in Franco-Arab intellectual
discourse…
…because we say things as we think of them, refusing to arrange our views to please anyone, and adopt the
method of expression which we believe in.…Both of us write in different places, but we meet in basic ideas
when it comes to our defense of human rights, freedom of the individual and the necessity in attacking and
renouncing ignorance and fanaticism.
588

Tunisian journalist Fawzia Zouari similarly defended Daoud, commending him on his
refusal to become hostage to a Western world "traumatisé par l’accusation d’islamophobie”:
"[Daoud] ne déteste pas sa culture ni ne souffre d’un déni d’identité, comme l’imaginent ses
détracteurs. Non. Il s’inscrit dans une autre lignée de musulmans : celle des écrivains rebelles et
des penseurs du doute qui travaillent à desserrer l’étau du dogme et à faire naître l’individu

586
Kamel Daoud, ‘The Sexual Misery of the Arab World’, The New York Times, n.d., 3.
587
“injustement critiqué.” Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 178. (my translation)
588
Quoted in Pham, ‘Leila Slimani: Demolishing Barriers with Literature and Francophone Values’.

166
musulman."
589
There is something rebellious about Daoud and Slimani’s radical embrace of
discursive freedom: in disrupting Western liberal intellectual circles where the principle of free
speech is thought to reign, they push at the limits of this ‘universal’ right, exposing the
expectations placed upon them to produce a certain kind of discourse. In doing so, however, they
reinforce – with or without intent – a discourse about sexual misery in the Maghreb upon which
sexual-nationalisms have come to rely. Demands for the birth of “the Muslim individual” begin
to bear an uncanny resemblance to demands for the eradication of Islam; the “rebellious”
discourse of the Franco-Maghrebi intellectual suddenly becoming radically mainstream.

3.3 Bourgeois perversion in Dans le jardin de l’ogre
It is surely no coincidence that Slimani’s debut novel, Dans le jardin de l’ogre (2014),
centres on what is arguably the most contentious (and marketable) topic for Franco-Maghrebi
women to write about: female sexuality. However, that the novel was widely celebrated as “un
livre libre et sexuel”
590
– considered all the more daring, and all the more commendable, for
being written by a Moroccan woman – bespeaks a fundamental (if predictable) misreading of the
text. A misreading, because while sexuality in Dans le jardin may be uninhibited it is by no
means ‘free’: Adèle’s is not a story of sensuality and desire (much less liberation), but of
addiction and compulsion, and of a desperate search for authentic being within an environment
that, while achingly familiar to us all (if not through personal experience then through
prescriptive class aspirationalism and dominant media interpretations of Western ‘family life’),

589
“…traumatized by the accusation of Islamophobia" / “[Daoud] does not hate his culture nor does he suffer from
identity denial, as his detractors imagine. No. He belongs to another line of Muslims: that of rebellious writers and
sceptical thinkers who work to loosen the grip of dogma and to give birth to the Muslim individual." Fawzia Zouari,
‘Polémique : pourquoi Kamel Daoud a raison’, JeuneAfrique.com, 24 February 2016,
https://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/304007/societe/polemique-kamel-daoud-a-raison/. (my translation)
590
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 11.

167
can feel utterly alienating. Fundamental, insofar as this crossing of market demands for
narratives of Maghrebi women’s sexual liberation with the reality of the text is, I believe, crucial
to the social critique that the novel presents. While French readers may have been shocked that a
Muslim woman could so candidly and vividly capture the inner workings of a nymphomaniac,
Slimani suggests that “les maghrébins sont très bien placés pour aborder des thématiques liées à
la douleur sexuelle, à la frustration ou à l’aliénation. Le fait de vivre ou d’avoir grandi dans des
sociétés ou la liberté sexuelle n’existe pas fait du sexe un objet d’obsession permanente."
591
At
the same time, the book is centrally concerned with the dynamics of power, sex and sexuality
present within the French middle class. If Slimani invites us to read Adèle’s narrative as an
allegory for Maghrebi sexual misery, then it is equally a narrative of sexual misery in the
metropole, where society is every bit as painfully sex-obsessed.
Dans le jardin’s Adèle and her husband, Richard, perform well at being the perfect couple
– they are educated; have respectable and interesting jobs and an adorable son; attend dinner
parties on the weekend and talk about their aspirations to buy a country house – yet, despite
appearances, Adèle is suffocating in her marriage. She can’t stand her daily existence: suffering
small talk, professing politics and playing at children’s games. She can find no pleasure in the
mundanity of the life they have so painstakingly created. Even the fact of Adèle’s infidelity, such
a clichéd component of bourgeois life (as confirmed by the revelation that Richard’s father, too,
once had an indiscretion), fails to disrupt this performance, but her needs far surpass those of a
frustrated middle-class wife whose husband works too much. Adèle does not have ‘affairs’; she
is only sexually gratified by degrading and oftentimes dangerous encounters – being spat on or

591
"Maghrebis are very well placed to address issues related to sexual suffering, frustration or alienation. Living or
growing up in societies where sexual freedom does not exist makes sex an object of permanent obsession.” Slimani,
11. (my translation)

168
punched in the vagina, being knocked against bed posts and walls, having unprotected sex with
strangers, drinking excessively or taking drugs with men she cannot trust.
592
Adèle is a bad wife,
a bad mother, and a bad feminist. Her best friend, Lauren, begs her to get out of a marriage that
doesn’t feed her desire, or allow her to be ‘free.’ But it’s not ‘freedom’ that Adèle craves. She is
grateful for the predictability and the security that her marriage provides her, and while Richard
does not satisfy her sexually, it seems she chose him for that very reason – she is turned off by
‘nice’ men, even as she craves the validation and security that comes through being with one.
Adèle’s desire to be objectified equals only her desire to be looked after. Adèle likes the rituals
that get her laid – back and forth, a touch, a glance – and she likes to feel desired; but at the same
time she is frightened by her vulnerability. She cruises sex shops on her way the supermarket, yet
she is afraid of walking home alone because of what men on the street might say to her. But if
Adèle’s ambivalence appears contradictory, then it only echoes the complexity of the messages
women receive about sexual liberation in a society that promotes female independence while
keeping heteronormative domesticity on a pedestal; a society that celebrates women’s economic
freedom while pushing them to invest in their own commodification, and extolls the virtues of
feminine agency while attacking women (sometimes physically) for being too headstrong. For
Adèle, like women all over the world, marriage offers her the validation and protection that her
community has always told her she needed, even as society has conditioned her to want ‘more’
from her life. The violence and abuse that she seeks in her sexual encounters, meanwhile, exist
on the same plane as the narrative of female conquest and male domination through which the

592
The most shocking of these incidents takes place when Richard is hospitalised following a motorcycle accident
that occurred on his way back from covering a shift (for his boss, who took the night off to meet Adèle in a hotel
room). Simultaneously riddled with guilt and sick of playing ‘nurse’ to her invalid husband, she hires two young
men from the rough side of the tracks (the leader of which is, notably, Arab) to ply her with drugs and engage in
violent sexual activity. Adèle wakes up covered in bruises and bleeding from between her thighs.

169
game of heteronormative seduction is societally coded. Even Lauren is not immune to the
pressures that push women to suffer mistreatment in the name their own desire: for years, she has
allowed her boyfriend to keep her at arm’s length, disguising long absences and obvious signs of
infidelity with vague promises of some future commitment. But if what bewilders Lauren is the
apparent passivity of her friend, who represents a ‘liberated’ woman in every other way, what
she fails to understand is that this passivity is not only what prevents Adèle from leaving her
marriage (it is certainly what got her into it), but what propels her to venture outside of it:
inasmuch as she wants anything, Adèle wants to be dominated.
Unsurprisingly, Adèle’s compulsions seem to originate in her childhood, and the duality of
her desire is reflected in her apparently ill-matched parents: if her bourgeois aspirations come
from her working-class mother (who, seemingly threatened by Adèle’s beauty, sexually shamed
her daughter throughout her childhood, all the while telling her that the only way to succeed in
life was to attract a rich husband), then her disillusionment with this pursuit surely echoes that of
her father, an ex-revolutionary who, having grown up a “peasant” in Algeria and been awarded a
scholarship to study in Russia, later emigrating to France, lives out the remainder of his days in
front of the TV in a crummy flat in Boulogne-sur-Mer. It is no doubt significant that Adèle’s
heritage is French-Algerian, but this in itself does not explain her inner conflict. If anyone, it is
Adèle’s French mother, Simone, who reproduces the gender biases and familial pressure Slimani
so strongly condemns in Sexe et Mensonges,
593
pressuring Adèle to trade on her looks to ensure
her upward social mobility. Yet it is Simone’s own affair, which Adèle bears witness to as a

593
One of Slimani’s interviewees, journalist Sanaa El Aji, explains that as a result of patriarchal culture Moroccan
women have “un lien mercantile avec leur corps” (Sexe 152), and suggests that, “[d]’une certaine façon, leur
marriage est une forme de prostitution institutionalise.” (153). Nabil Ayouch also argues that the repression of
sexual relations before marriage “favorise la marchandisation du corps, la violence, et l’instrumentalisation du corps
de la femme” (72), and Slimani, commenting on Morocco’s booming hymen-reconstruction industry, asserts that
"La misère sexuelle…est un capitalisme comme un autre." (29).

170
child, forced to accompany her mother on a seedy rendez-vous in Paris, that fuels Adèle’s quest
for depravity:
…serrée entre sa mère et l’homme qui se lançaient des regards lubriques, Adèle a ressenti pour la première
fois ce mélange de peur et d’envie, de dégoût et d’émoi érotique. …Elle n’a jamais retrouvé, ni dans les bras
des hommes, ni dans les promenades qu’elle a faites des années plus tard sur ce même boulevard, ce
sentiment magique de toucher du doigt le vil et l’obscène, la perversion bourgeoise et la misère humaine.
594

Adèle’s “douleur sexuelle”
595
is thus simultaneously inscribed within racialised and
deracialised (insofar as bourgeois space presents itself as colour-blind – we will get to this)
systems of gender oppression that reduce the female body to a token of economic exchange,
united under the bracket of “human misery.” By troubling familiar motifs of secular
emancipation such as sexual agency, Slimani brings both French and Maghrebi discourses on
femininity into question, foregrounding the violent banalisation of gender ideals and the pressure
to conform across societies. Adèle’s passivity, for example, is seen by Lauren – as by many
secular feminists, for whom ‘submissiveness’ has become emblematic of women’s oppression by
Islam – as antithetical to the possibility of agency, yet for Adèle, this apathy is rooted in desire.
While Slimani is clearly not condoning a feminist politics of submission – Slimani is too
attached to the universal rights of the ‘individual’ for that – her treatment of the concept does
lend it some complexity. In interview, Slimani remarks that “there is a particularly harsh gaze on
female passivity”: while passive men are thought to have “depth, …modern women have to be
fighters, they have to take things in hand” or else be perceived “failures.”
596
If Adèle goes with
the flow, Slimani claims it is because she is “a very unhappy woman looking for something”
597
–

594
"squeezed between her mother and the man, who kept shooting each other lascivious looks, Adèle felt for the first
time that mix of fear and longing, disgust and arousal. ...Never since that evening—not in the arms of men, nor
during the walks she took years later on the same boulevard—has she ever rediscovered that magical feeling of
actually touching the vile and the obscene, the heart of bourgeois perversion and human wretchedness.” Slimani,
Dans le jardin de l’ogre, 73 (my emphasis); Official translation in Leïla Slimani, Adèle, trans. Sam Taylor (New
York: Penguin Books, 2019), 61–62.
595
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 11.
596
In interview with Bastide, ‘Leïla Slimani’, [16:50].
597
Bastide, [17:18].

171
but, just like her father, Kader, who dies on his sofa dreaming of revolution in the Algerian
countryside, she will never be satisfied. Adèle’s promiscuity, meanwhile, plays on orientalist
fantasies of Arab hypersexuality (an early psychoanalytic term for sex addiction, according to
Estellon and Mouras
598
), while problematizing sexular assumptions of promiscuity as a
manifestation of agency. Sex addiction is both compulsive and impulsive, it does not spring from
volition but from an invasive and “devouring” need often accompanied by broader patterns of
self-destruction and “a deep sense of the pointlessness of life.”
599
For Adèle, sex is an unending
quest to fulfil a physical necessity. As Slimani notes, “Adèle tire ni gloire ni honte de ses
conquêtes.”
600
If in likening Adèle’s “obsession permanente” to the sexual misery of the
Maghreb, Slimani echoes Daoud’s assertion that sexuality in Muslim cultures is somehow
“sick,” then she equally upsets Republican notions of sexual liberation through the compulsive
repetition of Adèle’s conquests. What might initially be read as an act of sexual liberation, a
woman freely embracing her sexual desires, emerges, through an almost parodic excess, as a an
act of total subjugation: Adèle’s sexuality is neither liberated nor liberating; she is a slave to her
impulses. What is more, this malady is firmly situated in the banality of bourgeois idealism
which, deeply oppressive in its own ways, Adèle is desperate to escape, unsettling popular
preconceptions (elsewhere perpetuated by Slimani) that sexual misery is somehow endemic to
the Maghreb.

598
‘Sexual Addiction: Insights from Psychoanalysis and Functional Neuroimaging’, Socioaffective Neuroscience &
Psychology 2 (20 January 2012), https://doi.org/10.3402/snp.v2i0.11814.
599
Estellon and Mouras.
600
Slimani, Dans le jardin de l’ogre, 292.

172
3.4 Disorienting domestics in Chanson douce
Slimani’s second novel, Chanson douce (which, since winning Slimani the Goncourt Prize
in 2016, has been adapted to both theatre and film
601
), again takes place in France’s troubled
middle classes, this time exploring what Slimani describes as the “horror” hidden behind
bourgeois ideals through the theme of infanticide. In an interview given soon after the book’s
UK release, Slimani noted:
I’ve lived all my life in the bourgeoisie, and I’ve seen terrible things in this social class that is supposed to be
nice and open-minded and very polite.… I wanted to show that violence doesn’t belong to one social class. I
wanted to show that…behind the mask there is a lot of hypocrisy. And hypocrisy makes you even more
violent because you don’t want people to know what is happening in your life.
Though Slimani is quick to defend the “bobos,”
602
whom she believes are too often
dismissed by the conservative right wing as “do-gooders” obsessed with “gluten and cycling,”
she is nonetheless interested in exploring the inconsistencies of this class whose values are
sometimes “confronted with the reality of a world.”
603
This uncomfortable dynamic of
unquestionable privilege partnered with aspirations of universal tolerance and equality is
perfectly performed by the young couple whose idealistic cocoon is about to be shattered in
Chanson douce (first by the arrival of their new nanny, Louise, and then, irreparably, by the
murder of their two young children). For Myriam and Paul Massé, a criminal defence lawyer and
a music producer living in central Paris, every daily decision becomes a painstaking deliberation
of its effects on the universe. When it comes to recruiting a nanny for their children (a decision,
itself, riddled with gendered negotiations and expectations), Myriam has some specifications:
“Pas de sans-papiers,” since it would be too dangerous should the nanny need to call the

601
The play was performed at the Comédie Française in Paris in 2019 and adapted by Pauline Bayle. The film was
adapted and directed by Lucie Borleteau in the same year, and stars Karin Viard (as killer-nanny Louise) and Leïla
Bekhti (as the children’s mother, Myriam). See Lucie Borleteau, Chanson Douce (Why Not Productions, 2019).
602
Bourgeois-Bohémiens – a term frequently used in France to refer to the metropolitan middle-classes.
603
In interview with Bastide, ‘Leïla Slimani’, [32:34].

173
authorities in an emergency, “…pas trop vieille, pas voilée et pas fumeuse.”
604
Above all, she
does not want to hire a North African nanny for fear it would inspire some sort of “complicité
tacite”:
Elle craint que ne s’installe…une familiarité entre elles deux. Que l’autre se mette à lui faire des remarques
en arabe. À lui raconter sa vie et, bientôt, à lui demander mille choses au nom de leur langue et de leur
religion communes. Elle s’est toujours méfiée de ce qu’elle appelle la solidarité d’immigrés.
605

Myriam and Paul are so afraid of inviting bias into their world that they end up repeating
the discriminatory dynamics that they so vehemently oppose by hiring the only white applicant
for the job. Louise’s subsequent introduction to the household results in an amusing parody of
the well-meaning hypocrisy of the middle classes, as her working-class gaze on the Massés’
bourgeois way of life slowly transforms their kindnesses into petty condescensions and their joie
de vivre into an ostentatious display of their own privilege.
Although Slimani maintains that the novel is primarily a study of class, and of the power
dynamics that saturate the ostensibly liberal space of the bourgeois home, the Massés’
commitment to creating a world unmarked by race has the uncanny effect of foregrounding its
effects in larger society. The widespread racialisation of domestic labour, though it does not go
un-noted in the novel, is conjured through its conspicuous absence in the Massé home; itself a
possible metaphor for the nation, anxious at the thought of inviting strangers across its
threshold.
606
Forced to dine with her employers one night in celebration of their recent successes
at work, Louise is made to feel deeply out of place amid the popping of Champagne corks and

604
Slimani, Chanson Douce, Loc 47.
605
‘She fears that a tacit complicity and familiarity would grow between her and the nanny. That the woman would
start speaking to her in Arabic. Telling Myriam her life story and, soon, asking her all sorts of favours in the name of
their shared language and religion. She has always been wary of what she calls immigrant solidarity.’ Slimani, Loc
186; Official translation in Leila Slimani, Lullaby, trans. Sam Taylor, 2018, 16.
606
It is worth noting, here, that Slimani’s story was inspired by real events that occurred in New York in 2012, when
two white children living on the Upper West Side were murdered by their nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, who was born in
the Dominican Republic and known to the children as “Lulu” (Louise). See James C. McKinley Jr. and Jan Ransom,
‘Manhattan Nanny Is Convicted in Murders of Two Children - The New York Times’, accessed 17 May 2021,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/nyregion/nanny-trial-verdict.html.

174
bourgeois parents lamenting that their child is “le seul Blanc de sa classe”
607
in the public school
they continue to send him to on principle: “[Louise] est nerveuse comme une étrangère, une
exilée qui ne comprend pas la langue parlée autour d’elle.”
608
This is not the only time that
Louise’s ‘foreignness’ comes to light. Having spent years living on low income in the (racially
marked) banlieues of Créteil and Bobigny, Louise is meticulous about waste and, much to the
amusement of the Massés, will painstakingly salvage every last morsel of food in the family
fridge. One evening, Myriam comes home to find a chicken carcass she threw out that morning
has been retrieved from the bin and left on the counter, stripped of all its remaining flesh. Her
little girl, Mila, later tells her that “Louise leur [a] appris à manger avec les doigts,”
609
rewarding
them with sweets for scraping the decaying flesh from its bones: “Cela ne peut pas être une
erreur, un oubli de Louise. Encore moins une plaisanterie. Non, la carcasse sent le liquide
vaisselle à l’amande douce. Louise l’a lavée à grande eau, elle l’a nettoyée et elle l’a posée là
comme une vengeance, comme un totem maléfique.”
610
Slimani describes this notable scene as
“le symbole de l’espèce de sourde lutte de classes qui se joue dans [le] livre,"
611
yet the image of
Myriam’s children gathered around a communal dish which they relish eating with their fingers
is heavily coded with racial and cultural (specifically North African) Otherness, and the way in
which this image gnaws at Myriam’s conscience, foreshadowing the horror to come, conjures
familiar tropes of racial anxiety over the outsourcing of children’s social education.

607
‘the only White in the class’ Slimani, Chanson Douce, Loc 567 (my translation).
608
‘Louise is nervouse like a foreigner, an exile who doesn’t understand the language spoken around her.’ Slimani,
Loc 557 (my translation).
609
‘Louise taught them to eat with their fingers.’ Slimani, Loc 1558 (my translation).
610
‘Louise can’t have done this by mistake or out of forgetfulness. And certainly not as a joke. No, the carcass
smells of washing up liquid and sweet almond. Louise washed it in the sink; she cleaned it and put it there as an act
of vengeance, like a baleful totem.’ Slimani, Loc 1559; Official translation in Slimani, Lullaby, 146.
611
“the symbol of the kind of complicated class struggle at work in the book” Slimani and Fottorino, Comment
j’écris, 21. (my translation)

175
This in mind, we might be forgiven for reading Louise as the projection of a sort of
dystopian racial anxiety reminiscent of Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission [Submission],
612

whereby violence is invited into the nation/home through the permissiveness of the liberal
classes, and the attainment of universalist ideals brings about the deracialisation of low-status
labour currently reserved for foreigners.
613
Yet Chanson douce does not present a
straightforward inversion of racial roles: though Louise is coded, in various ways, as “a
foreigner,” her estrangement is characteristic of a class divide that, while distinctly racialized, is
not limited to non-white populations. Outside of the Massés’ home, meanwhile, race continues to
exist in the novel as it does in the real world: Myriam, who is at one point mistaken for a nanny
in search of a job (rather than a mother in search of a nanny), and Louise’s friend, Wafa, who
wonders if the little boy she looks after will grow up to frequent brothels like the one she was
forced to work in upon her arrival in Paris, are acutely aware of what it means to feel out of place
in a society still very much oriented around whiteness. Class does, however, go some way to
dissimulate the effects of race. When a white friend at a party thrown by the Massés says she just
doesn’t know what she’ll do when her son starts spitting on the floor and speaking Arabic like
the kids at his public school, it is clear that she sees Myriam as complicit in whiteness: she is an
accomplished bourgeois; therefore not ‘Arab’ like the poor kids in the quartier.
Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s interrogation of racial-spatial dynamics in Queer
Phenomenologies, we might question how bourgeois universalist space perpetuates the

612
Michel Houellebecq, Soumission (Paris: Flammarion, 2015).
613
The politics of “the domestic” Slimani claims she was interested in exploring in the novel are deeply reminiscent
of national concerns about “the migrant”: “…in the bourgeoisie you want to preserve the domesticity, you want to
preserve your family, your house. You don’t want people to know what’s happening in your house so the domestics,
the people who come into your house and work for you, who are dominated by you, at the same time they know
everything about you so they have a power over you. And you have a power over them because you are paying them
and you are dominating them. So that’s this power game that was very interesting for me in the book.” (Quoted in
Freeman, my emphasis).

176
reproduction of whiteness. For Ahmed, whiteness is reproduced not only through domination,
but through habitation: like a chair worn into shape by people repeatedly sitting on it, social
spaces are “made to fit” certain bodies “through the impressions that they leave”
614
: “The
surfaces of the social ‘record’ the repetition of acts, and the ‘passing by’ of some and not
others.”
615
You do not have to be white to inhabit whiteness, but “how whiteness is reproduced
in domestic and public spaces affects what racialized bodies can do and where they can go.”
616

“White bodies” on the other hand, “do not have to face their whiteness; they are not orientated
‘toward’ it, and this ‘not’ is what allows whiteness to cohere, as that which bodies are orientated
around.”
617
Thus, even with its ideals of multicultural and multiracial tolerance, bourgeois space
in Chanson Douce can be said to function like (and as) white space: its dominance is
invisibilised by its very orientation away from itself. What Slimani does so effectively in
Chanson douce is to draw attention to this spatiality through her characters’ troubled habitation
of it. While Paul and Myriam are committed to the ideal of a domestic space unmarked by social
privilege, they continue to reproduce social (and, by extension, racial, in the recruitment of a
nanny on the basis of obliquely racialized criteria) hierarchy through the assumption that their
own navigation of social space does not leave a trace. Louise, on the other hand, fails to be
accommodated by this apparently ‘universal’ space. Though her displacement in the Massé
house is often racially coded, the real disorientation is her (apparently unmarked) whiteness in a
position that is usually racialized. Her inability to ‘pass’ in bourgeois space calls attention to
what ordinarily recedes into the background, making the familiar unfamiliar, the unremarkable
suddenly strange. As Ahmed notes, “[t]he moments when the body appears ‘out of place’ are

614
Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 135.
615
Ahmed, 135.
616
Ahmed, 112.
617
Ahmed, 132.

177
moments of political and personal trouble,”
618
but – crucially – this kind of disorientation
provides the grounds for thinking what it means to be ‘oriented’ in the first place. Bodies that are
out of line, or do not toe the line, help us to see the line, and rethink it. In Chanson douce,
Louise’s disorientation echoes racialized experiences of feeling ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘exposed’
in white space, but it is actually her whiteness that is ‘out of line’: her presence in the Massé
home denaturalises the racialisation of private, public and national space that is ordinarily
concealed by Republican colourblindness. Returning to the French public’s fascination with
Slimani, we might say the author does the same for the literary market, which – although it
increasingly welcomes authors from the margins – is nonetheless tacitly oriented around
whiteness.

4 Conclusion
If Slimani’s work on sexuality shows that it is impossible for the Franco-Maghrebi
intellectual – always already implicated in discursive networks beyond their control – to write
definitively about those questions for which there is no black-and-white answer, then literature
may offer a more effective means to explore those grey areas. Literature, writes Slimani,
“…ramène de la complexité et de l’ambiguïté dans un monde qui les rejette. Elle peut ausculter,
sans fard et sans complaisance, ce que nos sociétés produisent de plus laid, de plus dangereux et
de plus infâme."
619
It is precisely this ambiguity that makes Slimani’s fictional work so
brilliantly unsettling. Be it the sexual compulsions of a married woman in Dans le jardin de
l’ogre, the violent impulses of a “perfect” nanny in Chanson douce, or a young scholar’s

618
Ahmed, 135.
619
"...brings complexity and ambiguity back into a world that rejects them. It can examine, without embellishment
and without complacency, the vilest, the ugliest, the most dangerous of what our societies produce." Slimani, Le
diable est dans les détails, 22. (my translation)

178
memories of the rape he committed in Slimani’s 2018 short story, “La confession,” Slimani’s
uncanny juxtaposition of the horrific and the banal highlights the monstrosity in what is jarringly
familiar. In interview, Slimani explains that her novels are not about transgression (since, in
literature, there are no lines to cross) but exploring what makes us human, beginning with
inhumanity.
620
Yet, for some, the fact that a Moroccan woman should write about something so
apparently universal as human ‘nature’ appears to be transgression enough. As Ben Jelloun
observes, Slimani has broken the mold simply by not resorting to the genre of ethnic
autobiography. What many readers may not realise, of course, is that when Slimani writes about
the “bobos” of Paris she is writing about her world – Slimani first moved to France when she
was seventeen, after which, just like Dans le jardin’s Adèle, Slimani worked as a journalist
reporting on North African affairs for many years; and she now lives in central Paris with her
French husband and two children, just like Chanson’s Myriam. Whether Slimani’s work is
autobiographical or not is by no means integral to a reading of her work, but nor would I argue
that it is a mere distraction. Rather, I believe Slimani’s writing to be in conscious dialogue with
the market’s expectations of her as a Franco-Maghrebi woman author. Though, ostensibly, in her
novels Slimani puts aside ‘identity’ to meditate on the human condition, they are haunted by very
French dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality, and Slimani’s incisive take on the sorrow
and hypocrisy that haunts bourgeois society is made all the more defamiliarising by the ease with
which she inhabits this landscape. The ambiguity with which she inserts herself into her fiction
disorients the reader, forcing them approach the text from multiple angles simultaneously,
troubling what at first appears to be a straightforward view of a dominant reality, and all the
while reasserting the author’s freedom to represent anything (or nothing all).

620
See Bastide, ‘Leïla Slimani’; Freeman, ‘Leila Slimani Doesn’t Care If You’re Uncomfortable’.

179
Similarly, through her doomed quest for ‘unmarked’ authorship, Alaoui reveals the
extraordinary demands for ‘authenticity’ that are placed not only on the author, but on literature;
and in doing so stages the impossibility of literary ‘origin.’ Though La vérité does not fully
divest itself of the problematic ‘scripts’ that dominate France’s culture industry, the perpetual
displacement of ‘voice’ and ‘truth’ in the novel and its promotional discourse creates a troubling
parody of the kinds of narrative that flourish in the metropolitan market, highlighting the
inconsistencies within a literary culture that simultaneously champions the universal status of the
Franco-/Maghrebi woman author and demands that their work reflect their identity. Alaoui
performs an effective intervention into audience expectations through a persistent ambiguisation
of ‘origin’ both inside and outside the text – inside, through the unexpected locus of the ‘horse’s
mouth’ and Jmiaa’s relentless questioning of the ‘truth’ that emerges from it; and outside, in the
author’s contradictory assertions that, unlike Chadlia, she knows what she is talking about and
yet, when she writes, she is not the one speaking at all. This ambiguity, it could be argued,
conforms to dominant patterns of third-world narrative production and consumption by placing a
somewhat orientalising emphasis on ‘authenticity.’ However, like Slimani’s work, Alaoui’s
novel poses significant questions – for reader and author alike – as to Franco-/Maghrebi
women’s literary representation, demonstrating that where marginal voices are absorbed into the
dominant market, avenues of resistance also open up. Make what we will of Alaoui and
Slimani’s disavowal of authorship, there is something radically confronting in their demand for
fictionality. As Anzaldúa asserts, the writing of the so-called ‘marginal’ author remains
inevitably ‘marked’ by their identity. Ultimately, however, it is these authors’ inability to divorce
their work from the fact of their identity that makes their fictional writing such a telling
endeavour. For it is precisely in the margins, in ‘the ambivalent world of the “not-quite/not-

180
white,”’ writes Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture, that “the body and the book lose their
representational authority.”
621

621
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 92.

181
CHAPTER FOUR

If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be Moroccan -- towards a new
national romance

1 Introduction
While the sexual rights of Moroccan nationals clearly remains a priority for public figures
like Leïla Slimani, the language of this discourse – which, for reasons explored in Chapters One
and Two, is often met with resistance in the Franco-/Maghrebi community – is rapidly changing.
Whether out of a genuine desire for a more nuanced debate surrounding sexual culture in the
Maghreb or a simple attempt to depoliticise the issue, artists, activists and online influencers
have developed a strategic sensitivity to the ‘taboo’ surrounding these discussions in recent
years, transforming the fight for sexual liberty into a new struggle: for love. In September 2019,
Leïla Slimani and fellow Moroccan author-activist Sonia Terrab launched the Moroccan Outlaws
campaign, shortly followed by a legal petition to reform the Moroccan penal code which they
circulated under the slogan, “lhob machee jarima” [love is not a crime]. Their manifesto, issued
in defence of Moroccan journalist Hajar Raissouni, who was controversially detained in August
2019 on charges of adultery and abortion, condemns the “lois liberticides et inapplicables” that
led to her arrest, proclaiming that the authors and their co-signatories
622
were, like Raissouni,
“hors la loi.”
623
Also known as Le Manifeste des 490 (in reference to the number of signatures
gathered as well as Article 490 of the Moroccan Penal Code, which makes sexual relations

622
Among them: author Fatna El Bouih, director Leïla Kilani, self-proclaimed artiviste Zainab Fasiki and, “en
solidarité,” the authors Tahar Ben Belloun, Abdellah Taïa, and Abdellatif Laabi.
623
Slimani and Terrab, ‘Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous sommes hors-la-loi’;
Republished in Pierre Pascual, ed., L’Amour Fait Loi (Rabat: éditions Le Sélénite, 2020).

182
outside of marriage punishable by up to a year in prison), the Hors-la-loi Manifesto grounded the
authors’ demands for sexual autonomy firmly in the language of love:
Chaque jour, chaque heure, en secret, en cachette, des femmes comme moi, des hommes comme toi,
conservateurs ou progressistes, personnalités publiques ou anonymes, de tous les milieux et toutes les
régions, osent et s’assument, jouissent et existent par eux-mêmes, brisent des chaines et bafouent des lois.
Parce qu’ils aiment. Chaque jour, je me rends coupable d’aimer et d’être aimé.
624

What springs from a simple desire to love, they argued, is punished at the whims of the
Moroccan authorities, the threat of persecution hanging over Moroccan citizens like “une épée de
Damoclès.”
625

Indeed, it has been widely speculated that Raissouni’s arrest came about as a consequence
of her journalisme engagé, rather than her supposed abortion or sexual relations with her fiancé
(who was also arrested, along with the doctor who allegedly performed the abortion, and his
medical assistant). Raissouni was well-known for her writing on 'sensitive' issues such as illegal
immigration and, in particular, the Rif movement (le Hirak du Rif), which has been violently
repressed by the Moroccan government.
626
However – and perhaps precisely for this reason –
what sparked for Terrab and Slimani a long-overdue debate about Moroccan women’s sexual
autonomy, spoke to others about larger issues of State corruption and control. The Moroccan
Outlaws movement, which credits itself with “contributing largely” to the King’s decision to

624
‘Every day, every hour, in secret, hidden, women like me, men like you, conservatives and progressives, public
personalities and anonymous people, from all backgrounds and all regions, dare and take responsibility for
themselves, enjoy and exist for ourselves, break chains and ignore the laws. Because they love. Every day I feel
guilty of loving and being loved.’ Slimani and Terrab, ‘Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous
sommes hors-la-loi’. (my translation).
625
‘sword of Damocles’ Slimani and Terrab. (my translation).
626
‘Avant d’être un symbole, qui était Hajar Raissouni ?’, Telquel.ma, accessed 11 February 2021,
https://telquel.ma/2019/09/27/avant-detre-un-symbole-qui-etait-hajar-raissouni_1652065?fbrefresh=4; ‘Abdellah
Taïa : “Hajar Raissouni paie deux fois. Pour son prétendu avortement et pour son soutien au Hirak”’, Telquel.ma,
accessed 10 February 2021, https://telquel.ma/2019/09/30/abdellah-taia-hajar-raissouni-paie-deux-fois-pour-son-
pretendu-avortement-et-pour-son-soutien-au-hirak_1652351?fbrefresh=6; ‘Hassan Bennajah, membre d’Al Adl Wal
Ihsane : “La condamnation de Hajar Raissouni est injuste”’, Telquel.ma, accessed 10 February 2021,
https://telquel.ma/2019/09/30/hassan-bennajah-membre-dal-adl-wal-ihsane-la-condamnation-de-hajar-raissouni-est-
injuste_1652355?fbrefresh=10.

183
pardon Raissouni after less than two months of imprisonment,
627
has garnered widespread
international support – especially in France, where it was awarded the Simone de Beauvoir Prize
for Women’s Freedom in January 2020. Yet, when Slimani came under fire for refusing to speak
on the Rif movement, despite Raissouni’s known commitment to the cause,
628
Terrab declared
that it simply wasn’t the artist’s place to do so: “On aurait pu parler de politique, de religion, du
Hirak, sauf que nous ne sommes pas des activistes.”
629
As a writer, Terrab rightly contends,
Slimani is not obliged to formulate a political opinion on every issue that pertains to her country:
“D’autres personnes le font très bien et je les soutiens et les respecte.”
630
Nonetheless, we may
well ask the question: what exactly is it about a movement that has petitioned for unprecedented
legal reform and resulted in a condemned woman being publicly pardoned that Terrab finds a-
political?
Clearly, the debate surrounding Franco-/Maghrebi women’s sexual rights remains one that
is complexly political, but, as I will argue in this chapter, in re-framing sexual discourse as a
discourse about love, Moroccan artists and activists have found a unique way to (at least
ostensibly) depoliticise discussions that have long been entrenched in nationalist/imperialist
discourse. Nonetheless, if, as Mehammed Mack argues, what is in fact at stake in these debates is
the sexualisation of national culture,
631
then can the desexualisation of national/cultural discourse
ever truly result in a discussion that is a-political, or does it merely succeed in producing a new
national/ist vocabulary? What does it mean to rally around love, to establish love as the language

627
Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi, 53.
628
‘Quand Leila Slimani se fait massacrer sur la toile pour “son manifeste”, mais aussi le Hirak’, Hespress Français,
30 September 2019, https://fr.hespress.com/98119-quand-leila-slimani-se-fait-massacrer-sur-la-toile-pour-son-
manifeste-mais-aussi-le-hirak.html.
629
‘Sonia Terrab: “On aurait pu parler de politique, de religion, du Hirak, sauf que nous ne sommes pas des
activistes”’, Telquel.ma, accessed 10 February 2021, https://telquel.ma/2019/10/04/on-aurait-pu-parler-de-politique-
de-religion-du-hirak-sauf-que-nous-ne-sommes-pas-des-activistes_1653004?fbrefresh=5.
630
‘Other people do it very well and I support them and respect them.’ ‘Sonia Terrab’. (my translation).
631
Mack, Sexagon.

184
of rights, when love – like sexuality – is presented as a ‘universal’ category of human
experience? How might Moroccan authors and artists embrace a politics of love that does not
reproduce the same nationalist/imperialist tropes as existing discourses on sexuality? Drawing on
diverse definitions of love as a cultural, affective and spiritual phenomenon, in addition to global
feminist and anti-capitalist discourses on the revolutionary promise of love, this chapter
investigates the discursive limits of ‘love’ as the language of protest in Moroccan youth
movements and literature. Through a close reading of Moroccan Outlaw-not-activist Sonia
Terrab's debut film, Shakespeare à Casablanca (2016), as well as two recent novels by gay
Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa, Celui qui est digne d’être aimé (2017) and La vie lente (2020),
I explore radical declarations of love as a new form of patriotic protest, or the budding of a new
national romance.

2 For the love of love
Leaving aside, for a moment, the ways that ‘love’ comes to stand in for ‘sex’ in Morocco’s
new romantic discourse, let us explore what it might mean to rally around love in the Franco-
/Maghrebi context. Reflecting on the rhetoric of ‘national love’ used in white supremacist and
anti-immigration discourse, Sara Ahmed encourages us to remain “wary of any assumption that
love ‘makes’ politics and decides what form such politics might take.”
632
Here, love becomes the
extension of the individual’s ability (or willing) to embrace a certain set of ideals synonymous
with the nation’s values. In national/ist discourse, love is what “sticks” the nation together by
way of directing subjects towards it (through their embrace of the nation as love-object, via their
embrace of national ideology) or away from it (through their failure to do so). Thus, while love

632
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 140.

185
has the power to bind collectives it does so on the basis of excluding those who do not or cannot
love, and in ‘multicultural’ contexts like Britain and America – where love for the nation is
“crucial to the promise of [national/cultural] cohesion” – assimilation becomes at once the effect
and the condition of national love: those who align with the nation’s ideals are deemed both
capable of loving the nation and worthy, through this alignment, of receiving the nation’s love.
The romantic discourse produced by the Moroccan artists and activists discussed in this
chapter is of course different, primarily in two ways. Firstly, the exclusionary effect of love that
Ahmed describes is manifest in Moroccan youths’ rejection of the nation as both source and
object of love; this is a discourse that binds the collective in its orientation away from the nation,
rather than toward it. Secondly, love, here, is at once the collective’s shared ideal and the
iteration of this ideal; in other words, the discourse represents a (political) community wherein
the love of the collective body (in this context, not the nation but the nation’s disenfranchised) is
expressed through the subjects’ love of love. I have bracketed ‘political’ here since, as Sonia
Terrab’s previous comments reveal, the discourse I will be presenting in this chapter relies to a
great extent on the idea that love lies somehow parenthetical to politics. Nevertheless, the
political implications of ‘love’ as a collective ideal cannot be ignored, particularly where love is
presented as both originating and drawing subjects outside of Morocco’s national/cultural
boundaries. As we shall soon see in Terrab’s 2016 documentary on love, Shakespeare à
Casablanca, the concept of love (often referred to using French or English, rather than Arabic, in
this discourse) is frequently depicted by Moroccan youths as something lacking in Moroccan
culture and society – or even alien to it, as implicated in the title of a recent podcast series,
Lov(e)ni (“Love + Ovni = Lov(e)ni”
633
), which hosts weekly discussions on relationships,

633
‘Ovni’ signifiying ‘UFO’ in French. ‘Loveni Podcast’, Listen Notes, accessed 15 February 2021,
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/loveni-podcast-loveni-podcast-uFr0eitxGUX/.

186
sexuality and individual liberties in Morocco as well as, of course, love. Inevitably, this pushes
Moroccan subjects in search of love elsewhere: following the release of the Hors-la-loi
manifesto, an outpouring of témoignages declaring young Moroccans’ desire to emigrate were
published on the Moroccan Outlaws’ social media accounts (and, more recently, in L’amour fait
loi (2020), an anthology of Moroccan LGBTQ+ writing, featuring contributions from Terrab and
Slimani, which I will later be touching on) referencing their inability to love and be loved at
home. The question of love is plainly tied to sexual freedom here, as well as to citizenship. The
citizen’s lack of freedom to love (or to make love) is viewed as symptomatic of the nation’s lack
of love for its citizens. The demand for sexual freedom is thus issued to the Moroccan
authorities, in the name of love, as a sort of (anti-)patriotic ultimatum: give us national love in
the way of ideal love, or else we give up on this loveless relationship altogether. For Sara
Ahmed, this bespeaks a broken nationalism: the citizen’s love for the nation naturally declines
with the nation’s prolonged or repeated failure to deliver on its promises, pushing them to
relinquish their patriotic pact in the name of other allegiances. We frequently witness this
sentiment in Terrab’s second film, L7sla [The Impasse], in which young men with few options
from Casablanca’s Hay Mohammadi neighbourhood recount their numerous attempts to reach
Europe, thereby shedding the burdens of a forgotten generation (poverty, violence, ineducation
and perpetual criminalisation, to name a few).
634
When national love breaks down on account of
the nation’s failure to ensure the possibility of love-as-ideal, however, the collective evoked by
this ideological alignment appears to supersede that of the nation: the young Moroccans engaged
in this struggle assert their right to a kind of global citizenship; one that hinges on the
universality of human values, desires and practices such as love.

634
See Sonia Terrab, L7sla (Ali’n Productions; 2M TV, 2020).

187
If I keep returning to the elision between love and sex in these discussions (the distinction
is made all the more elusive by the use of the French amour), then it is precisely because of this
way in which the discourse of love, in all its supposed universality, begins to echo French
universalist discussions of sexual liberty. Where love stands in for ‘sexual freedom,’ the
narratives of resistance and exile publicised by Moroccan Outlaws come complicatedly close to
anti-immigration rhetorics about the abusive, hyper-masculine Maghreb and the feminised victim
of patriarchal Islam fleeing to Europe in search of better treatment.
635
Could it be that
lovelessness is simply replacing sexual violence, in the words of Miriam Ticktin, as the language
of French border control?
636
In French journalistic discourse, it certainly seems that way: if
Moroccan sociologists like Fatema Mernissi and Abdessamad Dialmy insist that love is
indigenous to the Maghreb, recent texts such as Michaëlle Gagnet’s L’amour interdit (2019) –
prefaced by Leïla Slimani – and Le Monde’s short podcast series, “Au Maghreb, l’amour en
résistance”
637
make it clear that love is not allowed to flourish there: “Pour un baiser échangé ou
un geste de tendresse un peu appuyé, n’importe qui peut se retrouver en prison…”
638
In this
context, to love (as to make love) in the Maghreb becomes an act of revolt; lovers ‘engaged’ in
the fight for individual liberties.
639
Europe – but in particular France, home to the self-

635
We may remember, in particular, the way Much Loved’s Loubna Abidar wrote about her abusive relationship
with Morocco, and their eventual break-up (by way of French citizenship).
636
Ticktin, ‘Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control’.
637
‘Au Maghreb, l’amour en résistance’, Le Monde.fr, 13 September 2018,
https://www.lemonde.fr/festival/article/2018/09/13/au-maghreb-l-amour-en-resistance_5354453_4415198.html.
638
‘For an exchanged kiss or a slight gesture of tenderness, anyone can end up in prison.’ Michaëlle Gagnet,
L’amour interdit: sexe et tabous au Maghreb, 2019, 14, http://banq.pretnumerique.ca/accueil/isbn/9782809826388.
(my translation).
639
This is reflected in a number of protests in which Moroccan youth gather in public spaces to stage kiss-ins or
offer free hugs. See, for example, ‘Moroccans Stage “Kiss-in” in Support of Arrested Teens’, France 24, 13 October
2013, https://www.france24.com/en/20131013-morocco-protest-stage-kiss-in-support-arrested-teens-picture-
facebook-kissing-islam.

188
proclaimed inventors of romance
640
– becomes a space for those who can and want to love; the
Maghreb a space for those who can’t or won’t.
Antiracist activists in the global north are well aware of the political implications of this
struggle “over who has the right to declare them-selves as acting out of love.”
641
In 2015, an
attack committed by Islamist extremists in San Bernadino, California, prompted the creation of
an anti-Islamophobic movement known as Vigilant Love,
642
and Sikh American activist Valerie
Kaur has emphatically pointed to love as a tool for achieving post-9/11 racial unity.
643
For bell
hooks, loving praxis is foundational to any struggle against racist imperialism, as well as
patriarchy and all other forms of oppression,
644
and in their collaborative essay, “Love in the
Time of Racism,” Darnell Moore and Monica J. Casper refer to love as both “a balm and a
pedagogy – an instructional approach to equitable relationality – that can be employed to
counteract the force of lovelessness.”
645
It is clear that love, here, is antithetical to racist-
imperialist ideologies. It is not a love that asserts its universality while, yet, defining itself
through others’ failure to love. What emerges instead is a theorisation of love as revolutionary
praxis, the possibility of a community made up of those who do and make “love work,”
646
rather
than those who justify their existing actions in love’s name. French-Algerian writer and activist
Houria Bouteldja takes this one step further: in her reading of “revolutionary love,” resistance
(against all forms of racist, nationalist, imperialist, capitalist and patriarchal oppression) becomes
an act of love in and of itself. Whereas love-as-ideology works on the basis of aligning some and

640
Marilyn Yalom, How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance, 1st ed (New
York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2012).
641
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 122.
642
‘#VigilantLOVE’, #VigilantLOVE, accessed 16 February 2021, https://www.vigilantlove.org.
643
Valarie Kaur, Revolutionary Love, First edition (New York: One World, 2020).
644
hooks, All about Love.
645
Darnell Moore and Monica Casper, ‘Love in the Time of Racism’, Ada New Media (blog), 7 July 2014,
https://adanewmedia.org/2014/07/issue5-moorecasper/.
646
Moore and Casper.

189
excluding others, love-as-praxis works to formulate a new political “We”
647
that deconstructs
and decolonises, tearing down borders rather than reinforcing them.

3 Fifty words for love
One does not have to look far within global popular culture or even, as we have seen,
political and academic discourse to find theories that support the transcendental power of love –
even Sara Ahmed cedes the necessity of “a politics of love” insofar as “how one loves
matters.”
648
Nonetheless, where love is evoked as a means of transcending not only personal and
social boundaries but national/cultural frontiers, we should ask which definition of ‘love’ is at
work in these movements. Given the reliance of Morocco’s new romantics on Anglo-American
discourse, in addition to Moroccans’ post/colonial and diasporic relationship with France, it is
important to develop a contextualised reading of love that I would argue is often missing from
these debates. How do we read for love in transcultural contexts? And how might a more
nuanced reading help us to recognise gestures of love in the land of the supposedly loveless? If
we search for physical displays of romantic affection as proof of love in the Maghreb, it is true
that we will likely find a dearth of evidence. As Michaëlle Gagnet observes, “Dans [les] rues
[d’Alger], comme à Tunis ou Rabat, l’amour est invisible. Rares sont les amoureux qui se
tiennent la main…"
649
However, we might ask whether a lack of hand-holding is a reliable
measure of love’s absence in a society that privileges both modesty and privacy. While men and
women embracing and holding hands is a common sight in much of Europe and America, as

647
Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us, 140.
648
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 140 My emphasis.
649
‘In [the] streets [of Algiers], as in Tunis or Rabat, love is invisible. Rare are lovers who hold hands...’ Gagnet,
L’amour interdit, 14. (my translation).

190
Moroccan actor-director Younes Yousfi playfully points out in his 2015 short, Houkak
[Because], such gestures do not translate readily into the Moroccan context.
Houkak follows two young men with too much time on their hands as they knock back
beers in search of something to do. Bored, drunk, and suddenly inspired by a news report
showing on the above-bar television about a “Free Hugs” event in Holland, they bribe the
barman to stage his own protest on the streets of Casablanca. “Try to do it here and you’ll see
what happens to you,”
650
he warns them, before taking their money, getting attacked by a passer-
by for approaching his wife, rudely refusing to hug a black man who wants to take him up on his
offer and eventually having his wallet and phone stolen by pickpockets. As he runs after the
thieves he throws the “Free Hugs” sign to Yousfi, who, attempting to report the crime to a
nearby police officer, is promptly arrested for public intoxication. The 17-minute film, which
Yousfi describes as “a story of lost benevolence,” is a comedic reflection on young Moroccans’
ever-growing frustration with the status quo – whenever the young protagonists question why
things are the way they are, the answer they receive is simply: “Houkak!” [because]. But if
Houkak openly points to the hypocrisy of a culture that will tolerate violence, racism and theft
while punishing people for petty personal indulgences, it also highlights the farcicality of
transplanting European displays of 'free love' directly onto the streets of Morocco. In case
Yousfi’s film leaves us with any doubts, this was proven in 2018 when, life repeating art, a
Moroccan ex-pat attempted to “mettre à bas [l]es stéréotypes en faveur de l’image d’un pays
libre et civilisé"
651
by organising a Free Hugs event in Rabat. Though hundreds registered their

650
Younes Yousfi, Houkak, 2015 [11:14].
651
‘break down stereotypes in favor of the image of a free and civilized country.’ The organiser, Hajar El Haloui,
qtd in Youssra Abdelmoumen, ‘«Free Hugs »: Pourquoi les câlins n’ont pas eu lieu à Rabat? – Barlamane’, accessed
10 December 2020, https://www.barlamane.com/fr/free-hugs-pourquoi-les-calins-nont-pas-eu-lieu-a-rabat/. (my
translation).

191
intention to participate on social media, on the day itself nobody materialised, and what was
supposed to “[mettre] en avant une jeunesse ouverte et épanouie capable de se serrer dans les
bras les uns des autres"
652
resulted only in a very public refusal to do so.
So what is it, precisely, about these gestures of love that gets so lost in translation?
Although Gagnet, like the Moroccan Outlaws, points to a range of legal and socio-religious
practices that force expressions of love underground in the Maghreb, rather than assuming that
love’s invisibility is indicative of its absence, I suggest that we explore the signs of love that are
made invisible through this optic. A close look at Sonia Terrab’s debut documentary,
Shakespeare à Casablanca, reveals that love – and indeed hand-holding – is abundantly present
in Morocco, if only you know where to look for it. Despite Terrab’s tendency to equate ‘love’
with expressions of sexual freedom in her more recent work, this T.V.-documentary film, created
for Morocco’s 2M channel in 2016 and produced by Much Loved director Nabil Ayouch, offers a
much deeper meditation on the limits of love’s translatability. Indeed, the quest to define ‘love’
in Moroccan terms is central to the film, which follows a Casablanca theatre ensemble’s
adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into colloquial Arabic and into the contemporary
Moroccan context. From the very first shots over the Casablanca coastline, the following
questions – originally posed by the Egyptian singer, Um Kaltoum, in her popular love song “Hob
Eih” – function as a sort of refrain for the film, reminding us of its central mission: “What is this
love you’re talking about? Do you know what love is?”
653
Led by the passionate and sometimes
explosive Ghassan El Hakim, founding member of the cross-dressing musical ensemble Kabareh
Cheikhates, the theatre group (known as the Choir) explore love and its many manifestations in

652
‘put forward an open and fulfilled youth capable of hugging each other’ El Halaoui in Abdelmoumen. (my
translation).
653
Translation taken from the English subtitle to the film, provided by Ghassan El Hakim and Amine xxxx, who
also translated Shakespeare’s play for this project. Terrab, Shakespeare à Casablanca.

192
Moroccan language and culture, in the process confronting their own ideas and experiences of
love. In this respect, the project sometimes risks taking on a didactic tone. As El Hakim attempts
to “find a way to pass on what Shakespeare is saying”
654
to modern-day Moroccans, he guides
the cast – a mix of students, workers and unemployed youths from a variety of socioeconomic
backgrounds – through a series of workshops on love: confiding in the group about their own
experiences, interviewing strangers on the streets of Casablanca about their opinions on love, and
engaging passers-by in improvised sketches based on love scenes from Shakespeare’s play. At
times therapeutic, at others more pedagogical, these exercises appear to be more for the
emotional and intellectual benefit of the cast than the performance itself. Consensus among the
those interviewed in the film appears to be that Moroccans simply aren’t trained in the ways of
love, and it is implied that, by discussing and performing the feelings evoked by Shakespeare,
the cast will gain an emotional repertoire that was sorely missing in their formative years.
This sentiment is echoed by TelQuel journalist Abdellah Tourabi, whom Leïla Slimani
cites in her conclusion to Sexe et mensonges: according both writers, faced with growing social
and sexual freedom, contemporary Moroccans “se comportment comme ‘des nouveaux riches
emotionnels’, qui ne savent pas quoi faire de leurs sentiments.”
655
For love to flourish in
Morocco, then, it will not suffice to lift the “lois liberticides”
656
that populate Moroccan
legislation or to lift the social stigmas surrounding freedom of sexual expression: Moroccan
lovers are in need of instruction. If we look to American scholars of love such as bell hooks and
Erich Fromm, who emphasise the importance of ‘love’ as a doing word, we understand that love

654
Terrab [3:28].
655
‘behave like emotional nouveaux riches who don’t know what to do with their feelings.’Slimani citing Tourabi in
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges, 179. (my translation).
656
‘oppressive laws’ Slimani and Terrab, ‘Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous sommes
hors-la-loi’; Republished in Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi; See also Gagnet, L’amour interdit.

193
is indeed something that can be mastered. According to their work, love is not just a ‘feeling’ or
an ‘instinct’ that pushes us to act in certain ways but a “praxis”
657
or an “art”
658
that requires both
study and diligence. It is curious, however, that a 16
th
-century Englishman should be the master
that young Moroccans turn to for guidance. While Shakespeare’s presumed status as the
grandfather of romance might speak to love’s continued (and transcultural) human relevance, the
assumption that 21
st
-century Moroccans will readily relate to the dilemmas faced by A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’s forbidden lovers would seem to suggest that Morocco is somehow
‘behind the times’ in learning how to love. The lines Terrab chooses to reproduce from the
group’s rehearsal sessions – particularly early on, while the actors are still struggling to get to
grips with the play and its contents – are very telling of this symmetry: the scene we observe
them practicing most often in the film is one in which Hermia confronts her father about her love
for Lysander, whose match he disapproves of. Dressed in a conservative-style Moroccan kaftan,
the actor playing Egeus pronounces: “To you your father should be as a god, to whom you are
but a form in wax, by him imprinted.”
659
Left hanging without the context of the continuing
Shakespearean scene, the words of this 12
th
-century Athenian patriarch evoke recurring debates
about familial pressure and patriarchal authority in Islamicate society, hinting at socio-religious
practices in the Maghreb that could be considered not just loveless, but medieval. That said,
Hermia’s conundrum does appear to resonate with the Moroccans interviewed in the film,
eliciting a variety of different answers as to what two young lovers should do when their parents
disapprove of their union. While a taxi driver says he thinks that breaking up one family to create
another can never work (though “Only God knows,” he admits), a lady who at first announces

657
See hooks, All about Love.
658
See Fromm, The Art of Loving.
659
Terrab, Shakespeare à Casablanca [45:40].

194
“there is no love in Casablanca” – only “greedy, ignorant girls” who marry for money and
neglect their duties toward their mothers-in-law – says that if the love is real they shouldn’t listen
to anyone. Later on, a man watching the troupe’s street rehearsal asks if Hermia and Lysander
are Muslim, concluding that if they are not then it is fine for them to run off to the forest, because
(in that case, it seems) “Love conquers all!”
Finally, a gentleman at this same street rehearsal insists that if the play is to be reflective of
a Moroccan love story, the couple should indeed elope, “but not to the forest, to the beach.”
660

Although his throw-away comment immediately elicits a ripple of laughter from the crowd, the
man’s insistence on the beach as the locus of romance à la Casablancaise reminds us that
Shakespearean landscapes are not the only ones capable of generating scenes of love. As
Michelle Gagnet observes, seaside coves are where you’re most likely to find young couples in
the Maghreb, away from the prying eyes of the city centre. But while Gagnet presents this as
evidence of lovers driven to secrecy, the sea’s cultural significance as the setting for romance
cannot be ignored. This is evidently not lost on Terrab, whose camera frequently lingers on
couples sitting on Casablanca beaches, furtively documenting their small gestures of love.
However, many of Terrab’s subjects appear to remain convinced that love hails from distant
shores. In interview, cast member and aspiring rapper ‘Fantôme’ tells the camera: “They used to
tell us that love [lhob] is for the Christians. It’s not for us [mashee dyalna]. It’s like an exotic
fruit. It’s not from here [mashee dyalna], that’s the problem.”
661
In a group discussion on how to
express one’s love, another young man tells his friends, “If you say I love you [kanbghee] in my
family you’ll be made fun of. Because for them, love [lhob] is what they see in the soap

660
Terrab [28:33].
661
Terrab [9:16].

195
operas.”
662
The romantic pedagogy elicited by Shakespeare’s play – which will be performed at
the end of the summer in an abandoned cathedral (L’Église Sacré-Coeur de Casablanca) – would
appear to reinforce this idea. If love exists in Morocco, at first glance, Shakespeare à Casablanca
would seem to suggest that it does not originate there. Even the language used to speak about
love in Morocco is imported: in the same group discussion, a young woman laments that
“[w]henever someone wants to talk about love, they switch to French or English or something.
It’s like it’s the only way they can say it without seeming…vulgar or something, I don’t
know.”
663
That is not to say, however, that there are no Arabic words for love. As Amine Nawny
– who collaborated with El Hakim in translating the A Midummer Night’s Dream into darija –
asserts, it’s not that the vocabulary doesn’t exist so much as the fact that Moroccans “don’t make
an effort to look at [their] own dialect.”
664

This is amply supported by the work of Fatema Mernissi, who assures us that, contrary to
Western theories on the subject, love “est un concept bien arabe."
665
In her extensive research on
love, she uncovers “more than fifty words for love, but no word for ‘couple.’”
666
So what is it
that apparently makes Moroccans so ignorant to their romantic heritage? According to Leïla
Slimani, while Moroccan culture is indeed rich with examples of love, the steady growth of
Wahabbism in the region has left Moroccan society bereft of tenderness.
667
Under this influence,
religious love takes precedence over all other forms. Islamic conservatism can thus be seen as
running counter to love – especially where demands for love are understood as a demand for

662
Terrab [8:21].
663
Terrab [6:53].
664
Terrab [34:34].
665
In particular, Mernissi is critical of Denis de Rougement’s assertion (in l’Amour et l’Occident) that the word
‘amour’ is ‘caractéristique de l’Europe chrétienne.’ See Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans, 32.
666
Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, 111; For the full list see Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays
musulmans.
667
Slimani, Sexe et Mensonges.

196
sexual freedom. As Mernissi points out, however, neither love nor love-making are historically
antithetical to Islam. According to Mernissi, the Prophet lived a very rich love life, which has
been recorded in detail in order to serve his believers as a both a model and a guide.
Furthermore, unlike Christianity, Mernissi argues that Islam “accorde une grande place” to the
subject of desire, which is regarded as something to manage and to master in the name of God. In
this sense, loving another becomes, in itself, a sacred practice. As Abdessamad Dialmy points
out, according to Islamic scripture sexual union is to be enjoyed – provided it is carried out
“d’une manière licite.”
668
Furthermore, as Mernissi’s research reminds us, both the Prophet and
the early Caliphs considered emotional and intellectual union with one’s lover to be an important
part of the pleasure.
According to Mernissi, not only is Arab and Islamic culture rife with stories of love,
Muslim intellectual traditions have had a substantial impact on European definitions of romance:
even courtly love (l’amour ‘udrite) – which feminist historian Marilyn Yalom attributes to 11
th
-
century French lovers developing an interest in adultery
669
– has its roots in Arabic literature.
670

Love, then, has multiple origins, but the question remains: what is the romantic heritage being
made available to young Moroccans in search of love? For Mernissi, no study of love could be
complete without consulting the Sufis – “les grands maîtres de l’art d’aimer de la civilisation
musulmane”
671
– for whom divine or spiritual practice is necessarily tied to love.
672
In contrast
with the (apparently) anti-love ethic of contemporary Wahhabism, Sufism offers both a religious
practice and a cultural-historical example of loving praxis that firmly grounds lhub in the

668
Dialmy, Féminisme, Islamisme, Soufisme, sec. 3814.
669
See ‘Chapter 1: Courtly Love - How the French Invented Romance.’ in Yalom, How the French Invented Love.
670
Specifically, Mernissi references the Andalusi Muslim scholar Ibn Hazim’s 11th-century treatise on love, ‘The
Ring of the Dove.’ Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans, 42.
671
Mernissi, 110.
672
both hubb, which appears in the Qur’an, and ‘ishq, a ‘passionate’ or ‘excessive’ love which, according to Islamic
scholar Joseph E. Lumbard, “has no such textual precedents.” See Lumbard, ‘FROM “ḤUBB” TO “ʿISHQ”’, 347.

197
Maghreb and – perhaps more importantly – could provide young Moroccans with exactly the sort
of emotional and philosophical guidance they appear to be seeking in Sonia Terrab’s film. The
problem, as Mernissi points out, is that this education is distinctly lacking in contemporary
Morocco: “Pourquoi n’enseigne-t-on pas, dans les écoles primaire où l’on modèle la personnalité
des enfants, cet Islam de l’amour? Ah! Les sufis, ces hommes et ces femmes qui se sont fait
marginaliser, brûler même pour l’idée de l’amour!"
673

In order to address this cultural amnesia, Nawny and El Hakim’s translation of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream draws on a variety of Moroccan sources on love including old darija,
Malhun (an Andalusian-influenced musical genre known for its love lyrics) and ‘Aita (a
traditionally female-dominated “musicopoetic”
674
genre). This kind of emotional heritage work
is fundamental to the mission of the Kabareh Cheikhates, in which both Nawny and El Hakim
play a prominent role. Originally conceived as a play entitled Masmaa [Manusfactured] about
men who would dress up as women at night and perform as shikhat, the cross-dressing musical
troupe began performing in downtown Casablanca in 2016 and now play more than fifty concerts
a year, touring nationally and internationally. Resistant to the rigid gender norms imposed by
Moroccan society and inspired by the way in which Shakespearean actors would switch between
playing men and women on stage, the Cheikhates seek to reveal the femininity that they believe
exists within all men, and in so-doing to challenge the “prison of tradition”
675
that presents
Moroccan men from expressing their emotions. The group is careful, however, to ground this
cultural-affective movement in Moroccan traditional culture. Though the work of female

673
Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans, 112.
674
Alessandra Ciucci, ‘The Study of Women and Music in Morocco’, International Journal of Middle East Studies
44, no. 4 (2012): 788.
675
El Hakim qtd in ‘Kabareh Cheikhats: The Moroccan Band Challenging Gender Norms’, Inside Arabia (blog), 23
February 2020, https://insidearabia.com/kabareh-cheikhats-the-moroccan-band-challenging-gender-norms/.

198
performers known as shikhat has been historically undervalued, they nonetheless constitute a
fundamental feature of the Moroccan cultural landscape and, in recent years, have been
increasingly incorporated into the State’s national heritage.
676
Furthermore, Moroccan men
dressing and performing as shikhat is not without precedent: apparently a common sight for
tourists
677
and at Moroccan wedding ceremonies,
678
it was previously brought into popular
theatre by Bouchaib El Bidaoui (1928-1965), who was well-known for his feminine roles.
679

Thus, although the gender-bending work of Kabareh Cheikhates might appear radical to some, as
Moroccan activist Selma El Houary has stated, “These are men who sing history.”
680

The Choir’s attempts to study love through Shakespeare’s protagonists may be less about
importing certain romantic traditions, then, than it is about revitalising others. Just as the cast
seem to undergo a sort of emotional training as they embody their romantic roles, Kabareh
Cheikhates claim that performing as women allows them access the feminine knowledge that is
already in them. “We cannot be women,” says El Hakim, “We can only be men who are women.
[…] men always have this deposit of ideas, and we’re trying to filter out that heritage.”
681

Through their art, the group is determined to revalorise feminine knowledge and tradition in
Morocco, challenging not only the patriarchal dictates surrounding gender but also the
denigration of women’s arts and practices in colonial discourse. According to musicologist
Alessandra Ciucci, while professional shikhat have always pushed at the boundaries of

676
See Ciucci, ‘The Study of Women and Music in Morocco’.
677
‘Dancing Boys Dressed as Women in Marrakech - Holidays Marrakech’, accessed 24 February 2021,
https://www.joaoleitao.com/holidays-marrakech/attractions/boys/.
678
‘Kabareh Cheikhats’.
679
Simo Benbachir, ‘Bouchaib El-Bidaoui: The Legend of Aïta’, Maroc Local et Nouvelles Du Monde | Nouvelles
Juives Du Maroc, Dernières Nouvelles | םלועהו וקורמ תושדח ,סמייט שייו׳ג וקורמ | Morocco News | برغملا رابخأ (blog), 10
July 2020, https://www.mjtnews.com/2020/07/10/bouchaib-el-bidaoui-the-legend-of-aita/.
680
Qtd in ‘Kabareh Cheikhats’.
681
BBC News, Kabareh Cheikhats: The All-Male Musical Troupe Who Dress up as Women, 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh17ERQIuXg&ab_channel=BBCNews [5:15].

199
Moroccan morality, “the undervaluing or silencing of women's musical practices and abilities”
682

stems primarily from the work of colonial anthropologists, who “emphasized the sensuality of
the shikhat's dances and minimized the poetic text sung by female performers.”
683
The
marginalisation of these archives has naturally resulted in a loss of knowledge about love, for –
as both Fatema Mernissi and bell hooks have fervently argued – who but women should be
love’s experts? Due to patriarchal assumptions that love is a ‘feminine’ topic unworthy of male
attention, hooks reasons that matters of the heart have become women’s privileged domain.
Furthermore, much of what hooks defines as ‘loving praxis’ is also considered (and consequently
devalued as) ‘feminine’ in patriarchal society. Knowledge about love is feminine, and feminine
knowledge is the knowledge of love. Patriarchy – like all systems structured by power and
dominance (racism, colonialism etc.) – is thus antithetical to love. In this sense, the work of
Kabareh Cheikhates is indeed a work of loving praxis.
For Mernissi (as for her beloved Sufis: Ibn Arabi, Junayd of Baghdad and Ibn Al-Rumi)
love is about transcending boundaries and forging unity; a unity that is constituted – and not
undone – by difference: “[l’amour est] un appel au voyage…auquel on ne peut résister, hors de
soi, vers autrui: aimer c’est se mettre à nu, c’est s’ouvrir à l’autre."
684
This is also a sentiment
warmly echoed by Nawny, who sees his work with the Cheikhates as a means of not only
resisting existing norms but embracing new experiential possibilities: “I think what we are doing
with Kabareh Cheikhates is really good because it gives me the power to understand someone
that is not me. Something that I am not. To understand something that I can be or that I cannot

682
Ciucci, ‘The Study of Women and Music in Morocco’, 787.
683
Ciucci, 788.
684
‘love is a call to travel ... which one cannot resist, outside of oneself, towards others: to love is to expose oneself,
it is to open up to others.’ Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans, 31. (my translation).

200
be.”
685
Performing with the Cheikhates is not simply an opportunity to don lipstick and a kaftan;
it exposes the male performers and their audience to new ways of perceiving and being in
perceived in the world, granting them access to emotional terrain they were taught to dismiss
growing up as men. Temporarily assuming a female identity allows Nawny and his fellow band-
members to explore what living and feeling might mean to them without the gendered
expectations placed upon them from childhood. As El Hakim notes, “The wigs and the dress are
only props…it’s just to help the audience that’s watching us.”
686

Ideally, El Hakim would like to see Kabareh Cheikhates contribute to society without
gender roles. The purpose of their feminine tribute is not to understand what it’s like to be a
woman, but to create a world that no longer categorises human expression in terms of femininity
and masculinity: “I’m a man according to my own definition, and I’m free to do that according to
my own rules.”
687
On tour, however, the Cheikhates’ struggle for gender justice takes on a new
dimension: “When we play in Europe, we also aim to challenge gender stereotypes, but also to
combat European stereotypes of countries like ours. We want to present another face of people
from Muslim countries.”
688
This marks a broader shift in discussions of gender in Moroccan
society; one in which contemporary activists are attempting to address how Moroccan men suffer
at once from the pressures placed on them in patriarchal society and from the racist-imperialist
assumptions that lie behind accusations of Arab/Muslim toxic masculinity. Moroccan writer and
activist Soufiane Hennani’s Machi Rojola, “podcast 100% Marocain qui promeut les
masculinités positives,” is one such example: quizzing artists and intellectuals such as Abdellah
Taïa, Asma Lambrabet, and Hicham Lasri on what they think is and isn’t [mashee] manhood

685
BBC News, Kabareh Cheikhats [4:35]. .
686
BBC News [2:59].
687
Nawny in interview with the BBC. BBC News [5:45].
688
‘Kabareh Cheikhats’.

201
[rojoola], Hennani aims to challenge patriarchal structures in Moroccan terms by “donn[ant] la
visibilité à toutes les masculinités avec toute leur pluralité.”
689
Though it was not promoted as
such, Sonia Terrab’s second film, L7sla [Impasse], is also something of a love-letter to
Morocco’s misunderstood young men: focusing on a group of Casablanca football fans (Rajaoui)
with a reputation for violence, the film paints a touching picture of male affection and
community, eschewing familiar scenes of masculine aggression for moments of real passion and
tenderness.
Though the Kabareh Cheikhates are mentioned only briefly in Shakespeare à Casablanca,
the group’s communal ethos is central to the film’s message about love. Indeed, Nawny and El
Hakim are given the last word on the matter: after A Midsummer Night’s Dream finally closes to
robust applause, we catch one last glimpse of them on stage before the credits roll, performing
Najat Aatabou’s “J’en ai marre” for an enthusiastic audience. Juxtaposed with the cast’s forlorn
goodbyes as they realise that the summer – and their journey together – is really over, the
Cheikhates remind us that the strongest declarations of love are to be found in expressions of
community. As one of the actors shouts out after a particularly gruelling workshop with the
Choir, “The best love story is with you, my friends!”
690
Furthermore, theirs is not the only loving
milieu portrayed in the film: though the casts’ interlocutors remain largely sceptical about the
prospect of romance in Morocco, many point to love’s other manifestations – love for the city,
your cat or your neighbour; a mother’s love or self-love. When El Hakim thanks a henna artist
for her (somewhat bleak) opinion on marital love, she responds: “You’re welcome – helping you

689
Hennani interview with TV5Monde. ‘Maroc : un podcast pour questionner la masculinité’, TV5MONDE
Afrique, accessed 3 March 2021, https://afrique.tv5monde.com/information/maroc-un-podcast-pour-questionner-la-
masculinite.
690
Terrab, Shakespeare à Casablanca [24:57}.

202
is also a form of love!”
691
In fact, the only places apparently devoid of love are the wealthier
parts of Casablanca, where the team is shunned by well-dressed passers-by carrying heavy
shopping bags. “To think that love only exists in working class neighbourhoods,” shouts El
Hakim, “The others have lost their ability to love!”
692

El Hakim is not alone in his anti-capitalist critique of love, which both of Terrab’s films
appear to emulate. According to Mernissi, love’s supposedly ‘universal’ ideal – the well-dressed,
educated polyglot who is as at home in a Hilton lobby in Paris or New York as he is in
Casablanca café
693
– is a fiction that springs directly from patriarchal structures of global capital.
But, as Mernissi rightly questions, what would such a man know of love? And why should we
desire a man who doesn’t care to know what love is? As Erich Fromm pointed out in 1956 (and
bell hooks elaborates in her own later treatise on love), love in capitalist society has evolved into
a something of a consumer sport, wherein love ‘objects’ are sought, compared and (with any
luck) taken off the ‘market.’
694
This is a practice that hooks argues is antithetical to communion
– either between romantic partners or within the larger community – which she regards as
foundational to the practice of love. By emphasising the potential for loving communion and
drawing our attention to love’s absence in the ville nouvelle, Terrab invites the audience to
question the assumption that love originates in Western society and, in doing so, to look more
closely at love where it is already (perhaps even uniquely) practiced in Moroccan society.

4 Love’s queer trajectories

691
Terrab [16:25].
692
Terrab [37:31].
693
See Mernissi, L’amour dans les pays musulmans, 27.
694
Fromm, The Art of Loving, ??

203
In 2020, Sonia Terrab and Leïla Slimani went on to join a new “communauté
d’amoureux.ses révolté.e.s,”
695
this time in the name of LGBTQI+ rights in Morocco. Following
a surge of homophobic violence in the early stages of Morocco’s COVID-19 lockdown in
2020,
696
the Moroccan Outlaws manifesto was re-published alongside personal and political
pieces written by a variety of queer artists, activists and intellectuals in a compendium titled
L’Amour fait loi. For many of the authors, it would appear a politics of love is the long-overdue
and necessary answer to the social and legal discrimination faced by Morocco’s LGBTQI+
community (so-defined in the book). As contributing writer Sofiane Hennani asserts in his
reassuring “Lettre à un.e jeune gay marocain.e,”
697
a cultural revolution centred on love will not
only prove vital grounds for the social and political acceptance of queer people in Morocco, but
is key to the larger project of decolonisation: “… la révolution est en route. Une révolution que
nous porterons. Une révolution qui les obligera à composer avec nous. Notre révolution sera une
farandole, une danse, un message de paix et d’amour.
698
For Hennani, a politics of love has the
potential to bring Moroccans together in the co-creation of a new national identity. Yet,
published in French (a version in Moroccan Arabic is apparently forthcoming) and publicised
through the contributions of a primarily Western-facing cohort of queer writers and artists from
the MENA region (Abdellah Taïa, Hicham Tahir, Haig Papazian and so on), L’Amour fait loi and

695
‘community of rebellious lovers’ Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi, 3. (my translation).
696
Namely; a series of malicious ‘outings’ that were prompted by Sofia Taloni, a transgender social media
influencer, in a deeply misguided attempt to “humanize” Morocco’s queer community by using gay dating apps such
as Grindr to show that gay people were “everywhere.” See Hugo Greenhalgh Al-Khal Abdulla, ‘Morocco Instagram
Influencer Apologises for Role in Outing of Gay Men’, Reuters, 13 May 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
morocco-lgbt-crime-trfn-idUSKBN22P2UI.
697
“Letter to a young gay Moroccan." This is probably a reference to Taïa’s edited collection of Lèttres à un jeune
marocain, itself a reference to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
698
‘… The revolution is on its way. A revolution that we will carry. A revolution that will force them to come to
terms with us. Our revolution will be a farandole, a dance, a message of peace and love.’Soufiane H. in Pascual,
L’Amour Fait Loi, 22–23. (my emphasis and my translation).

204
its affiliated social movement
699
raise important questions as to the role of ‘love’ in international
gay rights discourse.
The discourse surrounding same-sex practices – and, increasingly, same-sex love – in
Islamicate society has a complex history, with Morocco figuring strongly in Western perceptions
of the homosexual ‘Orient.’ This in mind, we might question the political orientation of L’Amour
fait loi’s new community of lovers. For Joseph Massad, expressions of homosexual identity and
solidarity in predominantly Muslim countries like Morocco are inherently neo-colonial: although
there is a long history of same-sex practices in Arab/Muslim societies, he argues, only in recent
decades – under the “missionary” influence of “Western male white-dominated organizations”
700
such as ILGA and IGLHRC
701
– did these practices come to be understood as ‘homosexual.’
According to Massad, the problem with the human rights discourse produced by such
organisations is that it “…assumes prediscursively that homosexuals, gays, and lesbians are a
universal category,” forcing discrete sexual identities onto cultural contexts where previously
there were none while allowing government bodies tied (both financially and ideologically) to
what he terms “the Gay International” to intervene on the behalf of the non-Western world’s
oppressed queer subjects (just as quickly as they materialise). What is more, for the majority of
Muslims previously engaged in same-sex relationships and practices, Massad argues, the
imposition of this supposedly emancipatory discourse “is eliciting less than liberatory
outcomes”:
By inciting discourse about homosexuals where none existed before, the Gay International is in fact
heterosexualizing a world that is being forced to be fixed by a Western binary. …men who are considered the

699
L’Amour fait loi has a strong social media presence, blog and interactive website and proceeds from the book
contribute to Moroccan activist organisations such as Nissawiyat. See: ‘QUI SOMMES-NOUS ?’, L’AMOUR FAIT
LOI, accessed 23 April 2021, https://www.lamourfaitloi.com/qui-sommes-nous.
700
Massad, Desiring Arabs, 161.
701
Respectively: the International Lesbian and Gay Association (now the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Trans and Intersex Association) and the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (now Outright
Action International).

205
“passive” or “receptive” parties in male-male sexual contacts are forced to have one object choice and
identify as homosexual or gay, just as men who are the “active” partners are also forced to limit their sexual
aim to one object choice, either women or men. As most “active” partners see themselves as part of a societal
norm, so heterosexuality becomes compulsory given that the alternative, as presented by the Gay
International, means becoming marked outside the norm— with all the attendant risks and disadvantages of
such a marking.
702

For Nadeem Mahomed and Farid Esack, the assumption that same-sex sexual activity was
widely accepted before the imposition of Western sexual ideologies overlooks a long-standing
problem of forced heteronormativity (and heteropatriarchal violence toward those who don’t
sexually conform) in Muslim cultures and societies.
703
For others, such as George Ioannides, to
adopt an entirely social constructionist approach to homosexuality is to dismiss the possibility
that gay Muslims’ and Arabs’ identification as such might come about as an expression of
agency.
704
Nonetheless, it remains questionable who stands to benefit from the
internationalisation of gay rights discourse, which, as Massad points out, lends itself to a rapidly
proliferating discourse of Muslim homophobia. Indeed, as Mohammed Mack observes, the “false
consciousness” narrative outlined above is one frequently used within the Muslim community,
whose supposedly innate homophobia – both Massad and Houria Bouteldja have argued – is
largely resultant of the West’s insistence on a universal homosexual “identity.”
705
Though it
remains heavily debated whether same-sex practices are actually condemned in the Qur’an,
Massad notes that Islamists “correctly” interpreting the encroachment of the Gay International as
an extension part of the West’s “expanding imperialism”
706
have successfully commandeered

702
Massad, Desiring Arabs, 88.
703
See Nadeem Mahomed and Farid Esack, ‘The Normal and Abnormal: On the Politics of Being Muslim and
Relating to Same-Sex Sexuality’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85, no. 1 (2017): 238,
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw057.
704
See George Ioannides, ‘Queer Travels: Intersections for the Study of Islam, Sexuality, and Queer Theory’, in
Queering Religion, Religious Queers, ed. Yvette Taylor and Ria Snowdon, 2014; Joseph Boone, The Homoerotics of
Orientalism: Mappings of Male Desire in Narratives of the Near and Middle East (New York, UNITED STATES:
Columbia University Press, 2014), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/socal/detail.action?docID=991305; Jarrod
Hayes, Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
705
Massad, Desiring Arabs; Bouteldja, ‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’.
706
Massad, Desiring Arabs, 194.

206
the discourse surrounding homosexuality to reflect their own religious-nationalist interests: “The
new [Islamist] discourse… is successfully restricting the terms of the debate to Western
licentiousness versus adherence to ‘true’ Islam, or in the language of the Gay International, to
sexual ‘rights’ versus repression and religious ‘barbarism.’”
707

As in broader discussions of sexual rights, love plays an interesting role in reinforcing this
discourse. Here, too, it would seem the right to ‘love’ coincides with the right to ‘make love,’
effectively desexualising a discourse that has sought to ontologize sexuality. What is more,
‘love’ plays a fundamental role in the continued process of homosexual ontologization,
distinguishing Western, homonormative modes of same-sex desire from other, more deviant
practices. As Ramzi Zakharia, founder of the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society (GLAS), has stated,
in the Arab world, “[j]ust because you sleep with a member of the same sex does not mean that
you are Gay…it means that you are engaging in homosexual activity. Once a relationship
develops beyond sex (i.e.: [sic] love) this is when the term gay applies.”
708
Thus, wresting the
question of LGBTQI+ rights from conservative discussions of ‘sexual licentiousness,’ the
question of sexual identity becomes one of (universal) affective subjectivity, the capacity for
‘love’ once again demarcating the boundaries of (sexual) civilisation. It should be noted that gay
rights discourse in the West has undergone a similar process of romanticisation over the last
several decades, the insistence that ‘love is love’ working to de-emphasise the role of sexual
activity in defining homosexual lives. However, just as this discourse serves to legitimate claims
to homosexuality by suggesting it is about ‘more’ than just sex, the romantic attachment to
Western homosexual ontologies implies that non-Western modes of same-sex desire are
somehow ‘less’ than legitimate. For Jasbir Puar, this distinction is crucial to the functioning of

707
Massad, 193.
708
Qtd in Massad, 173.

207
European homonationalisms, wherein political support for LGBTQ+ rights such as same-sex
marriage – a widely-accepted index of civilizational ‘progress’ and a key component of the
LGBTQ+ struggle for the ‘right to love’ – is used to “justif[y] further targeting of a perversely
sexualized and racialized Muslim population (pedophilic, sexually lascivious and excessive, yet
perversely repressed) who refuse to properly assimilate, in contrast to the upright homosexuals
engaged in sanctioned kinship norms.”
709
There is no doubt that the rhetorical contrast created by
(Westernised) homosexuals’ universal desire for love and the apparent lovelessness of same-sex
interactions in the Muslim/Arab universe contributes to this dynamic, shoring up the foundations
of the Western gay subject and their attending politics. In the context of the Gay International,
however, the discourse of love (and the geopolitical positioning of love’s possibility) also neatly
opposes the discourse of anti-democratic hatred attached to Muslim (read: potentially terrorist)
subjectivities. As hate speech, homophobic discourse appears the natural extension of
fundamentalist intolerance, and as Robert Aydemir points out in his study of “Moroccan boys” in
Dutch immigration discourse, the oppressed Muslim homosexual seeking “liberation” in the
West forms the ideal counterpart to the violent Islamist, whose threat is perpetually alluded
through the former both at home and abroad:
On one side is the asylum seeker from faraway, the self-arrogated protection of whose threatened sexual
individuality rhetorically enables Western countries to legitimate overriding dialogue and negotiation and
facilitating violent intervention under the flag of sexual freedom. On the other side is the homophobic, gay-
bashing immigrant nearby, whose culturalization enforces a qualified, conditional, and precarious
citizenship.
710

709
Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Next Wave (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2007), 20. In 2013, Houria Bouteldja refused (on national television) to comment on France’s ‘mariage pour
tous’ campaign on these very grounds, though she favours the term “homoracialisme”: “Moi je vais vous le dire un
peu brutalement, je ne suis pas concernée par ce débat. …Je suis située dans l’histoire de l’immigration post-
coloniale et dans les quartiers populaires. Si on m’interroge sur cette question [de mariage pour tous], là où je suis,
parce que je n’ai pas un avis universel, là où je suis, je dis, cette question ne me concerne pas.” See Bouteldja,
‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’.
710
Aydemir, Indiscretions, 14.

208
In Holland, as in France and elsewhere, only those capable of homosexual love (or loving
homosexuals) are seen as worthy of the nation’s love. To engage in homophobic discourse (or
even, as Boutledja has noted, to speak out against the apparently universality of a Western
homosexual identity
711
) is to engage in a kind of hate speech against the nation.
Although the authors of L’Amour fait loi appear to embrace Western articulations of
homosexuality, many are quick to point out the colonial origins of institutionalised homophobia
– beginning most obviously with Article 489 of the Moroccan Penal Code, carried over from the
French protectorate, which imposes a fine or up to three years’ imprisonment on “quiconque
commet un acte impudique ou contre nature avec un individu de son sexe.”
712
In a touching letter
addressed to his deceased mother entitled “Homophobie coloniale,” Sofiane Hennani recalls the
history of the French colonial administrator Maréchal Lyautey, “instigateur de l’article 489 qui
pénalise ce que je suis, me mettant d’office au ban,”
713
who is well-known for his apparent ‘love’
of Morocco as well as his homosexuality:
Quand je repense au Maréchal Lyautey, je me fous un peu de ses histoires, de ses intentions et de son amour
probable pour le Maroc. Je vois juste cet homme qui a vécu son homosexualité dans ce Maroc des années
vingt et qui, encore aujourd’hui, à cause d’une loi qu’il a commise, m’empêche de vivre la mienne.
714

In his letter, Hennani issues a tender apology to his mother, whose ‘traditional’ values he
dismissed in favour of the more ‘progressive’ ideology supposedly offered by Morocco’s former
colonisers.
Je t’ai haïe par moment, toi ma génitrice, et j’en suis arrivé à aimer mon bourreau, le confondant avec mon
libérateur. Celui qui m’a appris à me détester et à ne m’aimer qu’à travers lui. Qu’à travers sa langue, sa

711
See Bouteldja, ‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’.
712
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Refworld | Morocco: Code Pénal’, Refworld, accessed 26
April 2021, https://www.refworld.org/docid/54294d164.html.
713
Soufiane H. in Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi, 79.
714
‘When I think back to Marshal Lyautey, I don’t really give a damn about his stories, his intentions and his
probable love for Morocco. I just see this man who lived his homosexuality in this 1920s Morocco and who, even
today, because of a law he made, prevents me from living mine.’ Sofiane H. in Pascual, 79–80.

209
civilisation, sa culture… Même aujourd’hui, pour te parler maman, je suis incapable de le faire dans notre
langue. Je suis obligé d’utiliser la langue de l’autre. Cette langue. Leur langue.
715

Convinced from an early age that the path to (homosexual) liberation and self-actualisation
lay in foreign territory, Hennani willingly sacrificed his relationship with both his mother and his
mother tongue. It is also thanks to his knowledge of French, however, that he was eventually
able to uncover the colonisers’ homophobic legacy, and to envisage an alternative future for
queer Moroccans; one of their own making: “J’ai ouvert les yeux. J’ai grandi. Je me suis
décolonisé. Je me décolonise. Pardon maman. Pardon. Je t’aime.”
716

As is to be expected, love is central to Hennani’s decolonial message, and in the same
letter he calls on his mother’s “islam culturel” as source of cultural resistance in the face of
colonial bigotry: “Ton islam à toi, maman, est amour, sérénité, vivre-ensemble.”
717
Together, he
writes, they could have reinterpreted the teachings of Islam and rewritten “ce maudit chapitre sur
Loth”
718
to reveal a different religious heritage. This echoes the work of queer religious scholars
such as Scott Kugle, who, in his well-known treatise on Homosexuality in Islam, lists love (last,
but not least) among his seven principles for a “sexually-sensitive” interpretation of the Qur’an:
…love is the goal, for, though the Qur'an urges us to build societies based on moral order requiring rules and
laws, the deeper goal behind this order is the promotion of loving sincerity between each person and God,
between individuals of the faith community, between members of every family, and between sexual
partners.”
719

The difficulty of reconciling one’s homosexuality with the Muslim faith is amply explored
in Western journalism, yet, as Kugle asserts, “[w]here the Qur'an treats same-sex acts, it

715
‘I hated you at times, you my progenitor, and I came to love my executioner, mistaking him for my liberator. The
one who taught me to hate myself and love myself only through him. Only through his language, his civilization, his
culture ... Even today, to speak to you, Mom, I am unable to do it in our language. I have to use the other’s language.
This language. Their language.’ Soufiane H. in Pascual, 78. (my translation).
716
Soufiane H. in Pascual, 80.
717
Soufiane H. in Pascual, 79.
718
Soufiane H. Pascual, 79.
719
Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 41.

210
condemns them only insofar as they are exploitative or violent,” and the few Hadith that
advocate for the punishment of same-sex practices are of spurious origin.
720
In another letter
published in L’Amour fait loi, this time addressed to “cet homophobe marocain ou d’ailleurs,”
Hennani thus encourages his readers to renew their understanding of Islam through the work of
feminist scholars such as Fatema Mernissi and Asma Lamrabet, calling on an alternative (queer-
friendly and pro-feminist) religious heritage.
Though many have suggested that Muslim homophobia (like Hennani’s mother’s religious
practice) is “cultural” rather than founded on scripture, the power that this might afford cultural
actors to participate in social change is much less frequently explored. The act of cultural
collaboration is a key component of Hennani’s decolonial strategy; one that is reflected in the
work of several other Franco-/Maghrebi artists and activists working in the pursuit and practice
of love. What is more, he suggests the LGBTQI+ community could play a fundamental role in
queering Moroccans’ collective understanding of their culture and their history. For Hennani,
Morocco’s decolonial future hinges on a radical reclamation of national identity: "Ce pays nous
appartient aussi, mon ami.e. Ce pays t’appartient. …Ce que nous sommes n’est ni une tendance
occidentale, ni un complot contre la religion, encore moins contre 'l’unité nationale', comme ils
disent. Tu n’es pas un étranger."
721
Guiding his readers toward Morocco’s existing queer
heritage, he places same-sex desire firmly within the scope of the nation:
Connais-tu notre histoire, mon ami.e? Celle de la culture queer marocaine qui nous a façonné.e.s? Tu la
trouveras dans une chanson de Bouchaib El Bidaoui, dans un Riad à Meknès ou dans une halka à Marrakech.
Tu la trouveras aussi dans les écrits de Mohamed Choukri, dans les films de Daoud Aoulad-Syad comme
Adieu forain , ou dans The sea is behind d’Hicham Lasri.
722

720
Kugle, 3; See also Massad, Desiring Arabs, 203.
721
Soufiane H. in Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi, 23.
722
‘Do you know our history, my friend? That of the Moroccan queer culture that shaped us? You will find it in a
song by Bouchaib El Bidaoui, in a Riad in Meknes or in a halqa [story-telling circle] in Marrakech. You will also
find it in the writings of Mohamed Choukri, in films by Daoud Aoulad-Syad like Adieu forain, or in The sea is
behind by Hicham Lasri.’ Soufiane H. in Pascual, 23. (my translation).

211
According to Hennani, it is from writers like Rachid O., Abdellah Taïa, Hicham Tahir, and
Bahaa Trabelsi – not the Gay International – that he learnt “l’amour et la resilience,”
723
and it is
only by researching and reasserting ownership over this inheritance that Moroccans might finally
wrest the national narrative from the hands of its former colonisers. As Ayouba (an interviewee
cited by the Moroccan queer and trans women’s collective, Nissawiyat, in a study of COVID-
19’s impact on the queer community
724
) proclaims, “They may have erased most part [sic] of our
history, but the present and the future are ours.”
725

The temporality of LGBTQI+ discourse is indeed a crucial factor, given the Gay
International’s insistence on the embrace of homosexual identity as an index of democratic
‘progress.’ For Houria Bouteldja, this makes the kind of historical recuperation proposed by
Hennani not only an act of decolonial resistance but “une question de survie sociale.”:
Le racisme a suspendu notre temps. On ne peut pas avancer et encore moins "progresser" si on ne reconstitue
pas notre colonne vertébrale. Dans ce processus, la priorité est donnée à la reconstitution du lien social
communautaire autour d’identités brisées, escamotées mais considérées comme nôtres et authentiques.
…C’est ce qu’on appelle communément le « repli communautaire » et que nous appelons, nous, l’"espace-
temps indigène" et qui se manifeste sous les traits d’une espèce de "régression féconde", une illusion de recul
mais qui est en fait un progrès du point de vue de l’intérêt global des racisés, un moment de refondation que
nous devons préserver de l’ingérence blanche coûte que coûte.
726

In the context of homoracialisme, Bouteljda argues, it is particularly important for the
Muslim community to explore the “formes d’homo-érotisme de l’ordre ancien [qui] ont survécu,
se sont maintenues sous des formes complexes, recomposées et résistent aux formes qu’imposent

723
‘love and resilience.’ Soufiane H. in Pascual, 23. (my translation).
724
Loubya fi zaman al-korouna [Loubya in the time of Corona]. Loubya literally refers to “beans” in Darija, but as
Nissawiyat [lit.: “Feminists”] explain, it is also “a [homophobic] slur reclaimed by some queer individuals in
Morocco.” ‘Loubya in the Time of Corona’ (Nissawiyat, 2020), 5, https://nassawiyat.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/02/3-Updated-Version-Rapport-Nassawiyat-English.pdf.
725
‘Loubya in the Time of Corona’, 23.
726
“Racism has suspended our time. We cannot move forward, much less ‘progress’ if we do not rebuild our spine.
In this process, priority is given to the reconstitution of the community social bond around identities broken,
concealed but considered as ours and authentic. … This is what is commonly called ‘withdrawal into the
community’ and which we call ‘indigenous space-time’ and which manifests itself in the guise of a kind of ‘fruitful
regression,’ an illusion of recoil which is in fact progress from the point of view of the global interest of racialized
people, a moment of refoundation that we must preserve from white interference at all costs.” Bouteldja,
‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’. (original emphasis, my translation).

212
au monde l’universalisation des normes tant hétérosexuelles qu’homosexuelles."
727
Popular
examples of this homo-erotic heritage can be found in the verse of Umayyad poet, Abu Nuwas,
whose 8
th
-century ghazal
728
openly professed his love of beautiful young men
729
; and the
“homosensual” nature of same-sex interactions in Islamicate society that Malek Chebel (among
others) has argued naturally results from Islamicate societies’ rigid gender segregation.
730
The
research of scholars such as Scott Kugle, who identifies “a rich archive of same-sex desires and
expressions”
731
in Islamic historical and literary records, as well as Kendili, Berrada and Kadiri,
who maintain that “homosexuality has always been present [and] socially accepted”
732
in
Morocco, prove pre-colonial (and often continuing) same-sex practices to be fertile ground for
LGBTQI+ activists seeking to destabilise the Western saviour narrative (as well as
corresponding narratives from conservatives in the region of moral degradation by the West).
However, as Mehammed Mack points out in his work on “clandestine sexualities,” we should
remain wary of the neo-imperialist impetus to expose the prevalence of Arab/Muslim
homosexuality. While rediscovering an Arab/Muslim history of same-sex desire and queer
positivity (just as unearthing the West’s history of homophobia) could prove crucial to the
construction of a loving community, for both Bouteldja and Hennani it is important that this
process remains one of communal introspection. Given the context of L’Amour fait loi’s

727
‘...forms of homoeroticism of the old order [which] have survived, are maintained in complex, recomposed forms
and resist the forms imposed on the world by the universalization of both heterosexual and homosexual norms.’
Bouteldja. (my translation).
728
Love lyrics
729
I. Kendili, S. Berrada, and N. Kadiri, ‘Homosexuality in Morocco: Between Cultural Influences and Life
Experience’, Sexologies 19, no. 3 (1 July 2010): 154, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2010.03.004; Boone, The
Homoerotics of Orientalism, 54; See also Massad, Desiring Arabs, 197.
730
Malek Chebel, Encyclopédie de l’amour En Islam: Érotisme, Beauté et Sexualité Dans Le Monde Arabe, En
Perse et En Turquie (Paris: Payot, 1995), ?; Scott Kugle speaks of ‘behavioural bisexuality’ in a similar vein. Kugle,
Homosexuality in Islam, 10; See also Kendili, Berrada, and Kadiri, ‘Homosexuality in Morocco’; Chris Belloni, I
Am Gay and Muslim, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJdSRv3PbN0&ab_channel=a.c.
731
Scott Siraj Al Haqq Kugle, ‘Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims’, in
Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism, ed. Omid Safi, Reprinted (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 197.
732
Kendili, Berrada, and Kadiri, ‘Homosexuality in Morocco’, 153.

213
publication, it is particularly important to acknowledge the ways in which LGBTQI+ visibility
can be weaponised. Faced with 2020’s spate of homophobic “outings,” L’Amour fait loi
contributors such as Soufiane Hennani, Abdellah Taïa, Zineb Diouri-Ammor and Fayçal Achbar
(also known under the drag name, Patricia ChaudePisse) emphasise the need for queer
Moroccans to retreat into the self as well as one’s community in order to flourish. What they
propose thus constitutes a “coming in”
733
rather than a coming out; a gathering rather than a
revelation of queer resources.
Though released some years earlier, the process of “coming in” (or “régression
féconde,”
734
in the words of Bouteldja) is beautifully encapsulated in French director Rémi
Lange’s 2001 film, The Road to Love, which follows an ostensibly heterosexual French-Algerian
student in Paris (Karim) along the path to self-discovery – and, as it turns out, queer romance –
as he carries out a university assignment on Muslim homosexuality. In an early scene, Karim
watches a television interview with Abdellah Taïa, long-time spokesperson for the Moroccan
queer community and perhaps L’Amour fait loi’s most prominent LGBTQ+ contributor, in which
he asked whether he thinks Morocco will ever introduce the Civil Solidarity Pact.
735
“I don’t
know if one day a gay contract will exist in Morocco,” he smiles, “but…we have better, or
rather: we had better.”
736
Taïa subsequently goes on to describe the custom marriages that used
to regularly occur between men in Egypt’s Siwa oasis, prompting Karim to pursue a long line of
questioning with regards to queer Muslim history (that will eventually result in his own custom
union). His girlfriend, Sihem, watching with increased agitation as he immerses himself in this

733
Pascual, L’Amour Fait Loi, 25.
734
Bouteldja, ‘Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et « mariage pour tous »’.
735
Pacte civil de solidarité (PACS), the only form of legal union available to same-sex couples in France before
same-sex marriage was introduced in 2013.
736
Rémi Lange, The Road to Love (Water Bearer Films, Inc., 2002), [3:23].

214
project, Karim belly-dances in front of the mirror to Egyptian love songs, interviews gay artists,
authors and activists in Paris and Marseille and delves into the work of queer writers such as Abu
Nuwas and Jean Genet before finally departing on his own homospiritual pilgrimage to
Marrakesh (“le Marais du Maghreb”
737
) with his openly gay (and obviously interested) new
friend, Farid. Though, in France, Karim is presented with numerous opportunities to engage in
same-sex activity, he vehemently denies any suggestion that he might be gay, and while it seems
he is haunted by the impossibility of reconciling such an identity with his origins (at night, his
dreams are filled with voices telling him it’s too “dangerous” to be gay in countries like Algeria),
it seems in Morocco Karim is finally able to come to terms with his sexuality. Wandering the
streets of Marrakesh reading snippets on Morocco’s sexual culture from the Rough Guide, Karim
and Farid repeat many of the Orientalist stereotypes circulating about Muslim homosexuality –
that, historically, it was not uncommon for sex to occur between religious teachers and their
disciples; that Morocco is a hotbed for (homo)sexual tourism; and that Moroccan men frequently
engage in same-sex activity as a “substitute” for heterosexual sex before marriage. More
curiously, however, it is here that Karim starts to lose sight of his research objective (North
African homosexuality), and, putting the camera aside, begins to question the boundaries of his
own sexual identity. Importantly, Karim’s becoming-queer does not entail his “coming out” as
homosexual. Rather, it is through his sudden inability to read the affection between Moroccan
men as either hetero- or homo-sexual that his own displays of masculinity and heterosexuality
(which, previously, he was reluctant to relinquish) are called into question and the possibility of
same-sex love opened up to him. A visit to Jean Genet’s tomb in Larache (where the author
famously moved to be near to his Moroccan lover), followed by recitations of Abu Nuwas’ poem

737
Le Marais is famously a gay district in Paris. Lange, The Road to Love.

215
Tariq al-hob (Road to Love, after which the film is titled) lead Karim to make peace with his
obvious feelings for Farid. Scenes of same-sex marriage in the Siwa oasis taken from Taïa’s
earlier interview are now repeated as Karim reads from a colonial text describing same-sex
marriages among the Beni Brahim of Ouargla, Algeria, as a “deviant” practice, testifying to the
inconsistency with which same-sex practices have been treated in Western morality discourse.
The couple later reconvene (at evening prayer) in Marrakesh’s Place de Foucauld, where Karim
happily accepts Farid’s informal offer of a ring.
While certain critics remain sceptical of the motives behind exposing the Muslim world’s
homosexual-historical reality,’
738
it is clear that delving into the (often-neglected, if not actively
suppressed) history of same-sex desire in the Middle East and North Africa offers young
LGBTQ+ Muslims a productive path to queer self-actualisation away from the forced
assumption of a universal homosexual identity. In The Road to Love, Lange gestures to a number
of documented practices that have historically generated problematic narratives – the “bawdy”
poetry of Abu Nuwas, for example, far from being a marker of a more widespread sexual
licentiousness was apparently quite controversial at the time it was written;
739
and in alluding to
Nuwas’ love of effeminate young men (as well as the master-disciple relationships that were
supposedly widespread in Qur’anic schools) as an indigenous form of same-sex love, Lange
draws on a long-standing fascination with ‘beautiful boys’ in colonial discourse about the
homosexual Orient, reinforcing “the myth of age-differentiated and gender-defined sodomy as

738
As Massad notes, it is Western Christians who first promoted the image of the ‘sexually licentious’ (therefore
morally bankrupt) Orient. As such, Boone questions the enduring Anglo-European fascination with unearthing the
Muslim world’s ‘homosexual’ heritage. See Massad, Desiring Arabs, 164; Boone, The Homoerotics of Orientalism,
xx.
739
See Massad, Desiring Arabs, 197.

216
the primary formation of male-male sexuality in Islamicate culture.”
740741
As Jasbir Puar notes,
“[t]he [homonationalist] claim to [Muslim] homosexuality counters two tendencies: the
colloquial deployment of Islamic sexual repression that plagues human rights, liberal queer, and
feminist discourses, and the Orientalist wet dreams of lascivious excesses of pedophilia, sodomy,
and perverse sexuality.”
742
If The Road to Love effectively resists the former, at times it would
appear to risk emulating the latter. Nonetheless, the film presents a rare effort to explore
Arab/Muslim sexual practices and ontologies outside of the Gay International paradigm, and in
the context of more recent developments in Moroccan LGBTQI+ discourse, it offers an
interesting example of how decolonial approaches to same-sex desire can be articulated through
the practice and pursuit of love. Karim’s love of Farid, though evidently sexual, is never assumed
under the label of a homosexual ‘identity,’ and while his research on North Africa’s homo-erotic
history allows him to reconcile his same-sex desires with his perceived cultural identity, the
result is not his ‘coming out’ as gay and North African. Rather, it is through a gradual retreat
from the discourses surrounding Muslim homosexuality – his ‘coming in,’ if you will – that
Karim is able to identify his desires and act on them despite the external pressures to define
himself. The inconsistency of the terms in which same-sex desires and practices in the Maghreb
have been historically defined is epitomised in his custom marriage to Farid, which seems to
gesture simultaneously toward an image of Western homosexual modernity and to pre-colonial
modes of same-sex kinship, shattering the Gay International’s myth of queer liberation

740
Boone, The Homoerotics of Orientalism, 51.
741
It’s worth noting that Western gay rights organisations (including the ILGA, which was affiliated with the North
American Man/Boy Love Association [NAMbLA] for many years) have also historically struggled with where to
place pedophilia, or “man-boy love,” in homosexual history. This is not to say that Muslim LGBTQI+ rights
discourse is somehow behind the West’s, but it is an important indicator of how definitions of ‘love’ have
historically shifted to exclude or accommodate certain sexual practices. For more detailed information about ILGA’s
relationship with NAMbLA, see Joshua Gamson, ‘Messages of Exclusion: Gender, Movements, and Symbolic
Boundaries’, Gender & Society 11, no. 2 (1 April 1997): 178–99, https://doi.org/10.1177/089124397011002003.
742
Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 14.

217
‘progress.’ As in Hennani and Bouteldja’s work, this disruption is both temporal and
orientational: Muslim queerness belongs neither to the future nor to the Global North; rather, it
precedes (or exceeds) Western intervention and might be the generator of new national/cultural
possibilities in the Maghreb.
5 S.O.S. for love
In light of the greater call to love articulated by young Moroccans over recent years, the
two latest novels by queer author and notable L’Amour fait loi contributor, Abdellah Taïa – Celui
qui est digne d’être aimé (2017) and La vie lente (2019) – raise significant questions as to how
Moroccans might pursue a form of loving praxis that runs counter to dominant, neo-imperialist
assumptions of Arab/Muslim lovelessness. Billed internationally as the “only openly gay man in
Morocco,”
743
Taïa has no doubt found himself complicit in the promotion of this discourse. As
Massad asserts, the voices of middle and upper-class “native informants” in Islamic countries
and the Muslim diaspora play an important role in universalising Western gay rights discourse,
and Taïa’s frequent public appearances on French television and in documentaries such as
Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love
744
and Chris Belloni’s I am Gay and Muslim
745
earlier on in
his career are exemplary of this process. Nonetheless, from as early as L’armée du salut (2006),
Taïa’s second and perhaps still best-known novel, one detects a strong ambivalence about the
supposed ‘freedoms’ that the West has to offer queer Moroccans. During a childhood trip to
Tangiers – a port city renowned for being a key trafficking point between Europe and North
Africa and one that, thanks to the writing of authors such as Mohamed Choukri, holds a firm

743
According to his U.S. publishers. The MIT Press, ‘Semiotext(e) / Native Agents’, accessed 11 February 2021,
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/semiotexte-native-agents?page=1.
744
A Jihad for Love (Mongrel Media, 2007).
745
Anxious about his appearance in the film after the backlash ensued by his appearance in TelQuel magazine, Taïa
assumes the pseudonym ‘Rayan Rayan’ (an allusion, perhaps, to the character in his short story, ‘The Scent of
Paradise,’ featured in Another Morocco) in this documentary. Belloni, I Am Gay and Muslim.

218
place in the queer Moroccan imagination – the autofictional Abdellah ponders whether it will be
“the start of some great passion or the start of some mutual hatred”
746
: “From the kasbah, there is
an extraordinary panoramic view of Tangiers, the port, the straight, the Mediterranean the Ocean.
The horizon. The future. The happiness life holds. The promises. Let’s go for it! Really?”
747
As a
young man, he finally makes it to Europe, only to be greeted by endless grey skies and a
suffocating relationship with an older man who accuses him prostituting himself for a ticket out
of Africa: “Freedom, it turned out, was just a word. I wasn’t free. All of a sudden I knew that,
realized it in a brutal, traumatic way.” Though he still considers Jean, his first same-sex partner,
“the very embodiment of love,”
748
Abdellah decides to create a life for himself alone in “that
cold, other world”
749
of Geneva, hoping that one day his “dream of being an intellectual in Paris
will become a reality.”
750

Still very much on the search for love, it is precisely this reality that, now in their forties,
Taïa’s more recent protagonists are attempting to navigate. Though, ostensibly, they have
achieved the goal originally set out by L’armée’s Abdellah (of becoming fully assimilated into
France’s intellectual culture), Celui’s Ahmed and La vie lente’s Mounir share a similar
disillusionment with regards to the freedom offered by life in European society. An epistolary
novel working retrospectively from the loss of the protagonist’s mother (and the subsequent
“dethroning” of his older brother as the head of the family) in 2015, Celui paints a particularly
thankless picture of queer Moroccans’ attempts to gain the acceptance they have always been
looking for in French society. Having left Morocco at the age of seventeen under the

746
Abdellah Taïa, Salvation Army, trans. Frank Stock, Semiotext(e) Native Agents Series (Los Angeles, CA :
Cambridge, Mass: Semiotext(e) ; Distributed by the MIT Press, 2009), 60 [2006].
747
Taïa, 59.
748
Taïa, 141.
749
Taïa, 142.
750
Taïa, 143.

219
sexual/cultural tutelage of Emmanuel, a French tourist he met in Salé, a thirty-something-year-
old Ahmed (now called ‘Midou’ in an attempt to replace a name that was “trop musulman, trop
arriéré”
751
for the couple’s friends in Paris) finds himself profoundly compromised by the life he
has committed to and resentful of the neo-colonial dynamics that forced him to relinquish his
sense of self and community in the holy pursuit of love. Emmanuel – who, according to Ahmed,
first convinces him that he is in need of “saving”
752
and then transforms him into “un petit pédé
parisien”
753
who speaks perfect French and knows only how to express his identity in the
language taught to him – proves to be an effective mouthpiece for the Gay International and a
testament to the enduring legacy of Orientalist intellectuals like Oscar Wilde and André Gide,
who famously treated the Maghreb like a “homosexual playground.”
754
Originally drawn to
Emmanuel by his “chic” way of saying and doing things in French, Ahmed now feels trapped by
the language that has come to define his existence as an assimilated intellectual in Paris, and
which forms the very terms of their relationship: “Le français s’est infiltré partout. Dans l’amour
entre nous. Dans le sexe entre nous. Dans les conversations. Dans notre façon de marcher, de
faire couple, de faire semblant d’être unis contre le monde."
755

The question of ‘love’ is an important part of Ahmed’s realisation : though it is a desire for
love (perhaps even love itself) that first propelled him to leave Morocco for Emmanuel (and for

751
‘too Muslim, too backwards.’ Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé, 2018, 104. (my translation).
752
‘J’ai même l’impression que l’idée de m’émanciper enfin de toi et de ton arrogance, c’est toi qui l’as plantée dans
ma tête. C’est toi. C’est sûr. C’est toi.’ Taïa, 116.
753
‘a little Parisian queer’ Taïa, 89. (my translation).
754
Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London ; New York: Routledge, 2003), 5; According to
Aldrich, ‘Certain colonies [such as those in North Africa] gained fame as sites of homosexual licence. Indeed, in
French slang, “ faire passer son brevet colonial ” (literally, to give someone an examination for a colonial diploma)
meant to initiate him to sodomy.’ 2; See also Joseph A. Boone, ‘Vacation Cruises; Or, the Homoerotics of
Orientalism’, PMLA 110, no. 1 (1995): 89–107, https://doi.org/10.2307/463197.
755
‘French has infiltrated everywhere. In the love between us. In the sex between us. In conversations. In our way of
walking, of being a couple, of pretending to be united against the world.’ Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé,
2018, 107. (my translation).

220
France), it is also what alerts him to the inherent power imbalance in their relationship. Love,
Ahmed deliberates, surely cannot account for his gradual loss of self, his willingness to sever ties
with his origins and to give himself over entirely to “la culture dominante”: “Comment ai-je pu
abdiquer si facilement ? Dis-moi, Emmanuel… Dis-moi… L’amour ne peut pas tout expliquer ni
tout justifier."
756
The love that Ahmed and Emmanuel have built over the years is both
monolingual and monocultural; not a meeting of minds but an assimilation of one into the other:
“Avec le temps, j’ai fini par comprendre que j’étais non seulement un assisté mais également, à
plusieurs titres, un colonisé.”
757
In France, Ahmed’s outspoken homosexuality has always been
the grounds of his supposed acceptance, the performative value of which he is increasingly
aware of. In contrast, his Moroccan sisters – who have always refused to acknowledge his
sexuality – offer the promise of a love that, while eschewing any possibility of “acceptance” à la
française, nonetheless allows Ahmed’s plurality: “Je veux parler avec elles d’elles et de moi. Je
ne veux pas que tout tourne autour de mon homosexualité. Car, je l’ai enfin compris, l’amour ne
se vit pas uniquement avec les gens qui partagent exactement toutes nos opinions, tous nos
choix."
758
This silence is no doubt a violent compromise for many queer Moroccans (and, for
many, a necessary tool for survival, as Taïa and others’ responses to last year’s outings have
amply demonstrated). However, Ahmed’s nostalgia for a world in which his same-sex desires do
not singularly form his identity (as well as the condition of his status as an international citizen)
alerts us to the violence of bringing these desires to discourse. In his first sexual encounter with
Emmanuel (which took place in a mausoleum in his native Salé when Ahmed was just a

756
‘the dominant culture’ / ‘How could I have surrendered so easily? Tell me, Emmanuel... Tell me..Love cannot
explain or justify everything.’ Taïa, 99. (my translation).
757
Abdellah Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé (Paris: Points, 2018), 101.
758
‘I want to talk to them about them and me. I don’t want everything to revolve around my homosexuality.
Because, I’ve finally understood, love is not lived only with people who share exactly all of our opinions, all of our
choices.’ Taïa, 109. (my translation).

221
teenager), Ahmed claims he felt “encore plus musulman que jamais.”
759
Yet, attempting to build
on the sense of belonging that he felt in this moment, Ahmed was forced to sacrifice any
possibility of a queer Muslim existence, and, with this loss, the possibility of ever loving or
being loved sincerely.
In the process of cultivating his sexual identity, it appears Ahmed has lost sight not only of
himself, but of love’s very possibility. Making fun of the gay North Africans he comes across in
Paris who espouse the virtues of French liberation and yet, for fear of giving away their origins,
“…n’osent plus nuancer leur parole; y mettre quelque chose de ce qu’ils sont au fond,”
760
Ahmed
decries the sexual-political economy that forces queer Arab boys to forget themselves in the
name of France’s so-called ‘freedom.’ “Comme eux," he writes, "j’ai été d’abord un excitant et
exotique objet sexuel en France.”
761
This is effectively illustrated in Ahmed’s presentation
(delivered, at Emmanuel’s bidding, at the University of Rabat) on the story of the Algerian boy
‘given’ by Oscar Wilde to André Gide, which he recounts with a great deal of shame in a letter to
his former lover. In what Emmanuel considered a moment of immense political importance,
Ahmed gave a detailed account of Gide’s sexual adventure, only to realise later that – like
countless historians before him – he had barely mentioned the garçon arabe at the centre of the
tale:
Moi, le pédé arabe d’Emmanuel, j’avais tué à Rabat une énième fois le garçon qui devrait être le véritable
héros de cette histoire. J’aurais dû lui servir de voix, d’avocat, d’ami, de frère lointain. Encore totalement
colonisé dans ma tête, je n’avais parlé que des deux écrivains faisant du tourisme orientalo-sexuel en
Algérie.
762

759
‘even more Muslim than ever’ Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé, 2018, 89. (my translation).
760
‘no longer dare to nuance their speech, put in something of who they are deep down’ Taïa, 41. (my translation).
761
‘Like them, ...I was above all an exciting and exotic sexual object in France.’ Taïa, 41. (my translation).
762
‘I, Emmanuel’s Arab queer, had killed for the umpteenth time in Rabat the boy who should be the real hero of
this story. I should have served as his voice, his advocate, his friend, his distant brother. Still totally colonized in my
head, I had only spoken of the two writers doing oriental-sexual tourism in Algeria.’ Taïa, 118. (my translation).

222
The following (and final) letter in the novel points to the real violence behind this erasure.
In May 1990, Ahmed receives a farewell letter from his childhood friend Lahbib (from al-habib,
“l’amour, l’objet d’amour, celui qui est digne d’être aimé”
763
), whose abusive French lover, a 45-
year-old ambassador, has just replaced him with an even younger boy. The letter is a suicide
note: feeling that, at 17, his life is already over due to his expulsion from an economy based on
child sexploitation, he warns Ahmed (who we know was later forbidden by Emmanuel from
even thinking of Lahbib
764
) not to settle for a Frenchman who won’t invest in him and his future.
Yet, despite finding a lover obviously interested in his long-term social and intellectual
development, it is clear that this path has made Ahmed no less disposable. Sensing that he is
about to be replaced by Kamal, a new graduate student that Emmanuel has begun supervising,
Ahmed finds himself suddenly alone in a life that he played no part in creating, his former self
consigned to obscurity just like Lahbib and countless other garçons arabes.
If Lahbib’s death is what first propelled Ahmed to separate himself from his Moroccan
identity, then it also lies at the root of his Ahmed’s guilt surrounding this process of forgetting.
The loss of this primary relationship – with Lahbib, al-habib, the beloved – only emphasises the
irrecoverability of love’s possibility. But while the novel travels back in time, moving ever closer
to love’s origins in Lahbib and Salé, it is clear that Ahmed’s inability to love pre-dates his
assimilation into French intellectual culture as a homosexual commodity. Even after leaving
Emmanuel ("Je sors de toi et je sors de cette langue que je ne supporte plus. Je ne veux plus
parler français."
765
), Ahmed struggles to let others in, instead finding a perverse pleasure in

763
"love, the object of love, the one worthy of being loved." Taïa, 128. (my translation).
764
"‘Encore tes histoires de pauvres ! Tu devrais te concentrer sur autre chose… Tu es à Paris… Tu es
arrivé…’”Taïa, Celui Qui Est Digne d’être Aimé, 2018, 99.
765
"I’m leaving you and I’m leaving this language that I can no longer stand. I don’t want to speak French
anymore.” Taïa, 81. (my translation).

223
ending his relationships. In the novel’s opening letter, Ahmed notes that this callousness has
become all the more prominent during his time in France, yet it is something that he originally
learnt from his mother – a woman who, thinking he was going to be another girl (and therefore
of no inherent value to her) first considered aborting him, and then learning of his homosexuality
rejected him anyway. Writing to his mother after the event of her death, it is her he blames for
the feeling of dépaysement that has haunted him since childhood:
C’est de ta faute, tout cela. Oui, entièrement de ta faute. Ce malheur interminable. Ces malentendus
permanents. Ce sentiment que je ne peux pas exister vraiment quelque part. Pourtant, je suis toujours là,
40 ans, entre deux pays, la France et le Maroc, sans repère fixe, sans amour sûr, sans histoire légitime à moi
et rien qu’à moi. Je suis perdu, depuis le départ, dans ton ventre déjà, en France encore plus que jamais.
766

In saying no to love, Ahmed re-enacts the double rejection he has faced in his own life:
disposing of his French lovers with the same callousness that queer men and women are disposed
of in Morocco’s heteropatriarchal culture and the garçon arabe has been perpetually elided from
Orientalist history, he reclaims the right to decide who is worthy of being loved (celui qui est
digne d’être aimé).
Demonstrating a similar scepticism towards the French cultural promise of (homosexual)
love and liberation, Taïa’s most recent novel, La vie lente, seems to dwell entirely in this space
of grief and non-existence: “…il y a juste l’attente vaine. Des promesses qui ne se réalisent pas.
Le temps et l’espace qui se déforment. La vie lente. Interminable.”
767
Like Celui’s Ahmed, La
vie’s Mounir appears to be adrift between two worlds, grasping at remnants of who he was
before his acculturation in French intellectual society. Similarly, the story that emerges from

766
“This is your fault, all of this. Yes, entirely your fault. This interminable misfortune. These permanent
misunderstandings. This feeling that I can't really exist anywhere. Yet I am still there, 40 years old, between two
countries, France and Morocco, with no fixed landmark, no sure love, no legitimate history that is mine and only
mine. I have been lost, from the start, in your womb already, in France even more than ever.” Taïa, Celui Qui Est
Digne d’être Aimé, 2018, 29. (my translation).
767
“There is just pointless waiting. Promises that are never realised. Time and space becoming distorted. Slow life.
Endless” Taïa, La vie lente, 129. (my translation).

224
Mounir’s fragmented memory is overwhelmingly a call for love. In the opening pages, we
quickly learn that, as an effeminate teenager growing up in Salé, Mounir was forced to assume a
strict religious persona in order to protect himself from sexual assault by older men in his
community (who describes as “des hommes hétérosexuels affamés de sexe”
768
). However,
following a chance sexual encounter on a bus with Soufiane (a man dressed in a suit whom he
assumes is some kind of government worker), Mounir decides to follow his “cœur
romantique”
769
to nearby Rabat (and subsequently to Paris). Still young and inexperienced, but
seeing the man pressed up against him on the bus as a symbol of hope for a new kind of life,
Mounir calms himself by singing the words of a pop song he’s heard in English but doesn’t yet
understand:
Atlantis is calling
SOS for love
Atlantis is calling
SOS for love
J’ai répété ces mots plusieurs fois dans mon cœur, dans ma bouche, dans mes mains. Il s’agissait vraiment de
cela : un appel d’amour.
770

Years later, in circumstances very similar to this initiatory encounter with “L’homme des
ministères,”
771
Mounir embarks on a brief love affair with a married police officer named
Antoine. Paralleling the increasing racial tension and militarisation of Paris following the Charlie
Hebdo attacks, the novel appears to take place in the aftermath of this relationship: as Mounir
struggles to overcome the grief and disorientation (“le terrorisme amoureux”
772
) of losing

768
“heterosexual men starved of sex” Taïa, La vie lente, 22. (my translation).
769
"romantic heart" Taïa, La vie lente, 53. (my translation).
770
“I repeated these words several times in my heart, in my mouth, in my hands. It was really that: a call to love.”
The song cited is ‘Atlantis is Calling (SOS for Love),’ released by the German pop group, Modern Talking, in 1986.
Taïa, 47. (my translation).
771
This time, the pair are pushed up against each other on a train in rush hour Paris. Taïa, La vie lente, 53.
772
“romantic terrorism” Taïa, 196. (my translation).

225
someone he loves, the well-mannered professor of French literature suddenly finds himself the
object of increasing scrutiny; a foreigner again in familiar territory.
773

Soufiane and Antoine, these dual figures of seduction and the State, would appear to
symbolise Mounir’s longing for national/cultural acceptance (or, to recall our earlier discussion
of love-as-politics, to be deemed worthy of the nation’s love). While he has done everything he
can to prove himself le bon citoyen – guarding his manners; perfecting his knowledge of French
art, culture and history – ultimately he is unable to escape the inferences attached to his
Moroccan/Arab identity: “Un terroriste en devenir. Un Marocain. Tu es Marocain, n’est-ce
pas ?”
774
Before long, Antoine turns his back on Mounir, just as France did before him:
Le manque de la famille, ses enfants, sa femme, des autres, est plus fort que tout. Il revient à eux. Il va
reprendre son boulot. Un policier français qui défend bien comme il faut sa belle patrie aux très belles valeurs
universalistes, qui protège les siens, ses concitoyens, et qui arrête sans aucun problème dans les rues les types
arabes comme moi : contrôle routinier, il faut bien lutter contre le terrorisme islamiste qui menace la France,
l’Europe, l’Occident.
775

When Mounir is apprehended for appearing to threaten an elderly neighbour, Antoine is
apparently sent to question him, though the man in uniform refuses to acknowledge having ever
met Mounir: “Il est passé de l’autre côté. Il est représentant du pouvoir.”
776
Here, it becomes
difficult to ascertain whether Antoine is real or merely a figment of Mounir’s increasingly
agitated imagination: Mounir’s neighbour, Mme Marty, claims she never saw nor heard of
Antoine, although Mounir insists that he has introduced them; and the police officer’s use of ‘tu’

773
The French-Algerian author, Nina Bouraoui, takes up very similar themes in her novel about about heartbreak set
between two terrorist attacks in Paris. Describing the book as a story of resistance, declaring that ‘Quels que soient
notre âge, notre sexe, notre origine sociale, nous sommes tous égaux devant un grand chagrin d’amour.’ Nina
Bouraoui, Beaux rivages, Le livre de poche 34619 (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2017).
774
“A terrorist in the making. A Moroccan. You’re Moroccan, aren’t you?” Taïa, La vie lente, 101. (my translation).
775
“The lack of family, his children, his wife, others, is stronger than anything. He’s going back to them. He will
resume his job. A French policeman who properly defends his beautiful homeland with beautiful universalist values,
who protects his family, his fellow citizens, and who stops Arab guys like me in the streets without any problem:
routine checks, we must fight against the Islamist terrorism that threatens France, Europe, the West.”Taïa, La vie
lente, 201–2. (my translation).
776
“He’s gone to the other side. He is the representative of power.” Taïa, La vie lente, 99. (my translation).

226
during interview, which Mounir reads as a betrayal of their former intimacy, could just as easily
be a sign of condescension. Even assuming Mounir’s affair with Antoine was a reality, this
slippage has always been definitive of their relationship, which – despite Mounir’s elevated
status according to the tenets of ‘cultured’ Parisian society – remains haunted by a fundamental
disparity in power. Parading his knowledge of France’s “culture officielle”
777
as a symbol of his
belonging, Mounir finds himself offending the lesser-educated French policeman, and in final act
of cultural dominance before the severing of their relationship, Antoine takes Mounir to visit the
Louvre – which he has never before been to – and makes a show of guiding them around the
museum: “Dans ce musée qu’il visitait pour la première fois, il voulait être celui qui guidait, pas
celui qui se faisait guider. L’homme, c’est lui. Le Français, c’est lui. La légitimité, c’est lui."
778

Mounir’s quest for love is strongly tied to his quest for legitimation. Ultimately, however,
it is this almost pathological need for validation that makes him so unappealing to Antoine, and
so apparently threatening to the French authorities. What began as a strategy for survival now
emerges as a liability, reminding Mounir that he will never achieve the integration he was
promised would come about as a result of his investment in French society:
La culture officielle en moi, sans me sauver, vient interférer avec tout ce qui se produit en moi. Des
comparaisons. Des analogies. Des interprétations. Des signes par-ci. Des signes par-là. Mais cela ne sert à
rien. Je suis juste encombré par cette culture officielle, importante et reconnue comme telle par ceux qui
comptent, ceux qui ont le pouvoir.
779

In the wake of his rupture with Antoine, these “signs” become increasingly unstable,
leading Mounir (and Taïa’s readers) to question what is real and when it is really him speaking.

777
"official culture." Taïa, La vie lente, 58. (my translation).
778
“In this museum that he was visiting for the first time, he wanted to the one guiding, not the one being guided. He
is the man. He is the French man. He is legitimacy.” Taïa, 188. (my translation).
779
“The official culture in me, without saving me, comes to interfere with everything that occurs in me.
Comparisons. Analogies. Interpretations. Signs here. Signs there. But it is useless. I'm just encumbered by this
official culture, important and recognized as such by those who matter, those in power.”Taïa, La vie lente, 108. (my
translation).

227
Abandoned by Antoine in the toilets of the Louvre, realising the futility of his decades-long
attempts at integration in France, Mounir is transported back to his days in Morocco, where even
his former rapists used to call him pédé, and – as he did then – he begins to recite Qur’anic
verses for protection. His two worlds colliding, Mounir’s heartbroken lament takes an ominous
tone: “Je vais exploser. Et je vais exploser le monde tout autour de moi….Je n’ai que les versets
coraniques pour me calmer. Soigner je ne sais quoi en moi. Je les dis et les redis en
t’attendant.”
780
Having spent years mastering the “signs” of French cultural assimilation, in
moment of traumatic upheaval the signs become confused, and in a momentary lapse, an
accident of language, Mounir’s declaration of love for a French police officer in one of France’s
most beloved institutions, the Louvre, becomes a declaration of hatred toward the first country to
‘welcome’ him with open arms.
Though critical of Morocco’s “dictature stérile”
781
and the country’s overwhelming
mistreatment of people in the LGBTQ+ community, in both Celui qui est digne d’être aimé and
La vie lente, it seems Taïa is keen to deromanticize the myth of homosexual liberation in foreign
territory. Separating the problem of male rape and a child sex abuse from consensual and loving
practices, he reaffirms the indigenous presence of same-sex desire in Morocco while
undermining the Orientalist fantasy that homoeroticism and homosexuality are particularly “rife”
in North Africa.
782
Moreover, in his nuanced depiction of Ahmed and Mounir’s ill-fated cross-
cultural relationships, he counters the Gay International’s promise of Western salvation by
situating the discourse of homosexual liberation firmly within the bounds of the neo-imperialist

780
“I’m going to explode. I’m going to explode everything around me. …All I have are the Qur’anic verses to calm
me. Nurture I don’t know what in me. I say them again and again while waiting.” Taïa, La vie lente, 205. (my
translation).
781
“sterile dictatorship” Taïa, La vie lente, 67. (my translation).
782
See Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, 4; Boone, The Homoerotics of Orientalism.

228
project, alerting readers to the inherent power imbalance in such relationships. In La vie, this is
illustrated not only through Mounir’s unrequited love for France/Antoine, but also in the
deteriorating relationship he has with his former friend and neighbour, Mme Marty, whose
childhood experiences of Vichy France recall the dangers of sleeping with the enemy. Mme
Marty’s older sister, Manon – who had sex with German officers in return for gifts and favours
only to be attacked by her community at the end of the war, forcing her to seek exile in Egypt –
offers a cautionary tale about the false profits of participating in such an economy: “Ce n’est pas
elle qui a déclaré Paris ‘ville ouverte’ et laissé les nazis occuper la capitale. Ce n’est pas elle qui
a abandonné la France et les Français. Ce n’est pas elle qui a réellement trahi. Elle n’avait fait
que survivre. Survivre en couchant avec l’ennemi.
783
As Mme Marty later points out, there are
notable parallels between Manon’s story and Mounir’s relationship with Antoine, who –
questioning Mounir, at the end of the novel, on his affiliation with a local mosque and certain
“radicalised” individuals – asks him to keep up his side of the bargain: “Vous vivez en France
depuis vingt ans. Vous avez bénéficié d’un tas d’avantages français. La liberté. L’égalité. La
fraternité. Au nom de tout cela, nous attendons de vous une entière collaboration."
784
In Celui,
the exploitative dynamics of this relationship are brought into even sharper relief through the
question of sexual tourism. As Jarrod Hayes writes in Queer Nations,
For the western tourist, the availability of sex in the Orient can never merely be a matter of intimacy between
two individuals in a vacuum (as if it ever could). Rather, sex takes place in a colonial or neo-colonial context
between colonizer and colonized (or former colonizer and former colonized).
785

783
“She was not the one who declared Paris an ‘open city’ and let the Nazis occupy the capital. It was not her that
abandoned France and the French. She wasn't the one who really betrayed. She had only survived. Survive by
sleeping with the enemy.” Taïa, La vie lente, 134–35. (my translation).
784
“You’ve been living in France for twenty years. You’ve benefited from a ton of French advantages. Freedom.
Equality. Brotherhood. In the name of all that, we expect a full collaboration from you.” Taïa, La vie lente, 267 (my
emphasis, my translation).
785
Hayes, Queer Nations, 23.

229
This is not to dismiss the agency of the garçon arabe involved in sex work or unpaid
romantic relationships with European men. As Joseph Boone (and some of Taïa’s characters,
such as L’armée du salut’s Mohammed, who readily engages in sex work for both pleasure and
monetary reward) will testify, “…local economies of Moroccan sex can latch onto, participate in,
and even exploit ‘exploitative’ Western practices in complex and predictable ways.”
786
What
Taïa’s novels reveal, however, is the inescapability of the power differential that undergirds
these relationships. As Boone notes, “‘Love’ of work…does not erase the dynamics of power
that many employers would rather believe their employees consider mere technicalities of the
trade.”
787
Nor does love of an individual partner from the former empire erase the history of
imperialism that preceded (indeed, in many ways precipitated) such a union.

6 Conclusion
In the recent novels of Abdellah Taïa, an emphasis on loving praxis (or the profound lack
of it in the protagonists’ lives) exposes the true violence of love-as-politics; a love that promises
freedom but, in reality, perpetuates the same racial/cultural hierarchies used to construct a
‘loveless’ Maghreb in the French national/ist imaginary. As La vie’s Mounir laments, “Après
avoir tout détruit pour être soi-disant enfin libre, je me rendais compte que je ne construisais plus
rien avec les autres, avec le monde. J’avançais. Oui. J’évoluais. Oui. Mais dans la déconnexion,
la solitude. Une autre forme de solitude.”
788
It is precisely this kind of “disconnection” and
“solitude” that proponents of revolutionary love such as bell hooks and Houria Bouteldja critique

786
Boone, ‘Vacation Cruises; Or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism’, 100.
787
Boone, 100.
788
“Having destroyed everything to be supposedly finally free, I realized that I was no longer building anything with
others, with the world. I was moving forward. Yes. I was evolving. Yes. But in disconnection, solitude. Another
form of solitude.” Taïa, La vie lente, 67. (my translation).

230
in their work,
789
and which the new communautés d’amoureux.ses established by Moroccan
Outlaws, the Choir and the authors and artists who came together to create L’Amour fait loi are
working hard to remedy through their creative and collective organising. While it is clear that
‘love’ often stands in for ‘sex’ in neo-imperialist discussions of Arab/Muslim women’s and
LGBTQ+ ‘freedom,’ the strategies of communal self-reflection employed by artists and activists
like Sonia Terrab, Kabareh Cheikhates and Soufiane Hennani nonetheless open up a vast array of
political possibilities grounded in Arab/Muslim and Moroccan theorisations and practices of
love. Rather than allowing the love of love to point them away from their community, their work
could very well prove the grounds for a new national romance, bring Moroccans together with
the collective promise of a new kind of communion. As Bouteldja writes in Whites, Jews and Us,
“the We of revolutionary love” is “the We of a new political identity that we will have to invent
together, the We of a decolonizing majority.”
790
Solidarity is resistance, and resistance is a
powerful expression of love.

789
hooks, All about Love; Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us.
790
Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us, 140.

231
Conclusion: Resisting Narrative

Reflecting on the wide corpus of sexual rebellion presented across these chapters, it is clear
that Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ ‘resistance’ exceeds questions of self-representation and
taking back ‘control’ of the queer and feminist narrative. While ample work has been done by
global scholars and activists to ‘give voice’ to those traditionally silenced in national/ist and
neo/imperialist discourse, Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ narratives of resistance reveal a
vast array of cultural, capital and political interests surrounding their production and circulation
in contemporary Morocco and France. As seen in the first two chapters, feminist discourse in
Morocco has played a crucial role in the development of Morocco’s political economy, raising
significant questions as to the motivations behind the public investment in certain narratives. In
the context of Morocco’s internationally-funded cinema industry and the French literary market,
furthermore, it has proven crucial to consider where queer and feminist ‘resistance’ is absorbed
into larger narratives of Western cultural superiority and Muslim menace. Literature and cinema,
of course, are particularly susceptible to the power of capital (itself imbricated in powers
political, cultural etc.). This is why Moroccan feminists such Fatema Mernissi, having spent
decades fighting for women’s place in the ‘official’ archives, have increasingly turned their
attention to forms of resistance ‘writing’ that defy narrative convention, bringing what Diana
Taylor refers to as ‘repertoire’ (and what Hélène Cixous refers to as ‘feminine’ modes of creative
and cultural expression) to the fore.
791
If Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ writing is to resist its
commodification and dissemination as cultural/political capital, it appears it must actively resist
both ‘text’ and ‘narrative’ (for both are products of a phallocratic, hence hierarchical and

791
See Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2003); Hélène Cixous, Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies (Paris: Galilée, 2010).

232
inherently appropriative, discursive economy
792
). Rare, however, is the cultural ‘performance’
that can be said to evade its imbrication in hegemonic discourse. Far more numerous (or at least
more widely disseminated) are those texts that readily converge with France and Morocco’s
political agendas. This does not make them unworthy of queer or feminist critique; to the
contrary, these texts form the crux of my inquiry precisely because they reveal – one could say
they record, or bear witness to – the impossibility of queer and feminist discursive resistance in
contemporary Franco-/Moroccan society. Though sceptical of the value placed on popular
narratives of Muslim and Moroccan socio-sexual rebellion, Writing Resistance nonetheless looks
to these narratives because it remains fundamentally concerned with identifying the cultural and
political forces that constrain them, as well as the cultural and political realities that are
constituted by Moroccan women and sexual minorities’ being-in-discourse. Resistance to
resistance ‘narrative,’ I believe, begins from this space of impossibility.
Rather than seeking to identify the authorial agency behind Moroccan women’s and
LGBTQ+ resistance writing, what I have attempted in this dissertation is to bring critical
attention to the discursive economies into which Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ resistance
narratives are inevitably entered, and from which they are inevitably created (with or without the
consent or intent of those involved). There are a number of significant reasons for adopting this
approach. Firstly, not only does ‘agency’ manifest itself in myriad ways across different cultures
and societal practices, but ‘resistance,’ too, is clearly manifold, and if we are to avoid re-entering
the speech of Muslim and Moroccan women and sexual minorities (once again) into discussions
of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feminism and/or queer activism, false consciousness and ‘real’ revolt, it is
vital that we question the ubiquity of these terms. As Saba Mahmood asserts, quests for feminine

792
Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, La jeune née, Série féminin futur 984 (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions,
1978).

233
agency that presume “the universality of the desire to be free from relations of subordination”
serve only to naturalise “a desire that is central for liberal and progressive thought, and
presupposed by the concept of resistance it authorizes.”
793
To think ‘resistance’ exclusively in
terms of this “capacity for agency,”
794
therefore, is to reproduce the binarisms established in
Western secular feminist discourses about Muslim femininity – repression and subordination
versus subversion and revolt – whose political utility in Western secular society is manifest. In
shedding the secular queer and feminist preoccupation with individual agency, we open up our
reading to diverse manifestations and methodologies of revolt (religious, communal, womanist,
decolonial etc.).
Secondly, by diverting our attention from questions of discursive agency (which, as theorists
such as Judith Butler have elaborated, can never be thought separately from our imbrication in
existing networks of relationality and power
795
) to focus on the discursive impact of Moroccan
women’s and LGBTQ+ resistance narratives, we allow for a productive critique of queer and
feminist discourse that emphasises the material consequences of French and Moroccan (sexual)
nationalisms without undermining the desires and resistive strategies that Moroccan scholars,
artists and activists are enacting. Though Writing Resistance is of course a testament to (as well
as a celebration of) Morocco’s historically underrepresented women’s and LGBTQ+ voices,
what is truly at stake in each of these chapters is not the surprising ubiquity of Moroccan queer
and feminist revolt,
796
but the prevailing power dynamics (patriarchal, colonial, neo-colonial)

793
Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival
in Egypt’, Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 42, no. 1 (2006): 196,
https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/4633.
794
Mahmood, 199.
795
See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge Classics (New York:
Routledge, 2006).
796
As Joseph Massad reminds us, same-sex practices in the Maghreb far predate the Euro-American invention of
‘subversive ’ sexuality, and as Fatema Mernissi knowingly foretold, those who “dare to listen ” to Arab/Muslim

234
that continue to delimit the scope Morocco’s women’s and LGBTQ+ cultural production as well
as their participation in society. In Morocco, the failure to curtail the very real violences faced by
women and sexual minorities (which activists in the country have been campaigning to address
for decades) would appear to be as much a result of Western interventionism as it is of regional
pressures to satisfy conservative factions while still preserving the country’s more ‘progressive’
international image. In France, meanwhile, these violences (and the supposed silence
surrounding them in ‘French’ North Africa) play an active role in fuelling Republican anti-
immigration rhetoric, leading to increasingly restrictive legislation (as well as violent
vigilantism) targeting France’s Muslim and North African communities.
797
On an international
scale, narratives of Muslim sexual oppression and resistance continue to be mobilised in support
of Western imperialist projects with drastic consequences for women and sexual minorities in the

women will have no trouble finding resistance Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 85; See also Massad,
Desiring Arabs.
797
As scholars such as Joan Scott, Mayanthi Fernando, and Mehammed Mack have observed, discussions of Muslim
sexuality (as well as French-Muslims ’ sexual resistance narratives) have long contributed to the policing and
criminalisation of Muslim communities in France and North Africa, the most resounding example perhaps being in
the French veil ban.Today, those who don the burqa or niqab in French public space face a fine and mandatory
enrolment in a citizenship training course. More crucially, however, the Collectif contre l ’islamaphobie en France
(CCIF) has reported a notable rise in “Islamophobic acts ” against individuals and institutions since the 2011
introduction of a ban on full-faced veiling, with women constituting 87.3% of recorded victims in 2012. In a trend
grotesquely reminiscent of French occupational forces ’ ceremonial ‘unveilings ’ of Algerian women during the
former colony ’s struggle for independence, members of the general public have reportedly taken to snatching the
veils off Muslim women ’s heads, and bystander photographs leaked to the press in 2016 show armed police officers
forcing a Muslim woman to remove articles of clothing as she sits fully – but not illegally – dressed on a beach in
Nice. Several French municipalities have since succeeded in banning the burkini (a garment that, it should be noted,
does not cover the face and thus does not contravene national law), citing an array of justifications ranging from the
preservation of French national values such as secularism and gender equality, national security, as well as hygiene.
See Angelique Chrisafis, ‘France ’s Burqa Ban: Women Are “Effectively under House Arrest ”’, The Guardian, 19
September 2011, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/19/battle-for-the-burqa; ‘CCIF ’,
CCIF - Collectif contre l ’islamophobie en France, accessed 16 December 2019, https://www.islamophobie.net/en/;
See also Hanan Ben Rhouma, ‘L ’islamophobie explose en France, les violences exacerbées en 2012 ’,
SaphirNews.com | Quotidien d ’actualité sur le fait musulman en France, 31 January 2013,
https://www.saphirnews.com/L-islamophobie-explose-en-France-les-violences-exacerbees-en-2012_a16158.html;
Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil, 8. printing and 1. paperback printing, The Public Square Book Series
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2010); Mayanthi L Fernando, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the
Contradictions of Secularism, 2014, http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1767230; Mehammed
Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2017).

235
global South. Given their inevitable entry into this broader political context, it is clear that
narratives of Muslim and Moroccan sexual resistance cannot ever simply be considered a matter
of personal expression (try as authors such as Meryem Aloui and Leïla Slimani might to shed
themselves of their representative role). However, this is not to suggest that Morocco’s women
and LGBTQ+ writers are necessarily exploited by the socio-political forces surrounding their
resistance narratives, or else complicit in them (though both or either may be true). Even as
Moroccan queer and feminist speech is subsumed by these complex power dynamics, ultimately,
they are what permits Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ resistance narratives to circulate,
thereby exposing the discursive dictates that they travel by. Turning our attention to the effects
(rather than the agents) of Moroccan queer and feminist discourse allows us to address these
paradoxes (and the material impact they have on Moroccan women and sexual minorities at
home and abroad) in solidarity with the cultural actors whose work is bound by them. Much in
the way that, in the work of Soufiane H. and Abdellah Taïa, national critique takes the form of
national love, it enables us to look critically at the discursive forces at work in queer and feminist
writing from Morocco (and, importantly, to interrogate the violences that they precipitate)
without detracting from the communities and strategies of resistance that Morocco’s queer and
feminist writers are continuously creating.
Finally, abandoning the quest for queer and feminist agency in the French-/Moroccan context
permits us to relinquish Western secular (but also capitalist and patriarchal) notions of the Self in
relation to the Other, complicating traditional (and often damaging) modes of oppositional
resistance. This binary logic of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ – which often undergirds Western discussions
of Arab/Muslim sexual oppression and victimhood, as well as post/colonial and anti/imperialist
discourses of resistance – elides the ways in which national/political communities and discursive

236
bodies are not only created in relation to myriad Others but fundamentally made up of them.
Such a boundless and communally-structured subjectivity is essential to Cixous’ theorisation of
the ‘feminine,’ itself central to the dissertation’s theorisation of ‘resistance.’ According to
Cixous, to be ‘possessed’ by another is not to lose one’s Self, but to live and grow with them in
endless reciprocity and exchange.
798
The notion that the Other is to be obliterated, that it exists in
opposition, shoring up the “empire” of the Self by way of its irreconcilable difference, could
stem only from a (masculinist, phallocratic) libidinal and political economy;
799
one that seeks to
colonise and dominate. While the artists and activists discussed in Writing Resistance sometimes
adopt similar approaches in their cultural production, the dissertation attempts to explore these
discursive movements at work in Morocco’s broader national/ist discourse, and in the
construction of its queer and feminist communities. Although there can be a problematic
tendency in post/colonial discourse to conflate Morocco’s cultural and societal concerns with
those found elsewhere in ‘French’ North Africa, configuring Moroccan identity exclusively in its
relation to the former coloniser, it is clear that French and Moroccan discussions of sexuality and
subjectivity are created in perpetual dialogue with one another. Moreover, while it is certainly
true that not all Moroccans are Muslim, Arab, or feel a cultural connection to either France or
‘the Maghreb,’ it is evident that the texts produced by Moroccan artists and activists are broadly
taken on the international culture market to represent those who are and do; just as
representations of Franco-Maghrebi and global Arab/Muslim populations are thought to
encapsulate the beliefs and practices of Moroccans. As we have seen, this homogenisation of

798
Cixous ’ use of ‘posession, ’ here, begins to allude to its supernatural dimension, in which the Self comes to
embody the spirit of other selves, resides with them, rather than being owned by them. See Cixous and Clément, La
jeune née; Cixous and Clément, The Newly Born Woman.
799
See Cixous and Clément, La jeune née; Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman, Theory
and History of Literature, v. 24 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

237
Moroccan and Moroccan-adjacent cultures and identities creates extremely complicated
dynamics of representation, of which women and sexual minorities often find themselves at the
rhetorical centre. This slippage is nonetheless telling of the malleability of ‘dominant’ discourse,
as well as its attendant possibilities.
If Writing Resistance emphasises the overlaps and ambiguities in French and Moroccan
sexual discourse, it is not to dismiss the very real differences subsumed within it or to insist upon
the inescapability of colonial domination, but rather to identify potential avenues of resistance
within those gaps and insufficiencies. Though I have attempted to present a contextualised
reading of Moroccan women’s and LGBTQ+ resistance writing that avoids framing it
exclusively in terms of its post/colonial relationship with Europe, I have also tried to draw
attention to those relations that remain underexplored, or else actively resisted in defense of
Moroccan cultural autonomy. Spotting where apparently oppositional discourses on Moroccan
sexuality interrelate and converge, rather than insisting on and reifying their difference, could
offer a productive means forward in a debate that holds queer and feminist activists to a limited
number of positions (and has done so since before Moroccan independence). An interdiscursive
approach to Moroccan gender politics and sexual resistance allows us to focus on those whose
desires and experiences stretch beyond national/colonial borders and ideologies. In this sense,
Moroccan ‘writing’ (used, here, in the broadest sense of the term) still very much has the
capacity to function, as Abdelkebir Khatibi suggested in his early writing on Moroccan literature,
as a writing of resistance, forging powerful networks of decolonial solidarity.
800
This may come
in the shape of new alignments, such as Morocco’s diasporic community and networks of
resistance across the global South; or a re-appropriation of old alignments, such as the

800
See Abdelkabir Khatibi, Le Roman Maghrébin, Kindle edition (Paris: François Maspero, 2017).

238
colonially-imposed regional unity of ‘the Maghreb’ or an Amazigh movement that transcends
current national borders. Tracing the various itineraries and intersections of Moroccan queer and
feminist resistance narratives in national/ist and imperialist discourse, Writing Resistance invites
us to join Moroccan artists and activists in mapping new territories of revolt, as well as pointing
to the resistive potential of those terrains that should perhaps remain unchartered.

239
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Asset Metadata

Creator Poole, Keziah M. (author)

Core Title Writing resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (Comparative Literature)

Degree Conferral Date 2021-08

Publication Date 07/20/2023

Defense Date 06/07/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Abdellah Taia,Amazigh,Arabic literature,Darija,decolonial,Fatema Mernissi,francophone literature,Gender Studies,Islamic feminism,Leila Slimani,Maghreb,Meryem Alaoui,Moroccan film,Moroccan literature,Morocco,Nabil Ayouch,Narjiss Nejjar,North Africa,OAI-PMH Harvest,postcolonial,queer studies,sexual nationalism,sexuality studies,Sonia Terrab,women's literature

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Harrison, Olivia C. (committee chair), Norindr, Panivong (committee member), Velasco, Sherry (committee member)

Creator Email kpoole@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC15617647

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Rights Poole, Keziah M.

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