The Construction of Queer Subjectivities in Franco-Maghrebian Literature

• Applicant: Dr. Annegret Richter
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; African, American and Oceania Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 287829999

The goal of the project is to make a substantial contribution to the understanding of the construction of queer subjectivities in recent Franco-Maghrebian literature that so far have been insufficiently studied. These texts include the representation of non-normative forms of gender and sexuality, which, on a more general level, re-develop the relationship between the individual and society and reflect the social and cultural changes in the post-colonial Maghrebian societies. Contrary to ghettoizing readings (e.g. by using the label of gay literature) these texts reflect not predominantly the construction of minorities. Instead, they decenter and hybridize categories of gender and sexualities and display a critical engagement with heteronormativity in order to develop alternative forms of subjectivity. Therefore, in the project, queer will not be used as an umbrella term for predefined sexual minorities, but as a critical perspective on norms and categorizations of sexuality and gender. The project focuses on the interdependence of gender and sexuality with other social power relations such as economic inequality, racism or disability. Here, the mechanisms of performing subjectivity are of central importance in order to grasp the relationship between social norms and individual identity. In addition, it is assumed that the various cultural and historical codes of non-normative, ambivalent, ambiguous or plural genders and sexualities can only be adequately studied from an intersectional research perspective. Going beyond a purely thematic study, the project analyzes the literary strategies of the construction of queer subjectivities, as these are essential for the constitution of meaning in the texts. The corpus, which consists of narrative texts, will be studied focusing on the relationship of narrative strategies and the performativity of gender and sexuality in order to answer the question of how heteronormativity corresponds to heteronarrativity (Judith Roof) or to what extent of queer subjectivity is realized by a queer form of storytelling. Therefore, the project studies literary representations about fundamental changes in the understanding of subjectivity in the Maghreb. The project is contributing to the understanding of the deconstruction of the social imaginary through new forms of performing gender and sexuality in Franco-Maghrebian literature which, on this basis, helps to develop new narratives of identity and belonging.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants