Gender and colonial transitioning: Frantz Fanon's Algerian freedom fighters in Moroccan and Caribbean novels?

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which Frantz Fanon's revolutionary narrative in L'An V de la révolution algérienne is reworked in selected novels of Tahar Ben Jelloun and Shani Mootoo. Focusing on Fanon's transitional politics, it draws out how these novelists employ gender transitioning to challenge colonial, nationalistic and familial violence. The article suggests that the intersections of anti-colonial rhetoric and familial discourse present in Fanon's work are reconfigured in these novels through a questioning of assumed gendered, sexual and national taxonomies of belonging. It proposes a notion of community that seeks to avoid the reiteration of colonial and familial violence through a transitional politics and an ethics of becoming.

Keywords:

• Post-colonial
• Frantz Fanon
• Tahar Ben Jelloun
• Shani Mootoo
• transitioning

Notes

1. Frantz Fanon, L'An V de la révolution algérienne (Paris: Éditions La Découverte & Syros, 2001 [1959]), 94. All translations from this text are my own.

2. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 23.

3. This text will be referred to throughout this article as L'An V.

4. Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (London: Pelican Books, 1970).

5. Max Silverman, ‘Introduction’, in Max Silverman, ed., Frantz Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 11.

6. See Neil Lazarus, ‘Disavowing Decolonisation: Fanon, Nationalism, and the Question of Representation in Postcolonial Theory’, in Anthony C. Alessandrini, ed., Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1999), 161–194.

7. See Homi Bhabha, ‘Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche, and the Colonial Condition’, in Nigel C. Gibson, ed., Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 179–196.

8. Henry Louis Gates Jr, ‘Critical Fanonism’, in Nigel C. Gibson, ed., Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 266, 253, and 267, respectively.

9. Frantz Fanon, Frantz, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspero, 1969 [1961]). Translated as The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967).

10. Fanon, L'An V, 13–14 and 88–90.

11. Marie-Aimée Helie-Lucas, ‘Women, Nationalism, and Religion in the Algerian Liberation Struggle’, in Gibson, ed., Rethinking Fanon, 271–282.

12. I use ‘beside’ rather than ‘beyond’ to evoke Judith Butler's idea of the need to forge political alliances not by trying to move ‘beyond’ existing bodily and community taxonomies, which she sees as an impossibility, but by constantly re-imagining them through a perpetual undoing of the self in relation to others (Butler, Precarious Life, 23).

13. Fanon, L'An V, 94.

14. Faulkner does briefly mention but does not expand upon the fact that Fanon ‘considers the occupation of land tantamount to the “occupation of its inhabitants”’ (Rita A. Faulkner, ‘Assia Djebar: Frantz Fanon, Women, Veils, and Land’, World Literature Today, 70, no. 4 (1996), 849).

15. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 1995), 366.

16. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 1995), 367.

17. Idem.

18. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 367.

19. Fanon, L'An V, 100.

20. Idem.

21. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 72.

22. Ian Baucom, ‘Frantz Fanon's Radio: Solidarity, Diaspora, and the Tactics of Listening’, Contemporary Literature, 42, no. 1 (2001), 17.

23. Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London: Routledge, 2000), 180.

24. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London: Routledge, 2004), 3.

25. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London: Routledge, 2004), 4.

26. Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 7.

27. Throughout this article I will follow the pronouns and names used in the novel. I will, therefore, switch between ‘he’ and ‘she’ and ‘Ahmed’ and ‘Zahra’ as appropriate. However, at times, the protagonist exists in a state of ambiguity and I will refer to the character using ‘Ahmed/Zahra’, ‘s/he’ and ‘her/him’.

28. Jay Prosser, ‘Skin Memories’, in Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, eds, Thinking Through the Skin (London: Routledge, 2001), 52–68.

29. Tahar Ben Jelloun, L'Enfant de sable (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), 8. Translated as The Sand Child, trans. Alan Sheridan (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2000). All translations from L'Enfant de sable in this article are my own.

30. Tahar Ben Jelloun, L'Enfant de sable (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), 8. Translated as The Sand Child, trans. Alan Sheridan (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2000). All translations from L'Enfant de sable in this article are my own, 30.

31. Idem.

32. Idem., 115–116.

33. Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (New York: Zone Books, 2003), 218.

34. Fanon, L'An V, 10.

35. Fanon, L'An V, 100.

36. Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms, 70.

37. Ben Jelloun L'Enfant de sable, 112.

38. Ben Jelloun L'Enfant de sable, 114 and 118.

39. Jarrod Hayes, Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 166–186.

40. Ben Jelloun, L'Enfant de sable, 208.

41. Rebecca Saunders, ‘Decolonizing the Body: Gender, Nation, and Narration in Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable’, Research in African Literature, 37, no. 4 (2006) 137. The Istiqlal were the main party fighting for independence from French colonial rule.

42. Ben Jelloun, L'Enfant de sable, 208.

43. Tahar Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), 6. Translated as The Sacred Night, trans. Alan Sheridan (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2000). All translations from La Nuit sacrée in this article are my own. The narrator is asserting her authority by claiming she is the eponymous hero: the sand child, or the child of uncertain identity.

44. Tahar Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), 6. Translated as The Sacred Night, trans. Alan Sheridan (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2000). All translations from La Nuit sacrée in this article are my own. The narrator is asserting her authority by claiming she is the eponymous hero: the sand child, or the child of uncertain identity, 19.

45. Fanon, L'An V, 26.

46. Abbes Maazaoui, ‘L'Enfant de sable et La Nuit sacrée ou le corps tragique’, The French Review, 69, no. 1 (1995), 74.

47. Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée, 158.

48. For criticism of Ben Jelloun's treatment of genital mutilation, see Suzanne Gauch's Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), especially Chapter 3, and Evelyne Accad's Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 157–158. I do not have the space to deal with the scene in detail but I would argue, contrary to Accad, that the novel condemns the fanaticism of Zahra's sisters and exposes the power that the family holds over women. Ben Jelloun has repeatedly stressed in interviews that such a practice does not take place in Morocco.

49. Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée, 161–171.

50. Fanon, L'An V, 100–102.

51. Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée, 137.

52. Ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée, 189.

53. Fanon, L'An V, 41.

54. Fanon, L'An V, 42–43.

55. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 29–32).

56. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands.

57. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands, 154.

58. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands, 228.

59. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands, 255.

60. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands, 30–31.

61. Chandin is taken from his home by the reverend to ensure a ‘bright and prosperous future’ (Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998 [1996], 29)). It is stated that to benefit from the resources offered by the missionaries, such as education, the South Asian-Caribbeans must (publicly) convert to Christianity and leave behind their Hindu heritage (Fanon, L'An V, 152). The Wetlanders are the colonialists on the island, and Ambrose bought this suit when he was studying abroad in The Shivering Northern Wetlands, 136.

62. Grace Kyungwon Hong, ‘“A Shared Queerness”: Colonialism, Transnationalism, and Sexuality in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night’, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 7, no. 1 (2006), 89.

63. Mootoo, Cereus, 188.

64. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, and History (London: Routledge, 1992), 58.

65. Mootoo, Cereus, 82.

66. Mootoo, Cereus, 267.

67. Mootoo, Cereus, 268.

68. Fanon, L'An V, 12–13.

69. Shani Mootoo, He Drown She in the Sea (New York: Grove Press, 2005), 260.

70. Fanon, L'An V, 100–102.

71. Mootoo, He Drown, 178.

72. Mootoo, He Drown, 122.

73. Mootoo, He Drown, 94.

74. Mootoo, He Drown, 238.

75. Mootoo, He Drown, 260.

76. Mootoo, He Drown, 251.

77. For a critique of hybridity, see Aijaz Ahmad's ‘The Politics of Literary Post-Coloniality’, Race and Class, 36, no. 3 (1995), 1–20. For a more nuanced view, see Ahmed's Strange Encounters.

78. Fanon, L'An V, 13.

79. Mootoo, He Drown, 182. The reference to Africa as a ‘country’ rather than a continent must be placed in the context of Uncle Mako telling a story of forced displacement that he ‘himself could make no sense of’ (Idem.).

80. Mootoo, He Drown, 182. The reference to Africa as a ‘country’ rather than a continent must be placed in the context of Uncle Mako telling a story of forced displacement that he ‘himself could make no sense of’ (Idem.), 182. See also Shani Mootoo in conversation with Robert Gougeon, Audio Blog @ The Writer's Cafe, available at http://www.writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/shani-mootoo_he-drown-she-in-the-sea.php, accessed December 2007.

81. Harry says this rather ‘mischievously’ (Mootoo, He Drown, 35) whilst flirting with a white Canadian woman, Kay.

82. Harry says this rather ‘mischievously’ (Mootoo, He Drown, 35) whilst flirting with a white Canadian woman, Kay, 260.

83. Harry says this rather ‘mischievously’ (Mootoo, He Drown, 35) whilst flirting with a white Canadian woman, Kay, 315.

84. Harry says this rather ‘mischievously’ (Mootoo, He Drown, 35) whilst flirting with a white Canadian woman, Kay, 317.