Il (neo)colonialismo allo specchio: Le vendredinnades di Abdellah Taïa

Abstract

The present essay intends to analyse the theme of the Other in Moroccan francophone writer Abdellah Taïa’s works L’armée du salut and Celui qui est digne d’être aimé, and the intertextual relationship they maintain with André Gide’s Si le grain ne meurt. The partially problematic application of postcolonial rewriting and vendredinnade category to these autobiographical texts will be justified by referring to cultural anthropophagy notion, ‘writing back’ practice and autofiction as an ethical act. After recalling the elements in Gide’s work that define it as an expression of the Africanist tendence of the beginning of the XX century, we will consider those parts in Taïa’s novels that illustrate the same (neo)colonial domination scheme in the contemporary context, overpassing it. Some categories introduced by the Queer Studies, such as hegemonic masculinity and performative solidarity, will be particularly useful for our analysis.