Transing the Algerian Nation-State: Textual Transgender and Intersex from Pre-Independence to the Black Decade

Abstract

The article examines the role of transgender and intersex in two key-texts, Marie-Pierre Pruvot’s Marie parce que c’est joli (2007) and Fériel Assima’s Rouhlem ou le sexe des anges (1996). Both texts chronicle two «moments» in Algerian history: 1) the two decades leading to Algerian independence in 1962; and 2) the Black decade spanning 1988-1998. These «moments» are experienced by two protagonists—pied-noir Jean-Pierre Pruvot and MTF Marie-Pierre Pruvot, rolled into one; and Assima’s intersex character raised as a boy, Rhoulem. Both their repressed feminine genders and bodies-in-transition, reflected through the discursive erosion of male genitalia, augur the “transing” of the Algerian nation-state, away from a traditional engendering of the nation-state as male.

Keywords

• Transgender
• Intersex
• Trans(ion)ing
• Algeria
• Nation-State
• queer Maghreb