La vie d’Ahmed/Zahra ou la mise en crise de la masculinité chez Tahar Ben Jelloun

Abstract

L’Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacrée form the diptych which made Tahar Ben Jelloun famous. L’Enfant de sable tells the story of a girl brought up as a boy called Ahmed in a male chauvinist society where she usurps men’s rights and powers. In La Nuit sacrée, Ahmed comes back to life as Zahra, an old woman who tells the (true?) story of her painful path to recover her womanhood and reach a doubtful liberation. Drawing on the works of Judith Butler, Thomas Laqueur and Élisabeth Badinter, this article examines the ways in which Ben Jelloun tackles the question of the construction of masculinity through the example of this girl compelled to be male, and how the very form of fiction (genre, narrative structures, registers…) is informed by the construction of gender.