Abstract

This Talk is part of the Centre of African Studies Lent term Seminar Series: Gender in Africa

This paper takes up the arguments of Joseph Massad’s Desiring Arabs concerning the cultural imperialism of the Western gay rights movement. In particular, Massad contests the discursive universalization of gay rights with respect to how this discourse fails to register the difference between dualist and non-dualist systems of thought, while further failing to attend sufficiently to the local articulations and sensitivities of different cultures. Responding to some of the critiques of Massad’s position on the part of the gay international, we go on to explore how North African literary and cultural texts dramatize same sex subjectivities and relationships in ways that resonate with the concerns of Desiring Arabs.