The Myth of Masculinity in the Films of Merzak Allouache

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3979276
AutoresAndrea Khalil (Queens College, CUNY, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen12
Número3
Páginas329-345
Fecha de publicación2007-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629380701461444
OpenAlexW2152182269
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas9

The Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache has made a series of films that describe the formations of masculinity in Algeria of the post-Independence period. The present paper focuses on three feature films made between the dates of 1976 and 2002, tracing the director's initial framing of mythical discourses of masculinity to an increasingly oppositional and alternative gender construction of the last film. The paper locates a nexus of discourses (colonial, national, Islamist) that inform the construction of masculinity in Algeria. It argues that a critical look at representations of masculinity is central to an analysis of North African identity due to the patriarchal nature of its traditional society, a society which has been in a state of transformation since the colonial and postcolonial periods. The construction of the colonial subject in discourse, and the exercise of colonial power through discourse, demands an articulation of forms of difference—racial and sexual. Such an articulation becomes crucial if it is held that the body is always simultaneously (if conflictually) inscribed in both the economy of pleasure and desire and the economy of discourse, domination and power. (Bhabha, 1994 Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture, New York/London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 67

Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Framing (construction · Male gaze · Masculinity · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · North African History and Literature