Honorable Mention, Association for Middle East Women's Studies
Honorable Mention, 2018 Arab American Book Awards (Non-Fiction) In
contemporary France, particularly in the banlieues of Paris, the
figure of the young, virile, hypermasculine Muslim looms large. So
large, in fact, it often supersedes liberal secular society's
understanding of gender and sexuality altogether. Engaging the
nexus of race, gender, nation, and sexuality, Sexagon studies the
broad politicization of Franco-Arab identity in the context of
French culture and its assumptions about appropriate modes of
sexual and gender expression, both gay and straight. Surveying
representations of young Muslim men and women in literature, film,
popular journalism, television, and erotica as well as in
psychoanalysis, ethnography, and gay and lesbian activist rhetoric,
Mehammed Amadeus Mack reveals the myriad ways in which communities
of immigrant origin are continually and consistently scapegoated as
already and always outside the boundary of French citizenship
regardless of where the individuals within these communities were
born. At the same time, through deft readings of-among other
things-fashion photography and online hook-up sites, Mack shows how
Franco-Arab youth culture is commodified and fetishized to the
point of sexual fantasy. Official French culture, as Mack suggests,
has judged the integration of Muslim immigrants from North and West
Africa-as well as their French descendants-according to their
presumed attitudes about gender and sexuality. More precisely, Mack
argues, the frustrations consistently expressed by the French
establishment in the face of the alleged Muslim refusal to
assimilate is not only symptomatic of anxieties regarding changes
to a "familiar" France but also indicative of an unacknowledged
preoccupation with what Mack identifies as the "virility cultures"
of Franco-Arabs, rendering Muslim youth as both sexualized objects
and unruly subjects. The perceived volatility of this banlieue
virility serves to animate French characterizations of the
"difficult" black, Arab, and Muslim boy-and girl-across a variety
of sensational newscasts and entertainment media, which are
crucially inflamed by the clandestine nature of the banlieues
themselves and non-European expressions of virility. Mirroring the
secret and underground qualities of "illegal" immigration, Mack
shows, Franco-Arab youth increasingly choose to withdraw from
official scrutiny of the French Republic and to thwart its desires
for universalism and transparency. For their impenetrability, these
sealed-off domains of banlieue virility are deemed all the more
threatening to the surveillance of mainstream French society and
the state apparatus.
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