English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Drawing on an unorthodox approach to desire, Belkacem Meghzouchene’s second novel,  The overcoat of Virginia  (2013), finds that opposition activists are probably more frustrating than the regime they contest. Specifying “a lack-based” desire, the trope of sodomy in the novel articulates the ways in which the Algerian postcolonial ruling elites allegedly embezzle the country’s resources without any sensible logic except “pure grab”, a predatory habit. This article argues that, while building on desire for understanding a postcolony such as Algeria can be insightful, reducing it to sexual assault is indicative of an impoverished intellectuality marked by a paucity of abstraction. Expressions of desire, once inhibited through disciplining the body via a recourse to an alienating temporality such as Islamism (even when not explicit), cannot be counted as insurrectional. Measured against the task of “revamping history”, the one outlined by the opposition activists in the novel, the “perverted-desire-as-sodomy argument” leads to a submissive regime of truth. Still, Meghzouchene’s characters’ conservative outlook encourages readers not to overlook the biopolitical dimension of the postcolonial state, but warns against populist discourse that confuses scandalizing with activism.

A “Sodomized” Postcolony? Narrating Algeria’s Cultural Impasse in Belkacem Meghzouchene’s The overcoat of Virginia