Department of World Languages & Cultures
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11875/2566
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Browsing Department of World Languages & Cultures by Author "Frelier, Jocelyn A."
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Item Feminist Theories of Development in Farida Benlyazid’s Double-Bildung story, La vida perra de Juanita Narboni (2005)(Taylor & Francis, 2019-08) Frelier, Jocelyn A.Farida Benlyazid’s film, La vida perra de Juanita Narboni (2005), offers viewers a novel iteration of the classic coming-of-age genre. As a film, it lies outside the preferred medium of expression for the genre and it features not one, but two distinct protagonists: Juanita (for whom the story is named) and her city, Tangier. Each half of this double narrative provides a feminist critique of the masculine projects traditionally associated with the Bildung genre. When read as a narrative of development, both the form and content of the film open up the possibility of gendering theories of development. The film’s feminist interventions destabilize the aims of Enlightenment thinking, which produced the Bildung genre, along a three-pronged axis: the film questions the processes that lead to the solidification of national boundaries; it challenges progress-oriented ideals as they relate to time and development; and it dissolves the construct of linguistic purity.Item Surrogacy: Temporary Familial Bonds and the Bondage of Origins in Fouad Laroui’s Une année chez les Français(Journal of North Afican, 2019-03) Frelier, Jocelyn A.This article examines Fouad Laroui’s 2010 novel, Une année chez les Français, and charts the protagonist’s development to argue that it offers a new model for Moroccan coming-of-age in a postcolonial context. While Une année is a Bildungsroman, it breaks away from patterns seen in the genre before it to illustrate the possibilities of creating ‘Third Spaces’ (Bhabha 1990). The protagonist, Mehdi, arrives at his moment of ‘apprentissage’ thanks to his pseudo-adoption by a French family and French boarding school, where he experiences what I have termed a pull-push sensation. I outline the sources and effects of the pull-push Mehdi perceives and then turn to argue that these experiences allow him to destabilise the relationship between the concepts of family and familiarity. It is through his newly found understanding that what is familiar is not always family and what is family does not always feel familiar that Mehdi is able to articulate the third space he desires for himself and come of age. While this article focuses on the experiences of a single, fictional character, Une année chez les Francais introduces readers with a framework for imagining the identity-formation of a multiplicity of individuals who have grown up at the intersection of postcolonial North Africa and continental France.