Redrawing the Territories of Desire and Melancholy. Le voyage homoérotique. The Travel Writings and Films of Gide, Duvert, Barthes, Genet, Taïa, Rachid O., Vallois and Bouzid

Walter S. Temple

Schena editore, coll. "Biblioteca della ricerca. Transatlantique", 2020.

192 p.

EUR 28,00

EAN13 : 9788868062514

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The authors and filmmakers examined in this study illuminate de queer traveler’s impulse to escape the limits of cultural and ideological constraints in an effort to redefine his experience in unknown territories. These travel writings take us from France to North Africa, beginning with the paradigmatic writings of André Gide and his wanderings in “exotic” lands. Through critical analysis of primary texts not only by Gide, but also Roland Barthes, Tony Duvert, and Jean Genet, this study concludes with an examination of Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa’s travels in/toward the north, which in a way reverse the dialectical positioning of Gide’s earlier travels south. The cinema of Philippe Vallois and Abdellah Taïa further illuminates what I argue to unravel as contemporary modes of self and being, as juxtaposed against the dual thematic regime of desire and melancholy.