Writing the self' as narrative of resistance: L'Armée du salut by Abdellah Taïa

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore how a textual analysis of the representational strategies in a literary work and its paratext can inform our conception of 'resistance narratives' in ways that sociology of literature cannot. With specific focus on Abdellah Taïa's autobiographical novel, L'Armée du salut (2006), this article intends to demonstrate how the self-absorbed and the socially engaged can interrelate when 'writing the self'. Moreover, a literary analysis of this interrelation points towards a reading of L'Armée du salut as a multi-layered voice of resistance: the novel is not only transgressing heteronormativity, it is also expanding the boundaries of so-called homosexual desires as well as displacing Orientalist conceptions of 'Oriental sex'.