Corps, culture et société: une lecture de L’enfant de sable et La nuit sacrée de Tahar Ben Jelloun

Abstract

This article aims to study the vision of Tahar Ben Jelloun towards the body through which the social and cultural situation of the Maghreb countries is clarified. The Moroccan author charges the body with the Arab-Muslim tradition, with male domination and culture, with the erasure of women in society. Hadj Ahmed Souleïmane, in a country that favours men, after having had seven daughters, he feels dishonoured, castrated, finally to repair this evil and rehabilitate his honour, he makes his daughter a boy, from birth, who will be the man of the family, his heir, not only of material goods but essentially of the values of masculinity and patriarchy. He manipulates both his daughter’s body and her way of thinking, teaching her how to become a man according to tradition, also inspecting her body, her reactions and her actions. The body is thus polysemous, through which we understand Ben Jelloun’s vision of gender, culture, family education, society, the male/female relationship and religion. Ben Jelloun uses the body for subversive reasons in order to deconstruct society’s vision of the body, of the values and culture that determine society. In his work, the body thus consists in condemning and denouncing.