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Marginal Bodies and Precarious Lives in North Africa: Homo Expendibilis presents an examination of North African literature situated at the crossroads of literary analysis, political philosophy, and sociology. The author analyzes social categories in relation to civil and social protections and in particular, the ways in which disruptions to these protections can lead to social degeneration. The author's analysis starts from the premise that precarious lives in North Africa have become true bodies of exception. In other words, they are deemed dangerous, expendable and unworthy of the rights and treatment accorded to full citizens. Thus, the author assesses portrayals of violence in contemporary literature as a crystallization of the existing disjunction between the socially disqualified and those who wield colonial, political, and religious power. Moreover, the author argues that in order to understand contemporary politics and the current climate of insecurity, a deeper understanding of precarity in North Africa from colonial times to the present is crucial. By affirming their right to exist, the author argues that the marginal bodies of North Africa offer unique insights into the society that marginalized them and thus, from the often inaudible and invisible periphery, they nevertheless challenge the dominant ideas of the center.
List of contents
Introduction: Homo Expendibilis In North Africa
Chapter One: Memento Mori: The Living Dead Of Colonial Algeria
Chapter Two: The Immigrant Body As Body Of Exception
Chapter Three: Women Body, Pathological Body
Chapter Four: Precarious Lives: Slum Dwellers And Social Outcasts
Conclusion: Decentering The Center, Recentering The Periphery
About the author
Hervé Anderson Tchumkam is associate professor of French and Francophone postcolonial studies at Southern Methodist University.
Summary
Marginal Bodies and Precarious Lives in North Africa sheds light on marginal bodies and the (post)colonial State, revealing the deep interconnectedness of the past with the recent situation of North Africa. Insecurity is not the consequence of a society perceived as uncivilized, but rather the result of an indecent society.
