A Dark, Inner Life and a Society in Crisis: Nina Bouraoui’s Standard

Lisa Marchi

doi:10.3390/h8010041

Abstract

Situating close readings of Nina Bouraoui’s latest novel Standard (2014) within the context of a critique of neoliberalism and of the ongoing geopolitical uprisings in the Arab world, this essay presents the novel as a fine literary and affective exploration of personal concerns relating to sex, gender, and desire as well as a sociohistorical chronicle detailing how representations of personal and intimate relations may illuminate wider social ills together with the mechanism of contemporary political life. Drawing on critical work on affect by Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Judith/Jack Halberstam, this article argues that through its focus on affect, the text contributes to the unveiling and critical questioning of the biopolitical maneuvers that dispose life to precarity and of the ensuing desire for freedom, dignity, and rebellion.

Highlights

The present essay situates close readings of Nina Bouraoui’s latest novel Standard (Bouraoui 2014)within the context of a critique of neoliberalism and of the ongoing geopolitical upheavals in theArab world
It argues that the novel is simultaneously a fine literary and affective exploration of personal concerns relating to sex, gender, and desire as well as a sociohistorical chronicle detailing the miseries of a young trio, who serve as representatives of a growing mass of people condemned to marginality by the economic rationality governing neoliberalism
I argue that by destabilizing and deviating from economic values and metrics and by showing how biopolitical maneuvers intrude in intimate lives, Bouraoui does not limit herself to mirror a generation in crisis but further denounces and contests neoliberalism, as a governing rationality that encroaches democratic principles and condemns a vast majority of people —especially the youth—to misery and invisibility

Summary

Introduction

The present essay situates close readings of Nina Bouraoui’s latest novel Standard (Bouraoui 2014). A prolific writer born in Rennes, France, and raised in Algeria until the age of 14, Bouraoui remains to a certain extent an author difficult to classify, since she cannot be univocally identified as a French writer tout court nor as a proper Maghrebi one (MacLachlan 2016) Her inwardly focused novels, in which she performs intimate explorations of subjectivity formation and negotiation across national, cultural, linguistic, and gender boundaries, situate her at the forefront of contemporary francophone. In Standard (Bouraoui 2014), Bouraoui’s attention focuses once again on the intricate relation between embodied lived experience and sociocultural pressures In this specific case, the global financial crisis of 2008 with the consequent turn to austerity politics forms the dramatic backdrop to the story of the protagonist and his two friends. Since it confounds clear geographical distinctions, by creating new points of contact and alternative forms of affiliation, coalition, and solidarity that exceed the strict contours of the nation, Bouraoui’s novel, I claim, represents a somehow twisted yet powerful reverberation of the Arab uprisings and a mournful hymn to the desire of freedom, dignity, and rebellion that animated the people participating in the so-called Arab spring

Neoliberal Rationality and Its Impact on Intimate Lives

Embodied Lived Experience and the Miseries of Neoliberalism

Conclusions