Neo-orientalisms in Leïla Sebbar’s Métro: instantanés

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Leïla Sebbar’s engagement with colonial-era orientalist iconography in her 2007 text Métro: instantanés, a collection of literary snapshots of scenes glimpsed in the Parisian metro dating from 1997 through 2006. Whereas critics have frequently affirmed that Sebbar’s evocations of orientalist visual artefacts work to subvert orientalist discourse, the author proposes that a number of these snapshots constitute a largely uncritical reinscription of contemporary formulations of orientalist discourse. In particular, the author analyses Sebbar’s portraits of French Muslim girls and women in relation to debates regarding the political, social and cultural meaning of Islamic headscarves. Through a comparative analysis of Métro: instantanés and Sebbar’s Mes Algéries trilogy (2004–2008), the author argues that the former betrays a nostalgia for a past era of Franco-Arab political and cultural expression, one that inflects her portraits of French Muslim girls and women at the turn of the century. These portraits are not the neutral, documentary objects that their form suggests, but rather Sebbar’s personal vision of contemporary France, one that significantly overlaps a neo-orientalist and neo-colonial imaginary in which the bodies of French Muslim girls and women threaten the values and security of the Republic.