Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979

Synopsis

Did sexual abnormality set the stage for the end of France's presumed natural domination of Algeria? The Algerian revolution for independence coincided with the sexual revolution in France, and in this book Todd Shepard argues that these two movements are inextricably linked.Sex, France, and Arab Men is a history of how and why from the upheavals of French Algeria in 1962 through the 1970s highly sexualized claims about Arabs were omnipresent in important public French discussions, both those that dealt with sex and those that spoke of Arabs. Shepard explores how the so-called sexual revolution took shape in a France profoundly influenced by the ongoing effects of the Algerian revolution. Shepard's analysis of both events alongside one another provides a frame that renders visible the ways that the fight for sexual liberation, usually explained as an American and European invention, developed out of the worldwide anticolonial movement of the mid-twentieth century. Sex talk and the post-Algerian history of France -- The far right and the reinvigoration of sexual orientalism in post-decolonization France -- May '68, Arab perversion, and anti-Arab racism -- The Algerian revolution and Arab men in the fight for sexual revolution -- Homosociality, human contact, and the specter of the Arab man in the post-'68 French gay world -- Prostitution and the Arab man, 1945-1975: Algerian pimps and the takeover of the whores of France -- Prostitution and the Arab man, 1962-1979: prostitutes, Arab clients, and the traffic in white women -- Power, resistance, and sodomy in post-Algerian France -- Rape as metaphor in the 1970s -- Rape as act in the 1970s -- The erotics of Algerian difference, 1979-2016. Todd Shepard. Includes bibliographical references and index.