From Archipelago to Atlas: Narrating the Postcolonial Queer Bodies in the Queer Writings of the Philippines and Morocco

Abstract

This thesis examines the coming-of-age narratives in Realuyo’s The Umbrella Country (1999) and Taïa’s Salvation Army (2009). Focusing on the forms of queer identity formation of Gringo and Abdella, the study aims to further reevaluate the insufficiency of Western queer narratives that centralize the act of “coming out” as a moment of liberation and precursor to an authentic life. Through the approach of postcolonial queer frameworks, it is found that coming out as a standard practice fails to capture the nuances of postcolonial belonging in the queer consciousness of the protagonists. Gringo and Abdellah transgress silence to reclaim the spaces and time that accommodate their expression of queerness. In the former, Gringo shares his silence with his effeminate brother Pipo to escape the oppressive control of normative authority. They do so by coexisting in the clandestine games of “Miss Unibers” and reclamation of shame where they also reconcile the conflicting worldviews of their parents—his mother’s inward looking-attachment to the Philippines, his father’s outward-looking aspiration toward the US and their grandmother’s past affiliation with Spanish occupation and colonialism. Meanwhile, the latter configures his queerness through the unspoken incestuous attraction to his older brother, which transgresses the confines of his Moroccan roots. As Abdellah leaves for Geneva, the physical dislocation and alienation from familiar spaces mobilize a deeper exploration of his sexuality. His disillusionment with this new reality however helps him to navigate his remembrance of shame and activate his agency in his identity formation. By foregrounding the significance of spatial and temporal transgression in the two texts, this study stresses the importance of seeing queerness as an ever-evolving expression of sexuality. Its declaration is not situated in a one-time act of coming out but in the continuous reclamation and recovery of alternative spaces and temporality as a means of sexual agency.