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   Book Info

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Colonial Affairs: Bowles, Burroughs, and Chester Write Tangier  
Author: Greg A. Mullins
ISBN: 0299179648
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review

Book Description
A North African port city that was home to as many Europeans as Moroccans, postwar Tangier was truly an international zone, a place where the familiar boundaries of language, culture, nationality, and sexuality blurred, and anything seemed possible. In the 1950s and 1960s three leading American writers settled in Tangier, where they were able to find critical new ways of living and writing on the margins of society. A subtle literary portrait of Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Alfred Chester, Colonial Affairs is also a complex and perceptive account of the ways colonialism and sexuality structure each other, particularly as reflected in the literature written in postwar Tangier. Sexual commerce and culture flourished in Tangier during these years, as gay expatriates fled repressive sexual norms at home. Greg Mullins explores the covert and overt representations of sex, fantasy, desire, and sexual identity in the literature of Bowles, Burroughs, Chester, and Moroccan authors who collaborated with Bowles. He argues that expatriate writing in Tangier articulates the desire to exceed national and other forms of identity through representations of sex, especially marginalized forms of sex and sexuality. The literature that emerges variously celebrates, critiques, and attempts to evade the double bind of colonial sexuality. Framed in relation to queer and postcolonial theory, Mullins's work is grounded in contemporary debates about sex, race, and desire. His sophisticated yet nimble analysis establishes beyond any doubt the central importance of colonialism and sexuality in the fiction of these writers working at once at the center and the margins of tradition-and reveals to contemporary readers the queer angles of their distinctly original work.

From the Back Cover
"An excellent critical account of the work of three American expatriate authors, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, and Alfred Chester, all of whom lived in Tangier during the post-World War II era. Mullins's key theme is the sexual politics of their fictions and its relation to colonialism. The theme is fascinating, and Mullins handles it with subtlety and thoughtfulness."-Henry Abelove, Wesleyan University

About the Author
Greg Mullins is a member of the faculty of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.




Colonial Affairs: Bowles, Burroughs, and Chester Write Tangier

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A North African port city that was home to as many Europeans as Moroccans, postwar Tangier was truly an international zone, a place where the familiar boundaries of language, culture, nationality, and sexuality blurred, and anything seemed possible. In the 1950s and 1960s three leading American writers settled in Tangier, where they were able to find critical new ways of living and writing on the margins of society. A subtle literary portrait of Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Alfred Chester, Colonial Affairs is also a complex and perceptive account of the ways colonialism and sexuality structure each other, particularly as reflected in the literature written in postwar Tangier.

Sexual commerce and culture flourished in Tangier during these years, as gay expatriates fled repressive sexual norms at home. Greg Mullins explores the covert and overt representations of sex, fantasy, desire, and sexual identity in the literature of Bowles, Burroughs, Chester, and Moroccan authors who collaborated with Bowles. He argues that expatriate writing in Tangier articulates the desire to exceed national and other forms of identity through representations of sex, especially marginalized forms of sex and sexuality. The literature that emerges variously celebrates, critiques, and attempts to evade the double bind of colonial sexuality.

Framed in relation to queer and postcolonial theory, Mullins's work is grounded in contemporary debates about sex, race, and desire. His sophisticated yet nimble analysis establishes beyond any doubt the central importance of colonialism and sexuality in the fiction of these writers working at once at the center and the margins of tradition-and reveals to contemporary readers the queer angles of their distinctly original work.

Author Biography: Greg Mullins is a member of the faculty of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

SYNOPSIS

Examining the literature produced by Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, and Alfred Chester while they were American expatriates in the Moroccan city of Tangier, Mullins (Evergreen State College) reflects on how their writings represented the interaction between sexual politics and colonialism. Applying concepts from queer theory and colonial theory, he looks at a range of issues swirling around the city where cultures, sexualities, and politics met with differing levels of power. Among these are the Western experience of Morroco as a destination of homosexual tourism, sexual tourism as situated in contexts of colonial relationships and financial transactions, the equation of colonial relationships with gendered spheres of power, and the accommodations of Moroccan society to practices it ostensibly condemned. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR

     



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