Sexagon

Honorable Mention, Association for Middle East Women's Studies
Honorable Mention, 2018 Arab American Book Awards (Non-Fiction)
In contemporary France, particularly in the banlieues of Paris, the figure of the young, virile, hypermasculine Muslim looms large. So large, in fact, it often supersedes liberal secular society's understanding of gender and sexuality altogether. Engaging the nexus of race, gender, nation, and sexuality, Sexagon studies the broad politicization of Franco-Arab identity in the context of French culture and its assumptions about appropriate modes of sexual and gender expression, both gay and straight.
Surveying representations of young Muslim men and women in literature, film, popular journalism, television, and erotica as well as in psychoanalysis, ethnography, and gay and lesbian activist rhetoric, Mehammed Amadeus Mack reveals the myriad ways in which communities of immigrant origin are continually and consistently scapegoated as already and always outside the boundary of French citizenship regardless of where the individuals within these communities were born. At the same time, through deft readings of-among other things-fashion photography and online hook-up sites, Mack shows how Franco-Arab youth culture is commodified and fetishized to the point of sexual fantasy.
Official French culture, as Mack suggests, has judged the integration of Muslim immigrants from North and West Africa-as well as their French descendants-according to their presumed attitudes about gender and sexuality. More precisely, Mack argues, the frustrations consistently expressed by the French establishment in the face of the alleged Muslim refusal to assimilate is not only symptomatic of anxieties regarding changes to a "familiar" France but also indicative of an unacknowledged preoccupation with what Mack identifies as the "virility cultures" of Franco-Arabs, rendering Muslim youth as both sexualized objects and unruly subjects.
The perceived volatility of this banlieue virility serves to animate French characterizations of the "difficult" black, Arab, and Muslim boy-and girl-across a variety of sensational newscasts and entertainment media, which are crucially inflamed by the clandestine nature of the banlieues themselves and non-European expressions of virility. Mirroring the secret and underground qualities of "illegal" immigration, Mack shows, Franco-Arab youth increasingly choose to withdraw from official scrutiny of the French Republic and to thwart its desires for universalism and transparency. For their impenetrability, these sealed-off domains of banlieue virility are deemed all the more threatening to the surveillance of mainstream French society and the state apparatus.

Mehammed Amadeus Mack is Assistant Professor of French Studies and Program Committee Member in the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College.

Introduction: Enter the Sexagon Manipulations of Gay-Friendliness Vocabularies of Race and Desire The Sexualization of Ethnicity, Now and Then Not Queer Enough Sexual Nationalism and the Rape of Europa The Banlieue as Laboratory An Eventful Home Life Exposing the Arab The Sexagon Chapter One: The Banlieue has a Gender: Competing Visions of Sexual Diversity Banlieue Girl Gangs and Muslima soldiers Ethnographic Obfuscation in the Homo-ghetto Capitalizing on Banlieusard Homosexualities The Banlieue as Maker, Not Cracked Mirror, of the Queer Chapter Two: Constructing the Broken Family: The Draw for Psychoanalysis The Juvenile Delinquent Mother Enablers of a Male Islam "Be Careful What You Wish For" Historical Echoes of the Colonial Delinquent The Veiled Woman The Veil, the Clandestine, and the Public/Private Distinction The Impotent Father Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Community Attachment Chapter Three: Uncultured yet Seductive: The Trope of the Difficult Arab Boy Sexuality, Ethnography, and Literature Sexual Informants of Bad News The Guardians of French Letters Looking Hard The Rehabilitation of Ethnic Virility Atonement for Cross-Cultural Injury The Arab Boy's Post-colonial Revenge Chapter Four: Sexual Undergrounds: Cinema, Performance, and Ethnic Surveillance Exposing the Clandestine, Intimately Homosexualization and Acceptance Rehabilitating Virility The Sexualization of Authority Big Brother is Watching You Interpenetration of Communities Sex Work, Immigrant Work, Travail d'Arabe Image Control Chapter Five: Erotic Solutions for Ethnic Tension: Fantasy, Reality, Pornography Exploiting Exploitation Stereotypes and Victimology François Sagat, aka, "Azzedine" The banlieue's Erotic Premises From beur to beurette, a Political Loss Domestic-Exotic Men Conclusion: The Sexagon's Border Crisis Acknowledgments Notes Index