Transgressing borders or bodies, deconstructing geographies in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s “Partir”

Abstract

The pictures of paradisiacal Europe and images of hellish Africa form the raw materials for the configuration of dreams of displacement and dislocation of an African migrant. Incidentally such pictorial conceptualization of Abroad defines as well the architecture and ambivalence of his/her hopes of departing from his/her Home. With the politicization of space and time, his/her ‘faux papiers’ or ‘sans papiers’ cannot assure the possibility of entrance, s/he is confronted with the impenetrability of enclosed borders and boundaries. Europe, now symbol of a female body, must be consummated, after amorous conceptualization. Though the boundary (body) is hermetic, it could be penetrated or violated forcefully. Focusing on Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Partir, this paper attempts to show how/why Maghrebian migrants transgress borders in order to reach their conceptualized and idealized European countries; this is analyzed in relation to the discourse of female body. It argues that romanticized idealization of the exterior propels its forced penetration or transgression of its borders. The paper also opines that the transgression of space permits the writer to deconstruct global geographies that have been highly politicized through the Eurocentric power of map.