Literacy, Sexuality and the Literary in the Self-Inscription of Muhammad Shukr¯I

This essay considers the intersection between the construction of self and the acquisition of literacy in the three autobiographical novels of the Moroccan writer Muhammad Shukr¯ı (1935–2003), who became literate in his 20s. The article examines not only how Shukr¯ı’s texts reveal the relationship between literacy and the experience and textual construction of self, but also how the power associated with literacy is circumscribed by both the inability to achieve stable, unmediated expression and notions of legitimate Arabic literary discourse. The three works present different senses of self, yet each of them is tied to distinct aspects of literacy and literariness, and in each of them legitimation, or a lack thereof, either shores up or, more often than not, wears away at the sense of self of the autobiographical ‘I’. Furthermore, Shukr¯ı’s three autobiographical texts all attempt to counter delegitimation through the expression of an explicit, corporeal masculinity.