ABSTRACT
Eroticism and subalternity are traditionally interwoven in the unconscious libidinal economy of classical Orientalism, within which the desire to possess the subaltern Other has always played a constitutive function. This chapter aims to show the discursive conditions that enabled the success of the postcolonial erotic genre through the books of Al Neimi, Nedjma and Haddad, despite adopting a gender perspective, the process of re-appropriating abused topoi of 'oriental' sexuality. It is a process whose stated intent is to rescue Arab culture from the mistaken and stereotyped portrait circulating in the West of a sexophobic Arab-Muslim world - ends up re-establishing a fabricated view of the 'Orient' and turning classical Western fantasies of the erotic East into a canon. Speaking of Neo-Orientalism thus requires analysing the current state of affairs in light of the ensemble of political and cultural implications that derive from the continuity of the present with the history of the past.
