Playing to the West only? Representations of Picasso, the gendered body and Islamism in Kamel Daoud’s <i>Le peintre dévorant la femme</i>

This research explores Algerian writer Kamel non-fictional text, Le peintre dévorant la femme . The text addresses questions relating to religious extremism, the meaning of art, death and eroticism, relationship between l’Occident l’Orient through visual aid Picasso’s 1932 Année érotique Central this is notion hybridized public intellectual (Daoud) entering spheres (Franco-Algerian beyond). consequences operating within a plural readership suggest that Daoud, subconsciously or not, speaks particular sectors his western-French audience more so than Muslim-Algerian ones, risking an imbalance. unpicks how Daoud negotiates aesthetics politics in writing, showing move essai 2018 can be read as facilitating conversation with bourgeois, potentially republican, French audience. It also analyses Daoud’s representations Picasso, Paris, museum, gendered body western Muslim societies. By doing so, it attempts highlight although appears offer ‘double-edged’ critique Algeria since independence neo-colonialism, tendency make generalizations about Islam sometimes unwittingly plays (and widely, western) Islamophobic assumptions.