IMAG(IN)ER Le Maghreb / IMAG(IN)ING The Maghreb

This bilingual double issue explores the intersections of image and imagination in Maghrebian cultural production — literature, film, photography, visual art, and performance. The title's typographical play — IMAG(IN)ER / IMAG(IN)ING — foregrounds the act of imagination embedded in every act of image-making, and signals the issue's central concern: how does one represent a region as historically layered, culturally heterogeneous, and politically contested as the Maghreb?

Essays in French and English examine questions of visual culture, postcolonial representation, gender and the gaze, the uses of archive and photography, and the aesthetics of Maghrebian cinema from its earliest years to the present. Contributors include scholars working in French, English, Arabic, and comparative literature traditions, making this issue one of the most genuinely interdisciplinary the journal has produced.

Featured filmmakers and artists include Abdellatif Kechiche, Moufida Tlatli, Farida Benlyazid, Leila Sebbar, and others whose work has defined the visual imagination of contemporary North Africa.