Article Title
Deconstructing Gender Relations in Selected Essays by Abdelkébir Khatibi and Fatema Mernissi
Abstract
This article examines how gender relations are deconstructed in selected essays by Abdelkébir Khatibi and Fatema Mernissi, situating their work within Moroccan debates of the 1980s and 1990s on social change and the family. It analyzes writing strategies and theoretical resources—literary and sociological—used to question gender as a socially acquired performance. Particular attention is given to Mernissi’s texts, where multiple female voices (songs, interviews, and familial figures) are made audible and reworked into a political reading of rights, labor, and access to public space. The study shows how the essay form operates as a site for shifting norms and for producing counter-discourses.