La dualité identitaire dans L’Enfant de sable et La Nuit sacrée de Tahar Ben Jelloun

Abstract

L'Enfant de Sable and La Nuit Sacrée, two texts in which Tahar Ben Jelloun wavers between
reality and fiction. A father takes an intolerable and criminal decision, motivated by a sense of divine
injustice: he diverts the existing laws for the sole purpose of creating an illusion, according to his desire
for a son. His eighth daughter will be declared and presented as a male named Ahmed. We will analyze
the impact of this dual identity. At first we try to see how to find a balanced identity that could reconcile
the carnal and the spiritual when it is divided between two images of the body, while in the second part,
we will examine how this division and the transition of each other through processes of self ambiguous
multiplier. In the third part, we will see that the quest for that person is no longer that of a man or a
woman, but is to find someone to whom to speak. She found an identity because it is not finally recognized
as male or female but as a human being.