In his essay “Pensée-autre” Abdelkebir Khatibi objects to the binary logic of center/periphery, in part at least, because it purports to account for everyone and everything with no acknowledgment that individuals and their experiences may not always fall neatly into a system of classification. According to Khatibi, the only way to confront such a binary is to subvert it, and for that he advocates what he calls plural thought, thought that acknowledges that it cannot encompass all. Whereas totalizing thought, according to Khatibi, is the kind of thought that seeks to dominate and control, plural thought allows for people and ideas that might fall right at the bar between center and periphery. Thought that arises from its poverty, as Khatibi calls it (and here he is not referring to material poverty, but rather to thought that acknowledges its own incomplete character) is thought that allows one to imagine a space between the dichotomy of center and margin.

Writer Leila Sebbar in her Sherazade novels might be said to put into practice Khatibi’s call for plural thought, or thought that is “minority, marginal, fragmentary and incomplete,” as he describes it. Sebbar’s novels are certainly interested in questions of center and margin, especially as concerns the elaboration of a French cultural identity. By pointing out centuries old links between France and its supposed “margins,” her novels remind the reader of the chimerical aspect of any distinction between center and margin. This reminder, however, counters much popular memory of French identity, and making the claim is obviously not the same as having it accepted. This paper argues that while Sebbar’s multi-voiced narrative may call into question the whole idea of margin and center, it also points to the cost for individuals in both the supposed center and margin--as well as for those who cannot be so easily placed to one “side” or another--who must negotiate these different understandings of French identity.