The question of sexuality is omnipresent in African literature. The presence of woman in the African novel is certainly vital, because she represents the most significant and interesting character. Her body and sex have become a subject of writing and a romantic object that assume thematic and ideological interpretations. 

In order to assert the presence of sex as a means of proclamation, writers refuse to be silent or to hide behind words. Approaching sex is a way of speaking freely and openly by confronting what is usually secret and hidden, that is to say forbidden, to be verbalized at the risk of overturning and breaking the stability of social order. The theme of sexuality has given birth to novelists who violate prohibitions and taboos and venture into writing that is intentionally shocking. 

Disobeying the patriarchy and stereotypes of society which make woman a simple sexual object to be consumed according to the desire of man becomes the weapon of any African woman who wishes to change her situation of damned and submissive in order to access emancipation and freedom of choice. The silence imposed by men in African Maghreb and sub-Saharan societies with the aim of subjecting women to enslavement is a subject much addressed by gender studies and current postcolonial studies which further clarify the nature of the link between men and women, particularly in formerly colonized countries. This situation does not seem to be able to last over time, especially after the emergence of female writing.

The theme of sexuality and the use of trivial language particularly interested the African Maghreb and sub-Saharan authors. As a result, we have chosen to examine two representative novels from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. We will be particularly interested in two writers representative of this theme in both Maghreb and Sub-Saharan spaces: Cest le soleil qui me brûlée by Calixthe Beyala and La Voyeuse interdite by Nina Bouraoui. These authors talk about sex without restraint, describing it in a blunt way. They approach sex by portraying it in a strong, detailed, and unedited way in erotic or even sometimes pornographic-looking scenes. Their concern is to stage carnal relationships bathed in deviation, prohibition, transgression, disorder, and liberation. Our work consists of a careful analysis of coarse language and the lexicon that dominates it while constantly linking with patriarchal and feminist ideology.

The use of trivial language is far from free in the novels submitted to our review. We will see how this language is indeed part of a logic that is part of the authors’ writing project based essentially on excess, excessiveness, and hyperbole in order to awaken the consciousness of the readers and to raise awareness of social debauchery and the flagrant imbalance between men and women. We will show that the exposure of social reality through trivial and pornographic language also signifies to what extent the relationship between man and woman in African societies have a sexual nature which reduces women to a simple object of pleasure. The authors did not fail to respond to this inferiorization imposed by man with demeaning and reductive language. We will also see how the offensive interpellation metaphorically translates feminine attitudes and their perceptions of the masculine gender. It is a way of imposing the subjugation that man knows how to impose on woman. The identification of man by repeatedly derogatory questioning reflects how dominant ideology is through language and has the power to exclude the subject. The strategies of language attack and the defense undertaken by men and women show that even language can be subjected to an ideology which structures it and prepares it for the destruction of a gender, a class, or a race.