This article argues that contemporary border regimes operate not merely do not solely engage power through juridical exclusion or economic exploitation but through the engagement of unconscious desire and collective affect as well. Through a comparative reading of three feature-length films directed by Maghrebi women directors—Yamina Benguigui’s Sunday God Willing (Inch’Allah Dimanche 2001), Reem Kherici’s Paris or Perish (Paris à tout prix 2013), and Narjiss Nejjar’s Apatride (2018)—the study employs a dual methodological approach combining Lacanian psychoanalytic approach with the Spinozian affect theory to examine how cinema contributes to shaping political subjectification. This analysis prioritizes feminine experiences and positions gender at the center to disclose diasporic subjectification. It examines how gender fundamentally shapes the way border-crossing characters experience displacement, belonging, and jouissance. Using affect theory as developed in film phenomenology, we analytically trace the affective intensities generated by these films as they exceed narrative resolution to inviting spectators, particularly those occupying positions of gendered and racialized marginalization, to experience the contradictions of diasporic life. The analysis develops three interconnected theoretical concepts: “border jouissance” describes the psychoanalytic mechanism through which borders bind subjects to structures of domination, “diasporic transference” names how this jouissance gets mobilized and managed through cultural forms, and the “cruel optimism of integration” reveals how border jouissance sustains itself through spectatorial investment, keeping the subjects attached to integration fantasies despite their structural impossibility. Methodologically, the article undertakes a textual analysis of the narrative structure, mise-en-scène, temporal organization, and sonicness across the three films, attending to how the motion pictures shape affective reception and spectatorial identification, situating each within its specific historical and political-economic context. Through this approach, the study traces the shift from assimilationist transference (promising integration through cultural performance) through entrepreneurial transference (transforming cultural difference into market value) to border transference (confronting spectators with state violence). It also engages with the way each mode organizes the unconscious political desire differently, either sustaining or potentially disrupting contemporary border regimes. In lieu of addressing gender as an isolated category, we address how the affect operates at the intersection of gender, colonialism, state power, race, and class—shaping both diegetic characters and the viewer's experience. The narratives under study underscore how feminine desire becomes a site where psychoanalytic repression, nationalist ideology, and affective intensity converge, contesting liberal feminist frameworks that isolate gender from colonial legacies and contemporary border regimes. This framework contributes to critical border studies, psychoanalytic film theory, and diaspora studies as it unravels biopolitical governance operating through unconscious mechanisms. It reveals new possibilities to deconstruct and subvert contemporary forms of racialized exclusion.
Moha Boutahir (Wed,) studied this question.