MOHSEN ELBELASY’S MONUMENTAL INQUEST UNLOCKS THE EPHEMERAL REALITY OF JOYCE MANSOUR

Paris, Cairo – October 5, 2025 – Sulfur Editions and Mohsen Elbelasy announce the forthcoming publication of Joyce Mansour: The Tuberose Baby Girl, the definitive, epistemologically rigorous monograph that demands a complete re-evaluation of the Egyptian-born powerhouse of Surrealist literature. This work is a genealogical hermeneutics of the imaginary, positioning Mansour’s volatile corpus at the critical fracture where Western metaphysics collides with the insurgent poetics of the unconscious.

A CRITICAL INTERVENTION: THE SUBVERSIVE LINGUISTIC ORDER

This study constitutes a profound intervention into

Sociolinguistics and Literary Criticism, meticulously dissecting the trauma and ecstasy that catalyzed Mansour’s oeuvre—a world violently constructed from desire, death, and an unparalleled Black Humor.

Elbelasy rigorously analyzes Joyce’s strategic choice of French—the Symbolic Order imposed by the colonial trace—not as an inheritance, but as a calculated occupation of the master’s tongue. Her syntax is shown to fracture the logical, linear grammar of the West, becoming a linguistic heterotopia that houses an identity forged in the rupture of exile and the confluence of cultures (English, French, Egyptian).
The text navigates the deep Freudian and post-Freudian currents in her work, from the trauma of early maternal loss to the relentless fear of death (Thanatos), which she compulsively counteracts through explosive, unbridled sexual desire (Eros). Her poetry is unveiled as a form of bodily compulsion, mirroring the hysteric’s defiance against corporeal containment.

THE ANATOMY OF INSURRECTION: EROS AND THE EGYPTIAN ROOTS

Elbelasy masterfully documents Mansour’s radical eroticism, aligning her output with the transgressive traditions of Sade and Bataille, while performing a crucial subversive inversion of the traditional male gaze. Her work asserts a negative ontology, demonstrating that the feminine body, in its fluid, androgynous, and often grotesque state, is an active agent of desire that resists capture by patriarchal systems.

Crucially, the book illuminates the persistent echoes of her Egyptian sensibility, detailing how the convergence of life, death, and virility symbolized by Osiris, Anubis, and the recurring motif of The Cobra—provide her with a unique, non-Abrahamic framework for poetic transcendence.

THE ARCHIVE AND THE CIRCLE OF FIRE

Joyce Mansour: The Tuberose Baby Girl provides unparalleled archival depth, relying on personal manuscripts, rare publishing correspondence, and intimate reflections.

The volume meticulously details the decade-long, complex epistolary bond with André Breton, establishing Mansour as his primary muse and companion in the final phase of Surrealism (“Surrealist poetry is you”)^{111111111111111111}.
It documents her critical, aesthetic, and personal rapport with the movement’s most challenging figures, from Pierre Alechinsky and Roberto Matta to Hans Bellmer, Pierre Molinier, and the crucial staging of Jean Benoît’s execution of the Marquis de Sade’s testament in her Parisian apartment^{121212121212121212}.
The monograph is fortified by illuminating introductory essays from international figures, including Will Alexander (Pulitzer Prize finalist), novelist Rikki Ducornet, and Professor Marc Kober, confirming the global necessity of this belated reckoning.

This book is the definitive intellectual map required to confront the raw, untamed landscape of Mansour’s consciousness—essential reading for any scholar or reader seeking the Breach (La Brèche) in the wall of literary conformity.

PUBLICATION DATA:

Title: Joyce Mansour: The Tuberose Baby Girl
Author: Mohsen Elbelasy
Publisher: Sulfur Editions
Release Date: 2025