Globalization Speaks English: The In (visibility) of Algerian Literature and Its Resistance to Translation.pdf (original) (raw)
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Assessment of Algerian French Literature in the Twenty-first Century
El Fadae el Magharibi, 2018
Literature is a mirror that reflects individual and collective frustration, strains, and anxiety. It vehicules also aspirations, desires, and visions, providing thereby hope, satisfaction, and liberation. By crystallysing their issues on paper, writers find themselves winners in battles against all dark spots in their society. By their rebelling stands, they may either realize self interests, or interests for the whole community. Algerian French literature falls within this scope as writers sought multi-faceted revolts against their socio-political orders for the sake of redressing both their individual and group interests. The present paper attempts the exploration of Algerian French literature in the twenty-first century with a view to assessing the inclinations of authors in this period, and synthetising the themes addressed. The survey takes into consideration five writers, notably Yasmina Khadra, Aziz Chouaki Amine Zaoui, Assia Djebar, and Malika Mokeddem. The findings reveal that Algerian novelists resorted to a rebelling form of writing in order to denunciate all evils in their society that hampered both individual and common welfare.
Postcolonial Algerian Writers in French: Language as Representation and Resistance
Sahar Editions, Tunisia- ISBN#978-9973-28-421-1, 2014
Based on postcolonial concepts borrowed from Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Jürgen Habermas, this paper studies the appropriation of French language by Algerian authors as a means of representation and resistance to the discourse of the colonizer, and in the case of women authors, to the patriarchal norms of Algerian society. Kateb Yacine uses French to resist French hegemony through subverting its structures by mixing it with the Algerian language and culture. His Nedjma reveals two types of narrative discourse: written and oral language, on the one hand, and the use of the Arabo-Berber vernacular, on the other. Yacine also writes against the post-colonial Algerian condition with the attribution of a dominant position to classical Arabic at the expense of Algerian Arabic and Tamazight. By clearing a space for the subaltern voice, women authors writing in French differ from male authors like Yacine. These women use French language not only to answer back to the colonial discourse but also the discourse held by men vis-a-vis women and their oppressive inferior condition. In Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, Assia Djebar uses oral testimonies and archival information as background for her narrative in order to enrich the reader’s comprehension of the cultural memory of Algeria, but she also fills the socio-cultural and intellectual void that often results from the patriarchal norms of the Algerian society. In The Forbidden Woman, Malika Mokeddem is similar to Djebar in her use of French not only to subvert the language of the colonizer but, especially, to reconfigure the status of Algerian women. She reclaims the use of French to resist the Algerian structures of patriarchy. What is common to these three authors and others is their focus on the linguistic hybridity of Algeria, the importance of which must be recognized as an asset to postcolonial Algeria, rather than viewed as a means of dividing the country for the welfare of the ruling few.
Francosphères, 2013
This article examines francophone publishing trends in Morocco and France, asking: what roles do the nation and languages play in transnational literary politics, and who reads francophone texts in Morocco and France? These questions are addressed through interviews with Moroccan writers and literary critics, a discussion of modes of literary production in Morocco and France, the role of Moroccan literature in the francophone sphere, the culture of ‘Death and Prizes’ in Morocco, and the politics of labelling Moroccan francophone literature ‘World Literature’. Ultimately, this article promotes close reading and a more literary treatment of Moroccan francophone literatures, rather than reinforcing the trend practised by some academics in the West who treat Moroccan francophone literature as a social lens through which to ‘read’ Morocco.
The appearance of Algerian literature is related to the appearance of what was known by Renaissance in the Arab world. Renaissance is a movement started by the French invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte on 1798 where the French army brought with him a team of scientists, philosophers, and writers (more than140 persons) and the type-machine (typed in Arabic), also they built a big library with what they brought from France and added what they took from the Egyptian libraries. The spread of Renaissance is one of the main causes that led to the birth of the Algerian literature in addition to the new era of travelling and discoveries. The Algerian and Middle East Arabian literature have been both influenced by the European modern literature and the industrial revolution (translation, typing and production…). They started by giving life to the ancient books and novels. The Postcolonial period in Algeria also influenced the Algerian literature, giving birth to a new modern literature, a strong and wide spread for both writers and literary production. The Algerian postcolonial period raised some questions about the Algerian Novel, since it was a period of Algerian writers using French language and also a period of women writers who faced many obstacles while publishing their writings, here we have to ask about the Algerian novel, what is it? And can we include novels written in French language by Algerian writers to the Algerian Literature? And With the emergence of women movements and women writers, how did the Algerian women writers managed to create a place among the Algerian novel and literature? And how could their writings contribute in feminine movements.
Rethinking urgence: Algerian Francophone Literature after the "décennie noire"
Francosphères, 2016
Set in the context of the Algerian ‘décennie noire’, a period of violence which spanned the 1990s, this article is about how multiple languages of urgence developed during and after the period and were applied to readings of Algerian Francophone literature produced at this time. The article is split into two parts: beginning with an overview of how urgence as a notion was written and constructed during the Algerian ‘décennie noire’ by the Algerian State (état d’urgence) and by French literary markets (écriture de l’urgence), the second part of the article considers how urgence might be seen to be interrogated and recast in the work of Algerian writers published within a blossoming Francophone publishing sector in Algeria. The main focus here is Mustapha Benfodil’s most recent novel, Archéologie du chaos (amoureux) (2007). The article suggests that the ethical imperative of the 1990s has been rethought and remapped by writers, outside of the hegemonic national narrative and reductive press receptions of novels common during the ‘décennie noire’. If initially cautioning against using literary fiction to read contemporary postcolonial societies, the article elaborates, through a reading of Benfodil’s novel, on how a more complex engagement with literary reference as suspended (simultaneously attached to and detached from reality) can offer a tentative but fruitful entry into recent Algerian history. /// Cet article propose une réflexion sur les langages de l’« urgence » développés pendant et après la « décennie noire » (les années 90 durant lesquelles l’Algérie fut fortement marquée par la violence) qui informèrent la production littéraire algérienne francophone de cette période. L’article est divisé en deux parties. Il montre tout d’abord que le concept d’« urgence » est une invention de l’état algérien (par le biais de l’« état d’urgence ») relayée par l’industrie littéraire française (sous la forme de l’« écriture de l’urgence »). Il étudie ensuite la manière dont certains écrivains algériens se sont réappropriés cette « urgence » après les années 90 afin d’en faire un outil non plus répressif, mais créatif. L’analyse se concentre sur le roman le plus récent de Mustapha Benfodil, Archéologie du chaos (amoureux) (2007), et établit que l’impératif moral de l’écriture propre aux années 90 y est détourné et déjoue tant le grand récit étatique d’hégémonie nationale que les réceptions réductrices de la presse typiques de la « décennie noire ». Tout en mettant en garde contre les dangers de la lecture des sociétés postcoloniales par le prisme de la fiction littéraire, nous montrons que la référence littéraire est toujours suspendue (à la fois reliée à et disjointe de la réalité) et considérons les façons dont la littérature peut offrir un accès provisoire, mais néanmoins fructueux, à l’histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine en nous appuyant sur le cas du roman de Benfodil.
Algerian French Literature between Praise and Blame of Cultural Phenomena
El-Quari'e Journal of Literary, Critical and Linguistic Studies, V 5, N 3 , 2022
Literature and society cannot be dissociated from each other as one nurtures the other, molding, thereby, patters of expression. Through its different genres, it helps to unveil the existing currents of thought which it either praises the merits or denounces the anomalies. The present paper addresses the exploration of the binary role of Algerian literature, precisely novels, in picturing acclaim and castigation vis-à-vis cultural modes and dogma. To carry out this investigation, a descriptive-analytical method canvasses three elements, namely the meaning of literature and its place in society, secondly the different uses of praise by novels and the parameters grounding it, and finally the cases of blame and the actors generating it. The findings concede that acclaim occurs in situations where the author feels the need to paint the virtues of a cultural trait of his society, whether it is related to customs, traditions, language, or its heritage of folk stories. The results indicate also that blame occurs generally when the author feels aversion towards certain forms of his culture which he strongly needs to denounce and suppress.
REVISTA LETRAS RARAS, 2018
In postcolonial literature, the Algerian people sought in literary writing a way to resist the forms of subordination to which they were subjected, through the agency of the scars and ruptures caused by the colonialist regime. Some Algerian writers began to write literary texts in French in order to be heard across borders. Fatima Zohra Imalayène was one of them. Best known by the pseudonym Assia Djebar, the Algerian writer became widely known by denouncing the situation of subalternation experienced by Algerian women in her works, as well as the massacre that Algerian people experienced under the impositions of French colonizers. This bibliographic research (GIL, 2008) intends to discuss elements that ratify the literary in-between in the work of Assia Djebar. To do so, we used Bhabha's (2005) concepts in-between and cultural hybridism, as well as the reflections of Deleuze and Guattari (2000) on the perspective of the becoming-revolutionary as our theoretical framework. In the context of diaspora, the author experienced the colonialist regime installed in her native country and sought, in literature, a way of overcoming the ruptures left by colonialism and the patriarchal impositions present in her cultural identity. We can find a type of discomfort regarding her identity in her writings. Because she sees herself as being neither totally Algerian nor totally French, she expresses in her works an anguish that leads her to write "to tell herself" (DJEBAR, 1985, p. 91) and to give voice to her people, especially to Arab women, who remain invisible. This voice is given through her literary writing in French. Thus, Assia Djebar's Franco-Arab in-between literature causes her an ambivalent feeling of freedom and aphasia. This identity breakup manifested itself throughout her work and led her to live among the French and Arab worlds.
2017
In its naming of a Moroccan world literature, the Euro-American concept of World Literature, I argue in this article, reflects questionable paradigms of universal value and literary merit. As a body of theory and a reading strategy, Comparative Literature should be involved in this system of cartographic naming, and it should put to the test World Literature’s ethical and political engagements with emergent and postcolonial literatures. Providing a critical overview of the state of Comparative Literature in Morocco since its inception, I start by defining its current challenges and situating Moroccan literature in world languages at the intersection of three decisive concepts: language, migration and a comparative consciousness. In so doing, I endeavor to set up the foundational premises of a new vision of doing comparative Literature; one which is suitable for properly assessing the rich mosaic of Moroccan world literatures.