Polygraphies: Francophone Women Writing Algeria

by Alison Rice

Overview

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Algeria's independence, Polygraphies is significant and timely in its focus on autobiographical writings by seven of the most prominent francophone women writers from Algeria today, including Maïssa Bey, Hélène Cixous, Assia Djebar, and Malika Mokeddem. These authors witnessed both the "before" and "after" of the colonial experience in their land, and their fictional and theoretical texts testify to the lasting impact of this history. From a variety of personal perspectives and backgrounds, each writer addresses linguistic, religious, and racial issues of crucial contemporary importance in Algeria. Alison Rice engages their work from a range of disciplines, striving both to heighten our sensitivity to the plurality inherent in their texts and to move beyond a true/false dichotomy to a wealth of possible truths, all communicated in writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813932934
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	08/30/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	618 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alison Rice, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Literature at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of Time Signatures: Contextualizing Contemporary Francophone Autobiographical Writing from the Maghreb.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction. The "Witness Stand: "Where the Truth Lies 1

Part I The Autobiographical Springboard

1 Le moi à plusieurs reprises: From Confession to Testimony in the Autobiographical Writings of Hélène Cixous and Assia Djebar 27

2 La singularité de l'altérité: Self-Portraiture and the Other in Maïssa Bey 46

Part II Takeoff Points

3 La terre maternelle: Algeria and the Mother in the "Work of Marie Cardinal, Hélène Cixous, and Assia Djebar 61

4 "La célébration d'une terre-mère": Albert Camus and Algeria according to Maïssa Bey and Assia Djebar 86

Part III Embodiments

5 Écrire les maux: Hélène Cixous and "Writing the Body over Time 99

6 Sexualités et sensualités: Corporeal Configurations in the Work of Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar, Malika Mokeddem, and Leïla Sebbar 109

Part IV Reverberations

7 Ruptures intimes: Sentimental Splitting in the Work of Assia Djebar 129

8 Lourds retours: Coming Back to Algeria in Malika Mokeddem's L'Interdite 140

9 Fille de harki: Relating to the Father, Country, and Religion in the Writing of Zahia Rahmani 151

10 Fabulation et imagination: Women, Nation, and Identification in Maïssa Bey's Cette fille-là 164

Conclusion. Mass in A Minor: Putting Algeria on the Map 186

Notes 197

Bibliography 215

Index 227

Editorial Reviews

The connections among texts by these various authors are articulated clearly and persuasively. The book’s elegant analysis of parallels in several of these authors’ autobiographical scenes makes the case for reading Cixous and Djebar together in ways that have not been done before. It also provides an original contribution to the scholarship on less-studied but important authors.

Anne Donadey

Polygraphies is a fascinating study of ‘women writing Algeria,’ and it is innovative in its inclusion of important writers born in Algeria, whether now considered "French" or "Algerian". Bringing these women’s voices together through their use of the autobiographical mode is an inspired move, and the title expresses the range of personal experience, as well as literary form, that is involved. The author is especially gifted in her ability to ground her literary analysis in a wide range of contemporary literary theory. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Mary Jean Green

"The connections among texts by these various authors are articulated clearly and persuasively. The book’s elegant analysis of parallels in several of these authors’ autobiographical scenes makes the case for reading Cixous and Djebar together in ways that have not been done before. It also provides an original contribution to the scholarship on less-studied but important authors. "—Anne Donadey, San Diego State University, author of Recasting Postcolonialism: Women Writing between Worlds

" Polygraphies is a fascinating study of ‘women writing Algeria,’ and it is innovative in its inclusion of important writers born in Algeria, whether now considered "French" or "Algerian". Bringing these women’s voices together through their use of the autobiographical mode is an inspired move, and the title expresses the range of personal experience, as well as literary form, that is involved. The author is especially gifted in her ability to ground her literary analysis in a wide range of contemporary literary theory. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. "—Mary Jean Green, Dartmouth College, author of Women and Narrative Identity: Rewriting the Quebec National Text

From the Publisher