Diss.--Leipzig, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 204-221. Notes bibliogr.

Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina retells the stories of the women who appear on the margins of the earliest sources of Islamic history from a contemporary Muslim feminist’s perspective. Djebar uses formal elements of early Islamic historiography and relies upon classical Sunni sources. These techniques place her novel in conversation with classical Islamic tradition and bring legitimacy to her subversive project which aims to shift the boundaries of that canon. Though crafted in relation to classical sources, Djebar’s critique of gender identity is also addressed to the discourses and institutions of Islamic authority that evolved over the centuries and that continue to delineate narrow roles for women, up to and including contemporary regimes. In chapter one I argue that by grounding her critique of circulating discourses on Muslim women within a project that appropriates canonical Sunni historiography, Djebar refuses the disjunction between feminism and Islam, critiquing normative Islamic discourse on women in contemporary Algeria without framing the conflict in terms of an East/West or a religious/secular binary. Chapter two examines Djebar’s treatment of Fatima in particular. I consider Djebar’s selection of classical sources and compare the earliest canonical Sunni renderings of Fatima and those found in the novel. I argue that the vision of empowered women in the first Muslim community posited in Far from Madina destabilizes the ideal of gender identity constructed in early Islamic historiography. Far from Madina focuses on the moment after the death of Muhammad when Muslims were left to interpret their scripture and recall their Prophet’s words and deeds. Djebar constructs the novel around the question of what role Muslim women would play in this process, a move which foregrounds her own choice to write the novel and embrace her role as witness and transmitter of the stories of these early women. Chapter three examines the reflexive character of Far from Madina and considers how Djebar’s narrative strategies and hermeneutical approach facilitate the articulation of identity through difference. I argue that the narrative is Djebar’s performance of contemporary Muslim identity and an example of “lived Islam.” / text

Zugl.: Mainz, Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2005

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 Jun 1

Ce mémoire est consacré au roman djebarien Ombre sultane, qui raconte l’histoire de deux femmes : Isma et sa coépouse Hajila, entre lesquelles se développe une sorte de sororité. À partir de la thématique de la sororité le mémoire cherche à analyser l’interaction du contenu et des trois aspects de la forme : la voix narrative, la focalisation et le temps narratif ; pour réaliser l’analyse nous utilisons une méthode narratologique, celle de Gérard Genette.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

No description available.

This thesis problematizes the recent transdisciplinary turn to melancholia by grounding the concept within the literature of three contemporary Algerian authors: Assia Djebar, Yasmina Khadra, and Boualem Sansal. If Freud figured melancholia as a pathological response to loss, much recent scholarship has reconceptualized it as an ethico-political model of remembrance that safeguards the memory of the lost or marginalized other. Yet the recent and ubiquitous depathologization of melancholia is only possible insofar as theorists overlook its more insidious elements. By analyzing how melancholia emerges within the postcolonial novels of Djebar, Khadra, and Sansal, this thesis reveals how melancholia in fact undermines an ethico-politics of remembrance, further displacing those lost others that theorists of melancholia would recuperate. Divided into two sections, the first part of the thesis thus challenges the ethico-political viability of melancholia as a mnemonic model. Through close readings of the texts, the first four chapters reveal postcolonial melancholia in Algeria to be imbricated in amnesia, immobility, repetition, victimhood, apolitical retrospection, and the unethical appropriation of the lost object. Part II investigates how the authors imagine different models of remembrance that move beyond the limits of the mourning and melancholia dyad. If melancholia has been depathologized, it nonetheless remains ensnared within a binary system in which the subject either forgets (mourns) or engages in a putative act of hyper-remembrance (melancholia). Building upon the recent theory of Dominick LaCapra, Mireille Rosello, and Judith Butler, the final two chapters explore the critical potential of ‘working upon’ the past. As an on-going and conscious model of remembrance, ‘working upon’ actively resists the closure inherent to mourning but it also circumvents the melancholic (re)appropriation of the past and its lost others. Ultimately, then, this thesis signals the need for emergent models of memorialization that move beyond the restrictions of the Freudian binary of mourning and melancholia.

Pourquoi le passé colonial français lointain (esclavagisme aux Antilles entre XVe et XIXe siècles) ou plus récent (Algérie française de 1830 à 1962 ; colonisation française en Afrique de 1895 à 1958) hante les œuvres d'écrivains francophones en postcolonialisme ? Comment l'irrésolution de tensions historiques façonne les récits de l'Antillaise Maryse Condé (Célanire cou-coupé, La Belle Créole) et de l'Algérienne Assia Djebar (Les nuits de Strasbourg, La disparition de la langue française) ? Par l'étude de personnages aux frontières mémorielle, territoriale et identitaire, ces auteurs déroulent les maux de l'histoire à travers le prisme de la mémoire. Les décès, assassinats et tortures, et la pérennité de cette violence à travers les générations soulignent l'irrésolution d'une mémoire coloniale et impérialiste. Avec la question de l'altérité et du regard porté sur la figure de l'autre, cette étude analyse des frictions identitaires : solidarité ethnique et sociale ; cercle vicieux qui lie bourreaux et victimes ; stigmatisation du couple mixte ; transgression des codes sociaux soulignant leur inanité ; communauté LGBTI et propension individuelle à intérioriser des préjugés malgré leur préjudice ; peurs issues de l'indéterminisme de personnages métis. Avec des personnages passeurs de frontières, la marge et le centre, la frontière et l'entre-deux deviennent des espaces d'exploration d'un multiculturalisme illimité. C'est donc une décolonisation des imaginaires dont il est question.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-272).