Thesis (M.A. (Pan-African Literatures)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Ce mémoire s'intéresse à la communication amoureuse au sein des couples interculturels dans Les nuits de Strasbourg d'Assia Djebar. Nous visons à montrer que la communication se divise en deux volets. Elle s'illustre de manière négative et malaisée, ou positive et poétique. Dans un premier temps, notre étude se penche sur les sources des problèmes communicationnels dans les relations amoureuses à travers l'analyse de l'énonciation des discours des narrateurs et des personnages, et celle des rapports de pouvoir entre l'homme et la femme dans le couple. Dans un deuxième temps, la communication se révèle renouvelée par un changement d'approche de la part des personnages. Cette fois-ci, ils développent des échanges où règne la poéticité. En effet, les couples façonnent une communication poétique en laissant interagir entre eux les silences, les corps, les langages et les langues dans le but de s'ouvrir et de s'unir à l'autre dans l'amour.

The present study elaborates a poetics of cross-cultural writing. Its primary theoretical reference is the ‘cross-cultural poetics’ (poétique de la relation) of Edouard Glissant: a set of poetic tropes and narrative structural strategies that he identifies in the mixed cultural setting of the Caribbean, in Le Discours antillais. My thesis argues that if these poetic strategies are indeed a response to specific social, cultural and political situations, then if analogous situations were considered elsewhere, we might expect an analogous poetics to arise. Taking North Africa as an example context, and specifically the novels of the Algerians Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Mohammed Dib, and the Sudanese Tayeb Salih, I argue that these writers’ complex poetic strategies engage with – indeed, help to articulate – analogous socio-political concerns arising in their homelands. The formal poetical analysis of these authors is based on several key thematic tropes and structural strategies that Glissant advocates in his cross-cultural poetics. My five chapters consider roots and origins, living landscapes, silence and screams, literary opacity, and structural polyphony. They also develop a new critical vocabulary to describe how Glissant’s poetical strategies might take form at a close textual level; my analysis reveals a complex, and reciprocal, relationship between poetic expression and socio-political context. Glissant’s work is therefore shown to be more broadly relevant, but the founding tenets of his theory are also interrogated and questioned; the comparison with a North African setting entails a (re)assessment of the underlying conceptions of Glissant’s poetics – of the implicit logic by which he connects poetic form to social, cultural and political factors. These factors, for Glissant, also display a clear overlap with the (post)colonial; in studying cross-culturality, the postcolonial, and the poetics engendered by their overlapping, my thesis presents a specific critical focus for the postcolonial literary field.

The object of this thesis is to study the attempts made by writers and filmmakers in two very different socio-cultural contexts to depict and elucidate the experience of political violence, particularly torture, in the periods 1954-1962 and 1976-1983. I seek to apply the hypotheses of Anglo-American and French theorists with an interest in historical representation, as well as trauma, to both 'realist' and experimental accounts of the widespread oppression that occurred during the Algerian war of independence and later during the so-called 'Dirty War' in Argentina. The texts analysed in detail include novels and short stories by Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Julio Cortázar and Luisa Valenzuela; the films I examine most closely are the Algerian-Italian 'docudrama' La Bataille d'Alger and the Argentine melodrama La historia oficial. However, the thesis also addresses other non-factual portrayals of brutality, such as the Nouvelle Vague's meditations on decolonization, and autobiographical writings, such as military memoirs and survivors' testimony, as a means of elaborating more fully on the issues at stake in the works cited above. It explores the difficulty - and the possibility - of giving voice to histories that simultaneously resist and demand articulation, and ultimately, of reconstituting the fragmented or 'disappeared' subject through narrative: of using fiction to summon the 'ghosts' of the past.

L'écriture des femmes a évolué d'une manière spectaculaire depuis le début du 20ème siècle. La création féminine a connu un essor remarquable. Ecrivaines occidentales et orientales, en position de défense ont pris une place prépondérante dans la littérature de leur temps. Leurs écrits ont tellement de points communs et si peu de divergences qu'il est possible d'en conclure qu'elles ont donné naissance à une expression littéraire nouvelle qui se distingue de l'écriture masculine. Le féminin émerge de la quête de soi et laisse apparaître des aspirations inédites. Les femmes s'expriment sous des formes créatrices et esthétiques spécifiques. Leur littérature révèle une omniprésence du corps et de la sexualité en lien étroit avec la société. Duras, Aleramo, Djebar et Mernissi, romancières brillantes ont reçu prix et honneurs venus du monde entier. Les critiques ont enfin remarqué leur talent d'auteure, poète, dramaturge alors que la société ne reconnaissait depuis longtemps que l'écriture masculine. L'écriture féminine ne cesse de gagner du terrain et s'impose désormais dans le milieu littéraire. Ces excellentes romancières se permettent d'aborder leur intimité et celle de leurs semblables. La plupart d'entre elles ont publié à l'âge de la maturité. Leurs biographies respectives montrent le lien qui les unit. Le sentiment d'injustice est le socle de leurs récits, injustice à l'égard du colonisé, à l égard de la femme dans le couple, et de la femme en général. Le fait féminin influence leur écriture qui exprime les malaises sociaux, l'isolement, la solitude, la violence et en imprègne le système scriptuel. L'étude de cette écriture est inséparable du contexte social et historique des textes, personnages et thèmes. Un rapprochement des œuvres de ces romancières est non seulement plausible mais indispensable pour comprendre l'essor de la littérature féminine. Au-delà de la langue, ces auteures, de pays, cultures et générations différents ont pris le chemin de l'écriture autobiographique, amorçant les traits distinctifs de l'écriture féminine. Elles ont en commun le choix essentiel de personnages féminins dont certains iront jusqu'au suicide pour échapper à l'aliénation. Il s'agit de mettre en exergue la quête identitaire des femmes dans une société donnée. Cette thèse centre son étude sur 4 romans : Una Donna, L'Amant de la Chine du Nord, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, et Dreams of Trespass. L'être- femme est représenté dans un rapport à la violence masculine mais aussi à sa propre violence sur arrière-plan d'aliénation sociale et culturelle.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

This thesis seeks to discuss the ways in which canonical Francophone Algerian authors, writing in the late-colonial period (1945 - 1962), namely Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri and Assia Djebar, approached the representation of Algerian women through literature. The thesis, divided into five chapters, each focusing on the late-colonial oeuvre of one writer, initially makes use of Bourdieusian conceptions relating to a gendered "dissymétrie fondementale" and concomitant Spivakian notions of representation, to argue that a masculine domination of public fields of representation contributed to, if not ensured, a post-colonial marginalization of women and a reduction of their public role. However, it is the principal argument of this thesis that the canonical writers of the period, who were mostly male, both textually acknowledge their inability to articulate the experiences and subjectivity of the feminine Other, to represent women, and deploy a remarkable variety of formal and conceptual innovations in an attempt to tentatively produce evocations of Algerian femininity that seek to upset or highlight the structural imbalance of masculine symbolic hegemony in literary and socio-political milieux. Though this thesis does not shy from investigating those aspects of its corpus that produce ideologically conditioned masculinist representations, it chiefly seeks to articulate a shared reluctance concerning representativity and an omnipresent literary subversion of a masculine subject pole. It deploys formal narrative analysis, Lacanian psychoanalytical frameworks and a conceptualisation of "pessimistic" form to achieve these ends and to argue that the texts of its corpus discreetly militate for a communal feminine self-representation to be inaugurated, before outlining in its conclusion a post-colonial Algerian feminine literary tradition, in particular contemporary symbolic conduits such as la bande dessinée that might serve as effective motors for progression in gender relations.

Using selected stories by two North African women writers, Alifa Rifaat of Egypt and Assia Djebar of Algeria, this study, entitled ‘Islamic culture and the question of women’s human rights in North Africa: a study of short stories by Assia Djebar and Alifa Rifaat’, analyzes the creative representation of contemporary Muslim society and its treatment of women. The continued marginalization of women in Muslim societies has led to the rise of feminist movements in North Africa and the Middle East. Muslim women, like their Christian counterparts, have made a most remarkable appearance on the African literary scene by producing literature that interrogates a system in which women are denied the rights to life, equality and freedom, which are the inalienable rights of all Islamic adherents. Thus, North African women’s writing reveals a disparity between Islamic culture, which is based on the Qur’an and upholds equal rights for all believers, and Muslim culture, which denies women access to full rights. The writings of Alifa Rifaat and Assia Djebar espouse the need for a transformation of Muslim culture such that the practices of Muslims effectively harmonize with the teachings of the Qur’an. The stories selected for analysis illustrate that while Rifaat uses the conservatist approach or womanist thrust in her criticism of Muslim culture, Djebar adopts a more radical approach that is ultimately feminist. Nevertheless, both writers address similar issues affecting women in Muslim societies, such as forced or arranged marriages and the suppression of female sexuality. The first chapter situates the argument within gender discourse and the human rights framework, providing a critical appraisal of women in Islam from pre-Islamic times to modern days. To contextualize the literary scene, the second chapter positions Muslim women’s writing within the broad corpus of African feminisms, using the works of Nawal el-Saadawi, Mariama Bâ and Zaynab Alkali to chart the many challenges facing Muslim women today. Chapters Three and Four focus on the selected literature of the chosen writers, Alifa Rifaat and Assia Djebar, respectively, showing how each writer uses her art as an instrument to combat social injustices against women. The concluding chapter establishes the points of convergence and divergence between Rifaat and Djebar and, ultimately, draws attention to the dire need for all Muslims to respect the human rights of women. This study, therefore, blends literary interpretation with sociological findings to assess the extent of the failure of Muslims to endorse the principle of equality for all humans irrespective of race, class, or gender. Essentially, it seeks to raise consciousness on women’s rights in Islam. / Dissertation (MA (Pan African Literatures))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / English / MA / unrestricted

No description available.

No description available.