Maghrebi Literature

As works of Morocco’s most famed writers are being translated for English readers to discover, Khalid Lyamlahy explores how translators have sought to capture the full range of nuance and diversity in their volumes, offering a new perspective on Moroccan identity and culture.

The full article can be found by following this link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629387.2016.1150183
Below are some excerpts:

The start of the 1980s marks Djebar’s return—after a decade-long absence—both to writing in general and to the French language in particular. If the 1970s stand out in her bibliography as a conspicuous gap in productivity, the circumstances of this gap are well-documented. Djebar has written about this period in her work indicating that she thought that she could write in Arabic. Yet, Arabic written by her would never appear in print. In 1980, she published Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, soon followed by a series of novels, all in French. At first look, it seems as though Assia Djebar eventually forsakes her unfruitful Arabic experiment for a definitive return to publishing in French. However, her Arabic experiment did bear fruit, and her output in that language did see the light of day, only it was on screen, rather than on the page. Those familiar with the Algerian author’s oeuvre know that the 1970s’ gap in her bibliography corresponds to her foray into filmmaking, which yielded two films. These films will also remain her only works that are not in French.
If Djebar did not write in Arabic but made a film instead, then how is filmmaking, in her case, a more suitable medium for Arabic expression than writing?
In order to begin answering this question, I focus on the first of her two films, The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1978), and articulate my analysis of both the film and its circumstances around the interrelated notions of aphasia, diglossia, and what I call arabophonie in Algeria. The last of these notions merits qualification straight away. The term arabophone is generally used in the objective sense of speaking Arabic. However, I intend it to convey the same connotation that francophone carries. Just as postcolonial implications of margin and centre result in francophone signifying not quite French, the Maghreb can be arabophone also in the sense of not quite Arabic. As to diglossia, while commonly addressed in the discipline of linguistics, and central to studies of Arabic within that field, it is, in this case, also relevant from a literary perspective. Nevertheless, it is necessary to start by considering the role of Nouba in Djebar’s work, and the role of speaking for the main character, or, as it happens, not speaking, which I designate as aphasia. This choice of word is not innovative by any means. Djebar herself used it as part of a chapter title in L’Amour, la fantasia (1985). By asking how is film a better suited medium than writing for Arabic expression in Djebar’s case, what I submit is that aphasia became essential to Djebar’s work specifically in its ties to Arabic, and the language’s position in Algeria at the intersections of French, Tamazight, and a broader Arabic-speaking region.
APHASIA
Nouba is a traditional form of urban music in the Maghreb, with its roots in Arab Spain, which is why it is sometimes also called Andalusian. The word nouba has entered French in its musical sense to mean a loud, carnivalesque revelry. However, it carries another meaning, still prevalent in the original Arabic, signifying ‘turn’ or ‘opportunity’ (as in take a turn, or get an ‘opportunity’ or a ‘chance’). This double meaning is intentional, and the women’s nouba in the title carries both senses of ‘women’s song’ (implying their song in their own voice), and ‘women’s turn’ (implying their turn to speak). The connection between the sense of ‘turn’ and the musical form is based on the trilateral root ن.و.ب, meaning representing (or acting as representative), it is also etymologically related to substitution and deputation or proxy. 
The titular nouba suggests that it is literally their turn to speak after they were overlooked by history, and their voices silenced, which is consistent with Djebar’s role as a historian. However, it is not enough to get a turn to speak, one needs a voice to speak with. In the other sense, of nouba, Lila substitutes the women of the Cherchell area’s voice for her own. With their turn to speak, they give Lila a voice as much as they are given one, and they represent her as much as the film represents them. Nouba is the facto the porte-parole of these women.
DIGLOSSIA
It is important to stress the difference between the two varieties of language that constitute Diglossia. Because these varieties are situational and socially-governed, they can easily be mistaken for tone or register, and diglossia can be misunderstood when the focus is only on the social factors that regulate the situations in which H or L is used. However, the differences between the two can be very pronounced, resulting in what may seem like two different languages, each with its own grammar, lexicon, and phonology. The implications of likening varieties of a language to separate languages can be highly inflammatory and politically laden. My purpose, however, is merely to indicate the apparent difference between H and L Arabic. Most importantly, however, it is essential to keep in mind that speakers of a diglossic language are not necessarily proficient in both varieties. While the L variety is acquired the way any language is acquired, namely through speaking to children, H is achieved through formal education.
This difference in acquisition is crucial. Using H or L is not necessarily a social choice, but a privilege of the literate. The first implications of this privilege for Nouba should be immediately apparent when taking into account the literacy rates of Algeria in the 1970s. According to UNESCO, and based on a 1971 census, the illiteracy rate in Algeria was 73.6% for segments of the population aged fifteen and over, and illiteracy among rural women specifically for that age group was 94.0% (1978, 42). While the literacy of the women in the film is unverifiable, the illiteracy rates among women in rural Algeria at the time were high by any standard. These women, speaking L Arabic only as a result of illiteracy, literally and very tangibly do not have a say in situations where the use of H is required. Consider, for instance, that parliament and political speeches are examples of some of these situations where H is used.
ARABOPHONIE
When taking into account the perceived superiority of certain varieties of Arabic, arabophonie, in this context, is analogous to what the term francophonie connotes, which is precisely not quite French. Arabophone, then, suggests a perceived inferiority in comparison to other varieties of Arabic. To clarify this analogy, I propose to focus on one crucial feature of francophonie, which is that it always entails the significant existence of at least one other language alongside French. Whether it is Wolof or the many other languages of West Africa, a Créole in the Caribbean, English in North America, Dutch or German in Europe. Naturally, the situation in each of these regions is considerably more complex than I am sketching here. However, the consistent feature that differentiates France from francophone countries or regions, is that in France only French is imagined to exist, regardless of the factual existence of other languages. In contrast, when French-speaking societies are francophone rather than French, the existence—officially acknowledged or not—of some other idiom is essential.
Similarly, arabophonie is demarcated by the apparent presence of one or more other languages in the region or society. It is the appearance of a presence of another language that is the significant feature here, rather than its actual presence. Defining Arabophonie as the fact of speaking Arabic in a bi- or multilingual context acknowledges the alleged inferiority of certain varieties of Arabic based on the belief that the presence of other languages in the region is corruptive, whether this belief and the hierarchy that it implies are adhered to or not. As such, it is different from a rivalry between regions (each claiming their variety of Spoken Arabic being closer to Fussha for example), but acknowledges without necessarily condoning the dynamic between an Arabic centre and a periphery, and the ensuing discrimination against, and/or paternalist attitudes towards, literary and cultural production in certain varieties of Arabic over others. In this sense, when one does not adhere to the language attitude that arabophonie describes, it remains possible to condemn and reject its hierarchical implications, or denounce the marginalization, silencing, or snubbing of the other languages that make it arabophone rather than Arabic.
Algeria is arabophone in that at least one other language is perceived to exist alongside Arabic. This is a fundamental difference between the Maghreb and other Arabic-speaking regions. In the Maghreb, the presence of French is obvious. In fact, often what defines the Maghreb as a region, is precisely that it is the three former French colonies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. This makes it francophone, but, consequently, arabophone also. However, if The Maghreb is obviously arabophone given the existence of French as a result of colonialism, Tamazight (the Amazigh language also known as Berber) compounds the complexity of the diglossic situation in Algeria, and plays an even more important role in making the region arabophone rather than strictly Arabic. Although the women of the Cherchell area speak in Dardja with Lila, they are also Amazigh, making Dardja presumably their second language, and Tamazight their first.

La sexualité queer au Maghreb à travers la littérature La sexualité queer demeure un sujet indicible et tabou dans les sociétés arabes. Ce livre met en conversation les récits de plusieurs romanciers d'origine maghrébine qui ont osé rompre l'intolérable silence à propos de l'homosexualité. Les romans des écrivains comme Rachid O., Abdellah Taïa, Eyet-Chékib Djaziri, Nina Bouraoui et Hicham Tahir sont synchrones avec l'intérêt croissant pour de divers aspects des sexualités « marginales » au Maghreb. Ce livre propose une déconstruction du personnage de l'homosexuel qui est à la fois contentieux et également le locus de nombreux discours concernant la remise en cause du statu quo et le dévoilement de l'indicible. La construction et la représentation littéraire de la sexualité « marginale » jouent certes un rôle central dans la déstabilisation des conceptions simplistes de la politique identitaire tout en mettant en cause les systèmes de valeurs qui sont à la base des désignations des identités et des orientations sexuelles.

Dans quel contexte ont été écrits les romans de Djaout et comment son assassinat a orienté les lectures? Une série d'entretiens inédits avec des écrivains, journalistes et critiques nous renseignent sur la réception et la postérité de cette oeuvre liée à son contexte mais le dépassant aussi par plus d'un aspect...

Le Wāsiṭat al-sulūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk est un miroir des princes rédigé au VIIIe/XIVe siècle par le souverain zayyānide de Tlemcen, Abū Ḥammū Mūsā II (m. 791/1389). À l’instar de nombreux miroirs des princes tardifs composés au Maghreb, cet ouvrage n’a pas suscité l’intérêt de nombreux chercheurs et aucune étude approfondie ne lui a été consacrée. Ce travail de recherche propose donc d’en établir une édition critique et d’en faire l’analyse. Il s’agit de s’interroger sur les spécificités de ce miroir des princes, d’une part, en analysant le discours théorique sur le bon gouvernement à la lumière du contexte particulier dans lequel ce livre a été rédigé et en le confrontant à l’expérience politique propre à son auteur et, d’autre part, en le comparant aux ouvrages qui en constituent les principales sources. Cette étude vise également à analyser la terminologie employée dans le Wāsiṭat al-sulūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk afin de mieux appréhender certains concepts fréquemment employés dans les miroirs des princes, tels ceux de siyāsa, de tadbīr, de ḥazm ou encore de ẖāṣṣa, et de déterminer l’emploi particulier qui en est fait dans l’ouvrage. Enfin, le récit des événements dans lequel l’auteur se met lui-même en scène est analysé et comparé au récit des mêmes événements relayé par ses contemporains afin de mettre en lumière les stratégies d’écriture mises en œuvre dans l’ouvrage et d’établir les différentes fonctions de ce miroir des princes qui ne peut se réduire à une simple compilation de conseils destinés au prince héritier.

Theory and Practice of Government: Abū Ḥammū Mūsā l-Zayyānī’s (d. 791/1389) Mirror for Princes. Critical Edition and Analysis of Wāsiṭat al-sulūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk.
Wāsiṭat al-sulūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk is a Mirror for Princes written in the 8th/14th century by the Zayyānid ruler of Tlemcen, Abū Ḥammū Mūsā II (d. 791/1389). Similarly to many later Mirrors for Princes composed in the Maghreb, this book did not attract the interest of many researchers and no comprehensive study was made of it. This research work proposes to establish a critical edition of it and to analyze it. The aim is to consider the specificities of this Mirror for Princes, on the one hand, by analyzing the theoretical discourse on good government in the light of the particular context in which this book was written and by comparing it with the political experience of its author and, on the other hand, by comparing it with the works constituting its principal sources. This study also aims to analyze the terminology used in the Wāsiṭat al-sulūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk to better understand certain concepts frequently used in the Mirrors for Princes, such as those of siyāsa, tadbīr, ḥazm and ẖāṣṣa, and to determine the particular use that is made of them in the work. Finally, the narrative of events which the author himself develops as one of the protagonists is analyzed and compared to the story of the same events relayed by his contemporaries in order to highlight the writing strategies implemented in the book and to establish the different functions of this Mirror for Princes which is far more than a simple compilation of advice intended for the Crown Prince.

Sexuality and spirituality constitute a superstructure on which Ben Jelloun’s plots are mostly founded. Reading his writing as gay and missiological discourse permits us to understand that Ben Jelloun’s “multiple” transgressions enable him to challenge Eurocentric and traditional epistemologies, thereby deconstructing sexuality and spirituality in his Islamic society. Focusing on the Moroccan Diaspora and prospective migrants, it can be said that Ben Jelloun’s homosexuality and spirituality are not attitudinal, but commodified and commoditised, thereby leading to sexual and spiritual ambivalence of diasporic consciousness.

How do we pass between language worlds? With ease and laughter or trauma and regret? With hope or despair? What lessons does such passage teach? In 1950 when the Muslim-Berber, Tamazight-speaking, and French-writing author Mouloud Feraoun published The Poor Man's Son, his classic fictionalized account of growing up in the rugged hills of colonial Algeria, such passage meant survival. The way out of rural poverty and forced emigration to French factories was through the acquisition of written French. But as his novel shows both thematically and structurally, translating the self or the world in which the self is born occurs within a particular historical and political landscape. What fails to become transparent in translation narratives is sometimes more important than what makes it across intact.

L’iconographie est un instrument essentiel de l’identité féminine de Nora, la protagoniste du roman de Malika Mokeddem, "N’zid." Au lieu de recourir à l’écriture pour recouvrer ses origines, son passé et son histoire, Nora dessine et retrouve ainsi
un lien privilégié entre l’art de la calligraphie, la culture maghrébine et l’expérience des femmes en Algérie. Les références à la méduse constituent une autre piste pour explorer une voie identitaire: Malika Mokeddem offre ainsi à Nora et aux Algériennes en général, souvent traitées de folles et de “sorcièresd’hommes”, l’image réconfortante et optimiste de la m/Méduse, belle, nomade et libre.

an introductory essay, which suggest a number of ways to look at the literatures of North Africa, including a multivectorial approach to literary history (the movement of literature between the Maghreb and the Egypt; the colonial factors and local literary traditions) and the multilingual dimension of the maghreb.

“Marginal” sexualities continue to be veiled by a cloud of silence and taboo in the Arab-Muslim societies. This study puts into conversation literary narratives by four writers of Maghrebian descent who have dared to break the intolerably irksome silence surrounding homosexuality. The novels of Rachid O., Abdellah Taïa, Eyet-Chékib Djaziri and Ilmann Bel are synchronous with the growing interest in the potential common points between literary production and queer sexualities in the Maghreb (and indeed other Arab/Muslim regions). Drawing on hermeneutic perspectives as well as diverse readings in gender and queer studies, this literary analysis deconstructs the problematic figure of the homosexual which is at once contentious as well as the locus of manifold discourses that are concerned with questioning the status quo whilst unveiling the unutterable. The literary construction and representation of “marginal” sexuality certainly plays a pivotal role in destabilising and challenging the simplistic conceptions of identity and value systems that underlie the designations of “correct and incorrect” sexual orientations and identities. Elaborating a comprehensive interpretative paradigm, this study attempts to fill the yawning gap in scholarship on the relationship between francophone literary production from the Maghreb and homosexuality. Adopting a tri-sequential approach, the study begins with an explanatory phase which contextualises queer sexuality as well as queer literary studies in the Maghreb and in France. An encounter phase follows offering a hermeneutic reading of the selected novels of the four writers, concentrating particularly on the definition, characterisation and general tonality of the literary works. The ultimate stage, the interpretive/theorisation phase, encompasses a re-reading of primary and secondary texts alongside each other so as to construct an original appraisal of the novels as well as develop a theoretically sound consideration of the construction of “marginal” sexualities in the selected novels. In addition to the above-enumerated tri-sequential approach, the argumentative flow of the study equally follows a three-pronged progression: production-text-reception. The first phase scrutinises the sociocultural, political and historical context in which the literary texts under consideration are created. The “text” phase analyses the novels in question in order to elaborate a theorisation of the construction and representation of “marginal” sexuality in the autofictional works of the aforementioned writers. The “reception” phase goes beyond the purely textual and delves into the possible impact of these literary texts on the everyday world of Arab-Muslim societies, in France as in the Maghreb.

Regards sur la littérature postcoloniale nous révèlent une manifestation de ses nouvelles tendances dans la littérature africaine qui tente de répondre au Centre impérial et de bouleverser l‟hégémonie littéraire eurocentrique. Notre étude nous conduit à percevoir les écrivains postcoloniaux de l‟Afrique francophone comme transgresseurs qui s‟approprient et transgressent les canons eurocentriques littéraires, évoquant la mode du réalisme magique et linguistique pour cerner toutes les réalités périphériques. De Bildungsroman postcolonial et du texte autoethnographique, ces écrivains déconstruisent le paradigme européen pour s‟ouvrir une nouvelle perspective identitaire qui rejette l‟exotisme et l‟indigénisme, tout en appropriant l‟idiome européen pour mettre au défi les grands récits de la représentation eurocentrique à l‟égard de l‟Afrique.

The BA English Literature Thesis awarded 1st Class Honours from Brunel University London commences with an analysis of the term ‘harem’, the quintessential Orientalist signifier for Maghrebian women, eventually progressing to highlight the rising significance of this controlled female space via the form of neo-colonial patriarchies, which ordains the polemical question of locating modernity for Maghrebian women. A modernity further conflated by a paradigm of language, nationality and the proliferating influence of the Salafiyya movement, whose origins being Egypt, was birthed within the Maghreb.

Maïssa Bey’s novels often hold confusing and sad closures that leave
the reader with a sense of puzzlement and bitterness. As the stories in Au commencement était la mer... and Hizya unfold, the reader becomes the witness of the life of young women who go through a variety of experiences and hardships that leave little room for personal fulfillment. The falling apart environment, which is also reflected in the setting’s description, becomes to a large extent a reflection of the protagonists’ inner self. The author’s aesthetic choices further reinforce this dominating atmosphere. The present paper contends that the sense of bitterness and collapse, the heroines’ turmoil, the setting’s description, and the elaborated scripture where typography, division, and structure interplay, contribute in creating what I would like to call a ‘writing of erosion’; a writing that voices the daily tragedies of marginalized young generations with stifled voices and crushed dreams.

This paper analyzes the use of Qur'anic rhetoric and imagery in al-Tahir Wattar's 1974 novel al-Zilzal (The Earthquake). More specifically, it emphasizes Watṭạ̄r’s employment of Qur'anic eschatology to blur the boundary between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ forms of discourse in the construction of Algerian nationalist discourse. The paper investigates al-Zilzal’s critical engagement with the rhetoric of Arabism and Islamism in post-revolutionary state politics, highlighting the novel’s hybrid genre, its conscious manipulation of narrative time and space, as well as its incorporation of various registers of the Arabic language. Through the mobilization of eschatological notions of struggle, death and sacrifice, al-Zilzal unsettles a number of authorized narratives on Algerian national identity, language and literature.

Although homosexuality is palpably present in Arab-Muslim societies of the Maghreb, there is nonetheless intolerance of their open discussion. Even on a purely discursive level, taboo remains an insurmountable hurdle. The present study attempts to contribute to growing debate and interest in various aspects
and potential common points between literary production and ‘marginal’ sexuality in Francophone North Africa. This article problematizes homosexuality in Arab-Muslim societies before examining its depiction in the autofictional novels of two openly gay Moroccan writers: Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa. Of
particular interest in this literary analysis is the manner in which the protagonists of the two novelists grapple in reconciling their (homo)sexuality and their religious beliefs. This article concludes by scrutinizing the transgressiveness of these pioneering contemporary novels in their candid and open representation
homosexuality.

A deep critical reception of Khatibi's notion of Bilingualism in Morocco and adjacent countries [ the Maghrebi World ]. The paper is a new way of seeing Bilingualism in accordance with Modern post-colonial views of language, culture and identity.

A pioneering wave of openly gay Maghrebian novelists broaching non-normative sexuality has emerged in the last two decades. Writers such as Rachid O., Abdellah Taïa and Eyet-Chékib Djaziri have penned autofictional novels depicting the struggles of assuming an exclusively “gay” identity in the Arab-Muslim societies of the Maghreb. Autofiction presents itself as an important conceptual tool that allows these writers to deal with issues concerning their so-called deviant sexuality. Autofiction through its breaking of boundaries between the real and the imagined, between the public and the private, facilitates a process of coming out as well as making public what is deemed taboo and unspeakable. This article also contends that autofiction, as an unstable genre, is employed by these writers to embody the fluidity and insuperable difficulty of putting into perspective phenomena such as sexual and gender identities.

ABSTRACT  This article reflects on the notion of criss-crossing envisioned as multi-directional passage in the Mediterranean contact zone. I trace Tahar Bekri's engagement with the two tropes of exile and wandering in Le Chant du roi errant and Les Chapelets d’attache. Estranged from a single linguistic or national logic, Bekri's poems perform multiple literary and aesthetic crossings between the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean. I examine how Bekri's poetry reinvents mobility as a productive concept lying at the source of new forms of cross-cultural contact. I conclude that Bekri's literary cosmopolitanism creates an imaginative site of belonging from which communal solidarity is enacted in a transnational framework.

    Criss-Crossing,
    Exile,
    Wandering,
    Bekri,
    Poetry,
    Cosmopolitanism

This article examines Abdelwahab Meddeb’s engagement with Sufism across his literary and critical writings.  It theorizes Sufi po/ethics as the aesthetic dimensions of Sufism, in which spiritual experience is simultaneously enacted and expressed through conceptual language and symbolization.  Mobilizing Syrian critic Adunis’ study on the intersection between Surrealism and Sufism, the article analyzes Meddeb’s 1979 novel Talismano.  It argues that the work functions as a Sufi surrealist text, rather than a postmodern novel par excellence as is often argued.  The essay concludes that Talismano invites hermeneutical practices in dialogue with Sufism as an ethical-aesthetic tradition.

Cet article examine l'engagement d'Abdelwahab Meddeb avec le soufisme dans ses écrits littéraires et critiques.  Il théorise la po/éthique sufi comme les dimensions esthétiques du soufisme, dans lequel l'expérience spirituelle est simultanément réalisée et exprimée par le langage conceptuel et la symbolisation.  Mobilisant l'étude du critique syrien Adunis sur l'intersection entre le surréalisme et le soufisme, l'article analyse le roman de Talismano écrit par Meddeb en 1979.  Il propose que le roman fonctionne comme un texte surréaliste sufi, plutôt que d'un roman post-moderne par excellence.  L'essai conclut que Talismano invite des pratiques hermétiques en dialogue avec le soufisme en tant que tradition éthique-esthétique.

One of Morocco's most important novels is also a window into the unaddressed tension between Casablanca's center and its marginal bidonvilles. The city's public spaces and streets remain prescribed with an ordering of belonging and not belonging. Zafzaf's novel continues to resonate as a text that makes Casablanca's bidonvilles and their relation to the city center legible, providing crucial insight into the complexity of the city's lived realities.

This article examines the representation of masculinity in the literary works of the Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa. Although masculinity in Maghrebian literary imaginations remains an understudied field of academic inquiry, this article argues that there is a need to understand how masculinity is understood and constructed in this region of Africa. Through an analysis of Taïa's novels, it contends that non-normative sexuality is important in that it allows for a reconceptualisation of masculinity. Taïa's novels reveal that masculinity is a fluid sociocultural phenomenon whose constitution requires a rethinking and unthinking of how genders are perceived and relate to each other. Drawing on diverse readings in gender and queer studies, the overarching argument in this article is that masculinity should be more than just the mechanical performance of what Butler calls a "stylised repetition of social acts" (1990: 4). This article shows the manner in which the trans-Mediterranean displacement of Taïa's protagonist further complicates how masculinity is considered.

The article refers to my book about: 1-Alexandra David Nèel (1869-1968), French explorer and writer who walked through unknown Himalayan territories to reach Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, forbidden to Europeans during WWI. Buddhist, she lived in caves with hermits. Her heroic feat is celebrated as the big polar explorations.2- Lou Andreas Salomé (1861-1937), Russian philosopher. Her great love story with poet Rainer María Rilke, her friendship with Nietzsche before he went crazy and with Sigmund Freud when psychoanalysis was being born, profession she held until her death. She wrote with an independent female perspective, ahead of her time. 3-Tina Modotti (1846-1942) Italian photographer exiled from her country and others, made part of the Mexican Vanguardismo. She sacrificed her artistic talent to militate in Stalinism. Her vicissitudes in the Spanish Civil War and WWII. Her exceptional photographs remain in books and museums. 4-Isabel Eberhardt (1877-1904) Swiss poet and writer, portrayed the lives of the natives in the Saharian desert. She was a war chronicler during the French colonization in the Maghreb. Finally other female writers who left their mark on the twentieth century are mentioned.

Ma volonté dans cet hommage à Mohammed Dib était, dans la lignée du travail de génétique et de critique sur les avant-textes que mène depuis 3 ou 4 ans le groupe "Manuscrit francophone" de l'ITEM-CNRS et de l'IRIEC-UPV, de m'intéresser aux brouillons de certaines oeuvres comme la trilogie Algérie ou Qui se souvient de la mer, ainsi qu'à la correspondance de Dib relative à ses débuts littéraires. Les conditions d'organisation un peu précipitées de cette journée ainsi que le contexte dans lequel elle se déroule, en pleine rentrée universitaire, ne m'ont permis de le faire qu'à un niveau élémentaire, à partir de quelques éléments de correspondance inédite : Dib-Sénac, Dib-Roblès, Dib-Millecam ou Dib-Monnoyer, sur une dizaine d'années, du milieu des années 40 à l'éclatement de la guerre d'Algérie, en me situant délibérément du côté du contexte et de la réception. Je remercie les ayant-droits qui m'ont fourni ces lettres à partir desquelles je vais tâcher de cerner un peu plus le contour des amitiés algériennes de Mohammed Dib et, au-delà, sa participation à l'émergence d'une littérature maghrébine de langue française.

This paper sets out to examine the social implications and functions of the contemporary body of gay Moroccan literature against Maria Pia Lara's readings of the creation and reception of literary works in the public sphere. Through a (re)reading of novels by Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa, it is argued that these novels offer a privileged space that is not simply a metalinguistic and autonomous edifice, but also a means through which individual, societal and cultural self-assessment and comprehension can be affected in the domain of quotidian life. Ultimately, and possibly more importantly, this paper asserts that gay literary narratives reveal the heterogeneity of lived experiences, thereby producing innovative ways of considering sexuality which cannot be simply overlooked or invalidated. These narratives thus propose an alternative public-sphere which challenges hegemonic Moroccan norms and value systems.

Through a comparative study of Muḥammad Shukrī (Choukri) and Jean Genet, this article situates Shukrī as a “world writer” who utilizes a poetics of inversion to call socially constituted discourses of authority into question. Like Genet, this aesthetic strategy allows him to uncover the systemic and symbolic forms of violence endemic in his society. Beyond their autobiographical narratives, Shukrī’s only published play, al-Saʻādah (Happiness), is interpreted next to Genet’s philosophy of theater to illustrate the way in which their dramatic texts work to confront their respective audiences with their own complicity in the perpetuation of unjust social hierarchies.

Pour le Centenaire de la naissance de Mohammed Dib, le journal "Algérie Cultures" prépare un dossier en hommage à l'écrivain et à son oeuvre.
Je vous propose mon dernier entretien avec Charles Bonn, Professeur émérite à Lyon 2, critique littéraire.