Violent Legacies: Family and Nation in post 1990s AlgerianLiterature Open Access

Abstract

Abstract Violent Legacies: Family and Nation in post 1990s Algerian Literature By Lucienne Knight

Until recently, historical or theoretical perspectives have dominated discussions of violence in the Algerian context. The aim of this analysis is to build on previously completed studies to offer a new perspective. Specifically, this examination demonstrates how literary texts, written in both French and Arabic, give unique insight into both the process of torture and the physical and psychological traces it leaves behind. This study focuses predominantly on contemporary texts of the 1990s to explore how authors understand and represent the violence associated with the War of Independence (1954-1962) retrospectively through the lens of the later civil war violence.

It is within the framework of relationships, historical, familial and national, that this analysis operates. For example, discussions of the War of Independence in Assia Djebar's La Femme sans sépulture and Ahlam Mostaghanemi's Memory in the Flesh , represent sexual torture associated with this earlier war period as a cause of both masculine and feminine sterility which impeded the birth of the Algerian nation. In addition to examining issues associated with national generation, this analysis studies one particular group, harkis or Algerians associated with the French during the war, who have traditionally been excluded from the Algerian ‘family'. Narratives such as Leïla Sebbar's La Seine était rouge and Yasmina Khadra's La Part du mort demonstrate not only how this community has been denied a national identity but also how literary representations of this group are strongly associated with particular political ideologies. In conjunction to examining issues related to the War of Independence, this study also focuses on representations of the more recent civil war such as Yasmina Salah's Glass Nation. More specifically this study analyzes how narratives represent how violence has shaped familial and national structures, causing distorted familial bonds and political chaos in contemporary Algerian society. As this analysis argues, in light of the deformation of genealogical or social structures, violence unites the contemporary Algerian nation and offers the population a way to understand its past and present.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction

1 Chapter One 12 Tortured Traces: Explorations of the Algerian body Chapter Two 89 La part du tort: Harkis and the non-birth of a nation Chapter Three 161 Une généalogie du sang: representations of the post-colonial Algerian family Conclusion 220 Bibliography 224 1

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	French
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Middle Eastern Literature, Modern
Keyword	Algerian Civil War Torture Harkis Algerian War of Independence
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Loichot, Valerie, Emory University
Committee Members	Marder, Elissa, Emory University Nouvet, Claire, Emory University Brustad, Kristen, University of Texas - Austin

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