Algerian Imprints : : Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous / / Brigitte Weltman-Aron.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Weltman-Aron, Brigitte,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.)

Born and raised in French Algeria, Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous represent in their literary works signs of conflict and enmity, drawing on discordant histories so as to reappraise the political on the very basis of dissensus.In a rare comparison of these authors' writings, Algerian Imprints shows how Cixous and Djebar consistently reclaim for ethical and political purposes the demarcations and dislocations emphasized in their fictions. Their works affirm the chance for thinking afforded by marginalization and exclusion and delineate political ways of preserving a space for difference informed by expropriation and nonbelonging. Cixous's inquiry is steeped in her formative encounter with the grudging integration of the Jews in French Algeria, while Djebar's narratives concern the colonial separation of "French" and "Arab," self and other. Yet both authors elaborate strategies to address inequality and injustice without resorting to tropes of victimization, challenging and transforming the understanding of the history and legacy of colonized space.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Dissensus; or, The Political in the Writings of Djebar and Cixous -- PART ONE: Colonial Demarcations -- chapter one The Gravity of the Body: Djebar’s and Cixous’s Textuality -- Chapter two Going to School in French Algeria: The Archive of Colonial Education -- PART TWO: Poetics of Language -- Chapter three: Vanishing Inscriptions: Djebar’s Poetics of the Trace -- Chapter four: Poetic Inc.: Language as Hospitality in Cixous -- PART THREE: Algerian War -- Chapter five: The Sound of Broken Memory: Djebar’s Women Fighters -- Chapter six: Allergy in the Body Politic: War in Cixous -- Conclusion: The Logic of the Veil; or, The Epistemology of Nonseeing -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index