“Entre deux feux”: Jean Sénac's Struggle for Self-Determination

Abstract

During the years between 1954 and 1965, which witnessed the construction of a new Algerian national identity, Jean Senac, the most important French- language poet associated with Algerian nationalism, was struggling to establish a sense of self, both at the collective level of the Nation and on the individual level of the Man. By the end this decade of self-determination Senac would fashion the complex nature of his national and sexual identi- ties into an authentic poetics of social protest. In Senac's works, produced after Algerian independence, he openly proclaims himself to be a gaouri— the Algerian pejorative for a foreigner or infidel—as well as a homosexual. However, Senac's stance on the margins came after more than a decade in which he struggled with the fear that his non-normative identity was an obstacle to be overcome if he wanted to be a poet in service to his people.