Fictional Testimonies or Testimonial Fictions: Moussa Ould Ebnou'sBarzakh

Abstract

innovative writers in African literature today, as well as among the most neglected by critics. He is the author of two novels in double version, French and Arabic. first is L'amour impossibk (1990) /AlHub al Mustahil (1999) and the second Barzakh (1993) /Madinat alRiyah (1996), in which he weaves masterfully together science fiction and mysticism, his? tory and myth, truth and fiction, philosophy and literature. concern of this paper is examine the complexities and implications of the inter? weaving of these discourses in the novel Barzakh. Jean-Francois Lyotard in Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowkdge defines modern as a term to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference a metadiscourse [. . .] making an explicit appeal some narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creating of wealth (xxiii). In these terms, the authorizing principle for the legitimacy of knowledge finds its foundation in the metaphysical tradition and its notion of truth as it relates concepts of totality and the certitude of an absolute Subject. In Barzakh the relationship between these grand and the discourses that they authorize come under scrutiny within the literary space. In other words, the text forces us confront the question of what happens the narratives of knowledge and truth once they are east in a literary mold; whether knowl? edge brought forth by literature can in fact lay claims the kind of notions of truth that motivate the narratives. In approaching the novel, we must first begin with considerations of even though we shall soon discover that the text will not allow such simple dualities as form and content withstand its challenges. In an article entitled The Mauritanian Novel and Duality of Origin, Mohamed Lamine Ould Moulay Brahim points a tradition of double writing of texts, first in French and then in Arabic, in contemporary Mauritanian fic? tion, and specifically Moussa Ould Ebnou's first novel L'amour impossibk (Impossible Love) and its corresponding Arabic version, Al Hub al Mustahil. Upon encountering Ould Ebnou's second novel, Barzakh, we come face face again with this problem of duality of origin, for the French text Barzakh also exists in an Arabic version entitled Madinat al? Riyah. difficulty, or rather the mystery, lies in the fact that nowhere in either of these two texts is it indicated which is the original. According the dates of publication, Barzakh precedes Madinat al-Riyah, but this does not imply that the two texts were also written in that order. Neither text defines itself as the translation of the other, for they both bear only the name of the author and no translator, leading the conclusion that the author wrote both texts. Though the stories remain fundamentally the