France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters

Abstract

Reviewed by: France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters Carla Calargé Translated by Rosemarie Scullion Rosello, Mireille . France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. Pp. 231. In the opening pages of Mireille Rosello's France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters, the reader will find an answer to the question its title begs: "What is a 'performative encounter?'" Inspired by J. L. Austin's theory of performative enunciation, Rosello explains that her use of the term refers to the dynamics binding human beings with a long history of strife, but who nonetheless succeed in disrupting the scenarios, practices, and overdetermined languages that have shaped their relations. In her critical perspective, a performative encounter takes place when individuals and peoples, assumed to be incompatible, resist being placed in positions that limit the form and content of their exchanges. In spite of the violence of certain shared historical experiences, these opponents are able to invent a common, heretofore unspoken language. These exchanges produce a new subject position, a new language and a new type of engagement which, although not necessarily devoid of conflict, does manage to disrupt dominant discourses and scenarios by giving rise to new forms of expression and dialogue. In France and the Maghreb, Rosello offers six essays, each exploring a different kind of perfomative encounter. In chapter one, she examines the discourses that circulated during the public events that took place in 2003 in the framework of "The Year of Algeria in France." She analyzes [End Page 161] the degree to which enunciators of these discourses were able to free themselves from the well-established patterns and parameters of Franco-Algerian relations, and to do so in ways that encouraged a reconsideration of the terms in which encounters between these countries are understood. Informed by the theoretical contributions of Benjamin Stora and Etienne Balibar, Rosello calls for a critical remapping of the borders that have historically separated France and Algeria. An interpretive strategy influenced by Michel Serres's Le Tiers instruit (1991) provides the foundations for Rosello's analysis of the 2001 soccer match that placed France and Algeria in sporting competition. Although the "amiable" encounter that was so much desired quickly degenerated into conflict that ended the match, Rosello considers certain aspects of this event to be an example of the type of performative encounters that can disrupt the deployment of a dominant discourse and oblige spectators to rethink, for instance, the limits of national identity, and thus, the nature of competition between two teams and the rules of the game they are playing. In chapter two, Rosello analyzes several works by Assia Djebar, including a short story titled "Le corps de Félicie" that is featured in the author's 1997 work Oran, langue morte. Rosello studies the different ways in which Djebar reinvents and rewrites in fictional form the ever-changing nature of the France-Algeria couple. She concludes that it is impossible to define these relations solely in terms of current thinking on métissage or hybridity. The notion of dual identity, which expresses itself in Djebar's short story in the form of the blended Christian and Muslim names given to Félicie's children, becomes the dominant force in the complex encounters her characters have with themselves and others—encounters that are incessantly invented and redefined according to each character's relation to hybridity. Rosello shows that Djebar's "Le Corps de Félicie" "is not about métissage, but about fréquentage or cohabition, about the endless continuation and reinterpretation of the supposedly original encounter" (73). The range of reactions each character has to the diverse elements of their identities shows that no single model of hybridity exists. Rather, Félicie's children construct their identities according to their own history and in relation to their particular given names. Rosello begins chapter three with a definition of "langualization," a concept constructed on the model of "creolization." Langualization conveys the idea of repeated performative encounters that occur in the linguistic arena both in the Maghreb in general and in works by North [End Page 162] African writers. Rosello's neologism derives from the fact that North African writers "must think...