Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma: The Dismembering of Algeria’s “Étoile de Sang”

Abstract

As an active participant in the Algerian independence demonstrations of 8 May 1945, sixteen-year old Kateb Yacine found himself in direct confrontation with French colonialism’s tactical uses of repression and violence. Arrested and tortured by police and sub sequently imprisoned during a period of several months, Kateb witnessed first-hand the oppression of the Algerian nation under the French system of colonialism. With these fresh memories of the Setif massacre, during which an estimated 6,000–13,000 Algerians were killed, 1 Kateb embarked on the eight-year long process of writing Nedjma (1956)—a novel, which, as the preface emphatically states, “bears witness to a people” 2 and despite being “conceived and written in French, [. . .] remains a profoundly Arab work.” 3 This essay will expound upon the central role of literary and figurative violence and “dismemberment” in Kateb’s novel. 4 It will provide a nuanced reading of the binary function of the novel’s central female protagonist, Nedjma—a recurring object of desta bilization throughout the narrative often interpreted as both a relic of French colonial occupation and a symbol for Algerian independence and recognition. The analysis will conclude with a brief inquiry into the correlation between Nedjma and Gustave Flaubert’s female protagonist in the 19th century Decadent novel, Salammbo (1862), including how this relates to the theme of dis memberment in Nedjma. To clarify, when I use the term dismemberment, I am referring to the textual fragmentation of person, time, and place that eliminates the borders between history and memory by dislocating the sequences of events, witnesses, and outcomes. This definition implies that Western literature’s traditional, linear border separat ing history and memory ceases to exist with the constant entry and re-entry of temporally unordered sequences of memory-pic tures through the various narratives in Nedjma. Thus, historical record is continually pierced within the fragmented series of col lective singularities making up the body of the novel. Narration