Poésie-danger or the Power of Contestation in Assia Djebar’s Loin de Médine

Abstract

It is in response to the brutal repression of the 1990s, as well as the colonial period and the post-independence regime in Algeria, that Assia Djebar’s novel Loin de Médine stands as a piece of committed literature that especially praises women’s voices against all forms of domination based on gender power dynamics. This article examines how Djebar advances a broader understanding of women’s agency by reviving some historical narratives from the Arab/Islamic world to open a wide horizon of possibilities for Muslim women’s voices. First, it demonstrates how these women used the power of speech—whether poetry or rhetorical argumentation—to assert their voices. Then it examines the chain of transmission established among these women as a way of validating their words. By reinterpreting a version of the history of the earliest Muslims, assumed as undisputable over time, Loin de Médine challenges the limitations enforced by the religious exegesis and patriarchal discourses, thus destabilizing the gender hierarchy encrypted in them.