Post/Past Violence: The Aftermath of Revolutions and Literature as Reconciliation

Abstract

In this article I argue that Maïssa Bey’s Pierre Sang Papier ou Cendre (2008) and Puisque mon cœur est mort (2010) highlight Bey’s hesitation to support the use of violence in response to violence. Whereas a figure like Frantz Fanon supports anticolonial violence as the near inevitable reply to colonial atrocity, Bey’s textual representations of brutality during the Algerian War and especially the Algerian Civil War are much more focused on illustrating the dangers of retaliatory violence and demonstrating the power of literature as a mode of healing and reconciliation. I will thus examine how these novels propose reconciliation through fiction—and especially reconciliatory writing in contrast to further violence—in the aftermath of revolution and martial cruelty more generally.