Requiem for a requiem

Abstract

As many readers will recall, the Algerian writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar died in Paris in February 2015. This article examines her legacy to memory, through memory, by re-reading a text about death, Le Blanc de l’Algerie. What is the status of this text that is difficult to classify, one that insists we look at and mourn next to Djebar and her memories? And where do we locate Assia Djebar? Le Blanc becomes a testament before death where readers are caught between mortal survival (Djebar at the time of publication survives; her friends do not) and textual immortality (embodied time; a spatial body that survives and keeps traces of time). Does redressing the dead with text ignite nostalgia and stave off forgetting? In other words, what is at stake in the production of Assia Djebar, through others and through her texts, and does this promote a specifically postcolonial melancholia or nostalgia? Finally, does the disappearance of Djebar change the way we read her? Re-reading Le Blanc will reveal Djebar’s m...