The Hypothetical Skeleton (A Letter to Tahar Djaout)

Abstract

When Tahar Djaout was gunned down in front of his Algiers apartment building on 26 May 1993, Algerians were stunned and enraged. A massive and public outpouring of grief ensued, a mountain of elegiac writing was produced, and the terrible moment of this writer's death was frozen, preserved as the moment that defined his life. Instantly, Tahar Djaout became a literary martyr and a kind of secular saint. My text explores the mediating role of the relic (the bone) in Djaout's texts, and, in turn, it will consider the text itself as a relic and site of mediation between the author and reader, and between the dead and the living. Djaout was the author of five novels and several books of poetry and short fiction, as well as being a founder and editor of the newspaper Ruptures, which disappeared shortly after his death.