Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature by Joseph Ford

Abstract

Reviewed by: Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature by Joseph Ford Stephen Wilford Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature. By Joseph Ford. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2021. viii+168 pp. $95; £73 (ebk $45; £35). ISBN 978–1–4985–8186–8 (ebk 978–1–4985–8187–5). The civil conflict that took place in Algeria throughout the 1990s, referred to as the décennie noire in French, has received relatively little scholarly attention, particularly in the Anglophone world. For Algerians living in both North Africa and throughout a global diaspora, however, the decade radically reshaped postcolonial Algeria, with its consequences still felt within politics, culture, and society more broadly. Joseph Ford’s Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature therefore makes an important contribution to an underexplored area of contemporary Maghrebi culture, not least in his critical reading of the role that the literature under review has played in constructing and challenging schematically binary understandings of the conflict. The book is composed of five main chapters (as well as an Introduction and a Conclusion), which focus upon seven contemporary Algerian authors who write in French: Habib Ayyoub, Salim Bachi, Maïssa Bey, Mustapha Benfodil, Kamel Daoud, Assia Djebar, and Rachid Mimouni. These authors will be of varying levels of familiarity to non-Algerian audiences, with Djebar and Daoud the most widely read outside of North Africa. At the heart of the book is Ford’s critical reading of each author’s relationship to, and depiction of, a highly contested period of Algerian history. He notes the ways in which scholarship and journalistic reporting of the conflict have too often relied upon reductive and essentializing myths of Algerian violence, and have promoted a facile and Orientalizing binary that depicts the décennie noire as a ‘clash of civilizations’, fought between a Westernized government and zealous Islamist insurgents (Ford quotes the term used by Samuel P. Huntington in ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72.3 (1993), 22–49). Ford does an excellent job of destabilizing this binary and unpicks the interweaving of fact and fiction in testimonial literature. He critiques ideas of representation, arguing that these authors ‘offer very different understandings of what it means to be a “spokesperson”’ (p. 140). The role of journalists, academics, and publishers in perpetuating myths about this period of history is also closely examined. A real strength of the book is Ford’s analysis of the differences between intention and actuality through the works of these writers, and he underscores the ways in which the likes of Mimouni and Bachi inadvertently reinforce the ‘clash of cultures’ trope. Nevertheless, he refrains from depicting the authors in absolute terms, showing the ways in which their writing about the ‘black decade’ develops and functions on multiple levels. One detail that is perhaps underexplored in the book is the relationship between French and the other languages spoken in Algeria, including Arabic, Darija (a vernacular form of Arabic, used in daily life throughout Algeria and Morocco), and the various Amazigh (or ‘Berber’) languages. In the Introduction, Ford notes the widespread influence of Francophone Algerian literature, writing that ‘throughout [End Page 129] the 1990s and since, French-language [Algerian] writing has by far received most media attention in France and internationally’ (p. 1). While this is undoubtedly true, there remains a lack of detailed discussion about the ways in which language reflects ideas of wealth, education, and class within contemporary Algeria. This is particularly apparent in Chapter 3, which focuses upon Ayyoub, who ‘styles himself as defending the downtrodden masses against the worst excesses of the powerful’ (p. 85), while writing in a language that retains strong connotations of power and privilege in Algeria. This is undoubtedly a thorough and well-argued book, which offers an important source for those interested in contemporary Algerian literature, and Algerian culture more broadly. The author provides a rigorous and critical reading of a body of Francophone Algerian literature too often ignored by the Anglophone world, and highlights the complexities and contradictions that lie in depicting and understanding Algeria’s décennie noire. Stephen Wilford University of Cambridge Copyright...