Tahar Djaout Research Articles

La ville carcérale ou le tombeau de la mémoire : étude des premiers recueils de Abdellatif Laâbi et Tahar Djaout (1960-1980)

L’article se propose d’aborder le motif de la carcéralité dans les œuvres poétiques d’Abdellatif Laâbi (Histoire des sept crucifiés de l’espoir) et de Tahar Djaout (Solstice barbelé et L’Arche à vau-l’eau). Si la ville carcérale apparaît comme la métaphore d’un pouvoir autoritaire post-colonial, elle cristallise également l’opposition entre deux types de parole. En effet, alors que l’enfermement et la censure, outils de maintien de l’ordre, cherchent à évacuer tout conflit possible au sein de l’espace public, afin de diffuser une version officielle de l’histoire et de taire les voix contestataires ou les récits alternatifs, la parole poétique, par sa marginalité, porte en elle une forte dimension critique visant à réinscrire du conflit, de l’hétérogénéité, au sein de cet espace. Qu’il s’agisse d’emprunter à la tradition du conte ou d’insuffler au langage une puissance cosmique, le dire poétique échappe aux normes et se présente comme hautement transgressif. Et c’est depuis la marge que peuvent se déployer ces écritures de la révolte.

Colonial Trauma: A Study of the Psychic and Political Consequences of Colonial Oppression in Algeria. By Karima Lazali

Karima Lazali’s extraordinary book is undoubtedly a milestone in postcolonial and decolonial studies since the publication of Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre (1961) and his posthumous Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté (2015). Lazali offers a comprehensive reading of coloniality in Algeria and of the long-lasting effects which France’s colonial violence and domination (1830–62) had on the subjectivities of the colonized, but also on the post-Independence political order, leading to the Internal War (1992–2000). Lazali’s perspective is based on her psychoanalytic practice located in both Algeria and France. Her methodology appeals to transdisciplinarity (history, literature, anthropology, psychology, sociology) in order to elucidate the blank spaces and ideological blind spots created on both sides of the Mediterranean by coloniality. Lazali exposes the legacy of colonialism and the traumas to which it subjected the population: ‘an unusual psychic phenomenon […]. The clinical psychologist is forced to deal with a history deprived of archives, literally and metaphorically. It is now no longer a question of deconstruction, but one of reconstructing traces that exist outside of memory’ (Colonial Trauma, p. 5). Lazali unseals the Algerian colonial world in its totality and dismantles its binary logic (reflected in France’s and Algeria’s frozen, antithetical attitudes regarding colonialism). She enlists key but often lesser-studied Algerian authors (for example, Jean El-Mouhoub Amrouche, Kamel Daoud, Tahar Djaout, Nabile Farès, Mouloud Feraoun, Wahiba Khiari, Mouloud Mammeri, Yamina Mechakra, Arezki Mellal, Rachid Mimouni, Samir Toumi, Kateb Yacine, Amin Zaoui) to give expression to the blank spaces of historical records, alerting readers ‘to how a text is continuously shaped by its invisible margins’ (p. 7), taking them closer to what has been and continues to be erased by the political order.

Our Civilizing Mission: The Lessons of Colonial Education

Our Civilizing Mission: The Lessons of Colonial Education

Mutual Adversaries, Fellow Dissidents

Abstract In mid- to late 20th-century Algeria, the language in which an author wrote reflected more than personal preference: it indicated a political affiliation and a position within the culture wars that merged with the violent conflict of the 1990s. Taking the tension between francophone, arabophone, and pluralist factions in Algerian literature as its point of departure, this article sheds light on the transcendent and multilingual “language” of dissidence exemplified in the novels of al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār and Tahar Djaout. Previous work on Waṭṭār and Djaout has portrayed their mutual antipathy as an unbridgeable political divide. This article challenges this interpretation through an analysis of Waṭṭār’s novel al-Zilzāl (1974) and Djaout’s posthumous novel Le Dernier Été de la raison (1999). The article concludes that Waṭṭār and Djaout were not simply antagonists. Rather, they were fellow dissidents opposed to a cultural monolith on the one hand, and political and economic malpractice on the other.

The Representation of the Desert and its Implications in “L’Invention du Désert” by Tahar Djaout

En Anthropologie, mais aussi en Littérature, le désert est un espace qui suscite un engouement certain et représente un objet signifiant chargé de symboliques. Les représentations du désert sont l’objet de réflexion continue pour les chercheurs en Anthropologie, en Histoire mais aussi en Littérature. Notre intérêt s’est porté sur le roman “ l’Invention du Désert » de Tahar Djaout car il s’y développe cet espace particulier et longtemps privilégié. En lisant le texte, nous constatons que le désert représente l’espace commun dans lequel se déroulent les multiples séquences de l’intrigue. Ce choix de l’espace désertique, opéré par l’auteur, ne semble pas anodin. Nous tenterons, dans cette étude, de mettre en lumière les différentes représentations de cet espace désertique, sa mise en page dans le récit ainsi que son importance en tant qu’espace référentiel mais nous essaierons également de cerner les effets de sens qui y sont relatifs.

Lemoudjahid, clé de dévoilement de l’Histoire dansLa Malédictionde Rachid Mimouni etLes Vigilesde Tahar Djaout

It is at the outset of independence that Algerian writers participate in drafting the nation’s history. It is a de-alienated History that structures the national imaginary and draws on unifying mythical representations. The 1988 ‘Black October’ riots however, challenged this mythical period built during the Boumediene and Bendjedid years. At that time, protesting the national narrative becomes part of the Algerian novel. Obsessed with the issue of historical discourse, Algerian writers embark on a Historical quest that navigates the insides of Algerian memory. This aesthetic of intimacy allows us to enter the forgotten fragments of History and reveal their pathologies: henceforth the ambiguity of collective memory that creates fiction. A concealed memory is the starting point of new fictions that are aimed at correcting the national narrative. This article aims to analyse the function of the unveiling of History embodied by the moudjahid character in the novels Les Vigiles (1991) by Tahar Djaout, and La Malédiction (1993) by Rachid Mimouni. Placed at the intersection of individual and collective memory, the moudjahid archetype in Algerian literature participates in the establishment of a hermeneutics of remembrance that ought to be explored.

On Islands and Deserts

Abstract This article argues for the necessity for world literature and postcolonial studies to examine both global hierarchies of literary legitimacy and those local practices which might challenge them, and give perspectives for other significant geographies. To do so, it focuses on the bilingual and transnational Algerian literary field; this requires different levels of interconnected analysis, namely of the two linguistic subfields, the intermediary level of national literary field and the two Francophone and Arabophone transnational literary fields. Trajectories and literary works of three very different yet linked writers, Rachid Boudjedra, Tahar Djaout and Tahar Ouettar, are examined in turn. The article traces both the global and linguistic inequalities to which they were subjected as well as their practices in order to argue that they reveal unexpected vectors of circulation between spaces and languages. Finally, this piece explores how and why each writer reinvents a world within their desert novels, that is, by narrating wanderings in the desert that are also explorations of national identity.

Berber Spider: Tahar Djaout, Arachne, and the Afterlife of Oral Poetics

Tahar Djaout was one of Algeria's most exciting young writers when he was gunned down in a suburb of Algiers in 1993. Although his novels have since been the subject of critical attention in Algeria, France, and beyond, little attention has been paid to his poetry, despite evidence to suggest that it was his activity as poet that was most important to him. This paper examines Les Vigiles (1991), Djaout's last novel, for what it reveals about modern Algerian literature and its relation to Berber oral traditions, before reading a cycle from his first collection of poems, Solstice barbelé (1975).

From Tahar Djaout's "No" to Mustapha Benfodil's "Enough!": Two Moments of Revolutionary Aesthetics in Contemporary Algerian Literature and Cultural Activism

Vingt-cinq ans avant la mort de Tahar Djaout, le poete, journaliste, dramaturge, et activiste Algerien Mustapha Benfodil naissait dans l'ouest de l'Algerie. C'etait 1968, une annee de bouleversements culturels, economiques, sociaux et politiques a travers le monde. Cet esprit continue a guider et informer l'œuvre de Benfodil de nos jours. L'annee de l'assassinat de Djaout, Benfodil lui a rendu hommage dans un poeme intitule « la sante de la Republique ». Ce poeme relie ces deux auteurs et figures intellectuelles publiques textuellement d'une maniere immediate et evidente. Les paralleles entre les ecrivains, specialement en ce qui concerne la revolution et les relations que l'artiste partage avec la societe, l'etat, et la religion, sont profonds. Cet article examine les messages, les tons et les approches revolutionnaires de Djaout et Benfodil a travers l'etude de la poesie revolutionnaire du premier et d'une installation artistique, intitulee Maportaliche/Ecritures sauvages , du deuxieme. Dans cette tradition esthetique revolutionnaire, l'importance du travail de l'artiste/l'intellectuel/l'activiste prend une signification intensifiee, alors que cette figure se trouve alternativement adulee ou censuree. Abstract: Twenty-five years before Tahar Djaout's death, the Algerian poet, journalist, dramaturge, and activist Mustapha Benfodil was born in western Algeria. The year was 1968, a year of great turmoil and upheaval on cultural, economic, social, and political levels the world round. Benfodil began life in a revolutionary moment, and such a spirit continues to guide and inform his work today. The same year that Djaout was assassinated, Benfodil paid tribute to him in a poem entitled, A la sante de la Republique. This poem connects the two authors and public intellectuals textually in an immediate and evident way. And yet the parallels between the writers, especially concerning the theme of revolution and the artist's relationships with society, the state, and religion, run deep. This article examines the revolutionary content, tone, and approach of both Djaout and Benfodil through the study of revolutionary poetry by the former and an artistic installation, entitled Maportaliche/Ecritures sauvages , by the latter. In this revolutionary aesthetic tradition, the stakes of the artist/intellectual/activist's work take on heightened significance, just as this figure finds itself alternatively lionized or censored.

الثقافة الحية لدى مولود معمري

Mouloud Mammeri’s career is characterized by his continuous intention and strong quest to point out what that culture acquired in term of language, literature, and incorporeal legacy of success. And to rise it to the surface founding an identity based on multiplicity in which unity is both stabilized and empowered with the same value of what its way to otherness and dialogue with the other are supported. This essay aims at showing what specifies Mouloud Mammeri’s cultural imagination that would be beneficial for us; a part of his meeting with Tahar Djaout, his outings to the field of research as well as a sample of his novel “The forgotten Hill” (La Colline Oubliee) that may be inserted in the concepts of multiplicity, otherness, and dialogue which give life to a culture and get it gathered.

Des Vigiles au Dernier Eté de la Raison ou le Récit de la Continuité

The reader of the last two novels of Tahar Djaout, namely Watchmen and The Last Summer of Reason , will certainly raise a number of similarities between the two texts, especially in terms of the themes and figures discussed. Moreover, this same reader will intuitively perceive a kind of supplement of sense that is added in The Last Summer of Reason . In other words, going from one story to another, it saves permanence and change, to the extent that these themes and figures are present in both stories, but they are transformed in The Last Summer of Reason . Incidentally, semiotic theory offers us a conceptual tool likely to enrich our interpretation of these two novels on escaping the intuitive grasp of meaning. Thus, it allows us, first, to show how this transformation occurs at different levels of analysis. Then, on apprehending these two novels as a whole or an all meaning, we will see that The Last Summer of Reason can be considered as a continuation of Watchmen .

Jungle and Desert in Postcolonial Texts: Intertextual Ecosystems

AbstractThis article examines postcolonial representations of the jungle and the desert, focusing on two novels in particular: Étienne Goyémidé’sLe silence de la forêt(1984) and Tahar Djaout’sL’invention du désert(1987). Postcolonial literary representations of these “extreme” landscapes are layered with allusions and almost always engage in an intertextual conversation with the colonial genres that influenced readers’ conception of these spaces. The specificity of jungle and desert serves in contemporary postcolonial literature as a foil to homogenizing forces of both the past and the present, as seen in the stylistic techniques authors employ to depict these spaces. These stylistic techniques often work in two seemingly opposing directions: they “naturalize” landscapes that are often portrayed as inhuman and contrast them to the “unnatural” structures of colonial and postcolonial society, while at the same time embodying and claiming the distortion or disorientation inherent in those landscapes. These complex, multifaceted, geographically rooted descriptions, which incorporate and react to a variety of historical and cultural factors, take what I call an ecosystem approach, rather than continuing to rely on a false nature/culture division.

An Incalculable Rupture? The Aesthetics and Politics of Postcolonial Fiction

My article studies the implications of Jacques Rancière's concepts of literary misunderstanding and political dissensus for our understanding of the politics of postcolonial fiction. The disjunctive junction that Rancière establishes between the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics constitutes the starting point of my investigation. For Rancière, the original disjunction of aesthetics forecloses the equivalence between literary misunderstanding and political dissensus. Aesthetics practices a metapolitics, which can only take the form of a denunciation of the false scene of politics, the invocation of a fusional community to come, or the evocation of an atomized, molecular, apathic, indifferent equality that renders political equality inoperable. My article questions the hermeneutics of Rancière's paradigm of aesthetics. Showing how Rancière's thinking of politics is shaped first and foremost by a sustained inquiry into the poetics of sense, or an aisthesis (the experience of sense, sensation, and sensibility), I try to bridge the conceptual gap he establishes between the sensible of aesthetics and the sensible of politics. Using a postcolonial novel, Tahar Djaout's Le dernierété de la raison (The Last Summer of Reason), as an example, I show how literary fiction stages acts of political subjectivation that Rancière reserves for the scene of political dissensus. I argue that Djaout constructs a heterologic and heterotopic poetics of sense (an aisthesis) that stages a different meaning of emancipation and equality. Allegory and metaphor enact the fragile power of a political dissensus as a fictional construction in the mode of an as if.

Jihad as rite of passage: Tahar Djaout’s The Last Summer of Reason and Slimane Benaïssa’s The Last Night of a Damned Soul

Two recent novels by Algerians (Tahar Djaout’s The Last Summer of Reason, and Slimane Benaïssa’s The Last Night of a Damned Soul) offer critiques of Islamic totalitarianism in two settings: local Arab states like the one fictionalized by Djaout, and the cosmopolitan community of diasporic Muslims recruited to the ranks of suicide bombers in the name of self‐ and social purification. Djaout, assassinated by fundamentalists outside his home in Algeria for writing against them, and Benaïssa, charting the psychological path towards violence taken by one westernized Muslim in the United States, instantiate the ongoing debate within Islam.

Walking the Tightrope between Memory and History: Metaphor in Tahar Djaout’s L’invention du désert

Research Article| November 01 2008 Walking the Tightrope between Memory and History: Metaphor in Tahar Djaout’s L’invention du désert RAJI VALLURY RAJI VALLURY Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Novel (2008) 41 (2-3): 320–341. https://doi.org/10.1215/ddnov.041020320 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation RAJI VALLURY; Walking the Tightrope between Memory and History: Metaphor in Tahar Djaout’s L’invention du désert. Novel 1 November 2008; 41 (2-3): 320–341. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/ddnov.041020320 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsNovel Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Novel Corp. 20082008 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Julija Šukys. Silence Is Death. The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2007. France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization series. xi + 197 pp. Photograph. Notes. Works Cited. Index. $26.95. Cloth.

Julija Šukys. Silence Is Death. The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2007. France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization series. xi + 197 pp. Photograph. Notes. Works Cited. Index. $26.95. Cloth. - Volume 51 Issue 1

Silence is death: the life and work of Tahar Djaout

Silence is death: the life and work of Tahar Djaout

The Hypothetical Skeleton (A Letter to Tahar Djaout)

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.

The Tragedy of Algeria: Slimane Benaissa's Drama of Terrorism

Algerian authors, creative artists, journalists, and intellectuals, especially French-speaking ones, were among the most likely targets of Islamist 3 extremists in the 1990's. From poet Tahar Djaout and sociologist M'Hamed Boukhobza in 1993 to dramatist [End Page 369] Abdelkader Alloula and raï singer Cheb Hasni in 1994, growing numbers of creative minds were slated for death throughout the turmoil of the 1990's. 4 Perceived as traitors and corrupt influences from within, as dangerous as the most vocal political opponents, they were brutally struck down outside of their homes, offices, or in the case of Alloula shot in the stairwell on his way to deliver a public lecture. However, in order to make sense of this inexplicably savage reality, it is necessary to place it within the context of the long and unusually complex history of Algeria and its colonial and postcolonial relationship to France. Ranked among the "world's most significant postcolonial relationships," 5 the unique case of Algeria is nevertheless "little studied" and "much misunderstood," especially by the English-speaking world. 6 The theatre of Algerian actor, director, and author, Slimane Benaïssa, living in Paris since 1993, will provide an illustrative entry point into the intricate mosaic of Algeria, both past and present.

Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb (review)

Building on the work of such scholars as Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, Jarrod Hayes provides a fascinating look at the interplay of sexual and national identity in francophone North African literature. His study covers a broad range of authors including Tahar Djaout, Mohammed Dib, Kateb Yacine, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, and Albert Memmi. Hayes's work is primarily a study of the presence of "non-normative" sexualities in Maghrebian literature written in French and the use of these taboo identities to challenge the dominant sexual identities, heterosexual and male, in their claim to hegemony. He demonstrates that through their foregrounding of marginal sexualities, these writers successfully achieve twin goals. They are able to support the establishment of a positive national identity against the suppression of this identity by the former colonizing power and against Orientalist views of the Maghreb, especially confronting Western notions of "Oriental sex." Simultaneously, these images of the nation challenge the dominant form of nationalism, countering a monolithic and exclusive definition of the nation with a multifaceted inclusive one. Hayes demonstrates that the effect of this overt presentation of marginal sexualities not only undermines the dominance of Maghrebian male heterosexuality--thereby "queering" the nation, but also Orientalizes the West by reflecting Orientalist images imposed upon the Maghreb onto the sexual identities and practices of the West itself.