The Other Language, the Language of the Other in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous

MLN ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 812-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Corbin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Helene Cixous

Decadent Orientalisms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fieni
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Social Disintegration ◽  
Wide Range

This book explores the confluence of decadence and Orientalism since the mid-nineteenth century in French and Arabic writing. It demonstrates how French Orientalism set the terms of modernity for Arab and Muslim thinkers and writers, but also how the latter responded to and transformed these terms. The book argues that Orientalism is doubly decadent: it describes the supposedly inherent degeneration of the Semitic and the “Oriental,” and in so doing Orientalism attempts to contribute to the decay of these societies. Through comparative close readings of French, Francophone, and Arabic texts, the author outlines how notions and representations of decadence and decay during the colonial and postcolonial periods have in fact produced symbolic and social disintegration in parts of the Arab world. Part 1 of the book examines the role of philology, secularism, Islamic reformism, and colonial policy in the configurations of colonial modernity during the second half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the Arab East (or Mashreq) and Algeria. Part 2 turns to Maghreb to explore the ways that loss becomes nationalized and gendered in the postcolonial era and how Maghrebi writers engage with the legacy of Orientalist decadence to find ways beyond it. In the context of these questions, it offers analyses of work by a wide range of writers, including Ernest Renan, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Ahmed Faris al-Shidyaq, Farah Antun, Céline, Tahar Wattar, Tahir Djaout, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Yamina Méchakra, Assia Djebar, Hélène Cixous, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Abdelkebir Khatibi.

Insistering Derrida: Cixous, Deconstruction, and the Work of Archive

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Verne Harris
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
National Library ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is the lecture Jacques Derrida gave in 2003 at an event to honor Hélène Cixous and mark the donation of her archive to the National Library of France. The lecture was a moving tribute to Cixous (her corpus, her genius, her archive), but it was also Derrida's reading of Cixous' "secrets of the archive". This essay explores "the secrets" - those of Cixous, those of Derrida - along two primary lines of enquiry. On the one hand, the question of archival stakes - what stakes are at play in archive? On the other, the question of the work of archive. For both Cixous and Derrida the work of archive is an endless opening to what is being "othered" and a tireless importuning of a justice-to-come. The work of archive is justice. But what does that work look like? Is there a deconstructive praxis in archive shaped by the call to, and of, justice? What stranger emerges from an insistering of the familiar Derridean formulations?

Humanising Islam's Message and Messenger in Postcolonial Literature

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-215
Author(s):  
Ferial J. Ghazoul
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Islamic Faith ◽  
The Military

Recent postcolonial novels have touched on Islamic faith and the Prophet, presenting a humanised image of Islam and Muḥammad. Such fiction has succeeded in writing back to Orientalist dehumanisation of the Other and stereotypes of Muslims as well as writing against fundamentalist reactionary appropriation of Islam. Leila Aboulela in The Translator (1999) interprets Islam literally and metaphorically to non-Muslims in a fictional romance that takes the protagonists from Scotland to Sudan. Assia Djebar in Loin de Médine (1991) deals with the beginnings of Islam in Arabia. This historical novel concentrates on women's voices that have been marginalised or dropped altogether from accounts by male historians. Salim Bachi in Le Silence de Mahomet (2008), narrates the advent of Islam through multiple points of view: by two wives of the Prophet, Khadīja and ʿĀʾisha, as well as by two influential men, the Prophet's companion Abū Bakr and the military leader Khālid b. al-Walīd. This polyphonic novel allows the complexity and diversity of worldviews to be juxtaposed and intertwined. The three novels offer fresh humane portraits of iconic figures and of Islam's message while simultaneously highlighting human frailty and splendour.

scholarly journals Jacques Derrida: The Double Liminality of a Philosophical Marrano

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Kutash
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
French Language ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The One

There is an analogy between two types of liminality: the geographic or cultural ‘outside’ space of the Marrano Jew, alienated from his/her original religion and the one he or she has been forced to adopt, and, a philosophical position that is outside of both Athens and Jerusalem. Derrida finds and re-finds ‘h’ors- texte’, an ‘internal desert’, a ‘secret’ outside place: alien to both the western philosophical tradition and the Hebraic archive. In this liminal space he questions the otherness of the French language to which he was acculturated, and, in a turn to a less discursive modality, autobiography, finds, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Jew-who-doesn’t know-that-he-is”. Derrida’s galut (exile) is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It is a private place outside of all discourse, which he claims, is inevitably ethnocentric. In inhabiting this outside space, he exercises the prerogative of a Marrano, equipped to critique the French language of his acculturation and the western philosophy of the scholars. French and Hebrew are irreconcilable binaries, western philosophy and his Hebrew legacy is as well. These issues will be discussed in this paper with reference to Monolingualism of the Other and Archive Fever as they augment some of his earlier work, Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena.

scholarly journals Die Bewegung des Anderen in den Schreibszenen von Hélène Cixous

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-141
Author(s):  
Karoline Gritzner
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the significance of movement and alterity in Hélène Cixous’s practice of writing, which she defines as an »exposure« to the other and as a sensitization to the present moment. The focus is on Cixous’s presentation of different modalities of being that are indissociable from the materiality of ‚écriture féminine‘. These range from the necessity for blindness in the act of writing and the discovery of imaginary worlds, to experiences of flight, sexual difference and modes of »de-selfing« in the process of writing. The transformative event-character of Cixous’s writing is foregrounded in her short story ‚Savoir‘, where the relationship between seeing and not-seeing, presence and absence, knowledge and desire is captured in the fleeting traces of the written word.

Lecture empathique et trauma de la guerre d’Algérie chez Assia Djebar, Boualem Sansal et Leila Sebbar

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Kirsten Husung
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
The Other ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Leila Sebbar ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Imaginative Resistance ◽  
Algerian War Of Independence ◽  
Moral Convictions

This article analyses the narrative processes and literary strategies that seek to engender the reader’s empathy for the main characters in three Francophone texts that depict the trauma of the Algerian War of independence. Each text starts from a real event by intertwining historical facts and the present with fiction, allowing for a better understanding of the postcolonial situation. These expectations are reinforced by Djebar’s and Sansal’s paratexts. Drawing on the theories of Suzanne Keen and Fritz Breithaupt empathy can especially be favoured by internal focalization, the characters’ empathic interpersonal relationships as well as polyphony. The imaginative construction of the other is emphasized as necessary, while the detailed description of historical facts may rather provoke feelings of pity. A fortiori, empathy can decline or be blocked in the passages, which go against the moral convictions of the reader. This imaginative resistance is due to the fact that these passages concern reality and not fiction

scholarly journals O Caderno de Maya, de Isabel Allende: uma leitura por dois caminhos

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Jozefh Fernando Soares Queiroz
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Isabel Allende ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Adrienne Rich ◽  
The One

Resumo: Este artigo tem como proposta apresentar duas trilhas de leitura analítica para a obra O Caderno de Maya (2011), da escritora chilena Isabel Allende. Se por um lado podemos ver o desenvolvimento da feminilidade da personagem por meio de sua inscrição na cultura local e pela conquista de um território feminino, por outro, podemos ver seu desenvolvimento interior, analisando a evolução de sua psique. Tais caminhos não se eliminam no decorrer da leitura e nos possibilitam ver a construção exterior e interior da personagem Maya. Neste entrelaçamento de teorias, dialogam os(as) teóricos(as) Simone de Beauvoir (2009), Hélène Cixous (2010), Luce Irigaray (1992), Jacques Lacan (1979) e Adrienne Rich (2017), entre outros(as).Palavras-chave: O Caderno de Maya; Isabel Allende; feminino; psique.Abstract: This article presents two possible ways of analyzing and reading Maya’s Notebook, by Chilean writer Isabel Allende (2011). On the one hand, we can see the development of the femininity of a character through her inscription in the local culture and the conquest of a female territory; on the other, we can see the character’s inner development, analyzing the evolution of her psyche. Such paths are not eliminated along the reading and enable us to see the external and internal of Maya’s character. In this interlink of theories, theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir (2009), Hélène Cixous (2010), Luce Irigaray (1992), Jacques Lacan (1979), and Adrienne Rich (2017), among others, dialogue. Keywords: Maya’s notebook; Isabel Allende; female; psyche. 

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