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ABSTRACT
If the insertion of photographs in literary texts could constitute, by its nature, the irrefutable proof of the famous Barthes’ ‘it-has-been’ assertion regarding the existence of a present/absent object, then the photograph which opens Maïssa Bey's novel complicates the relationship between the factual and the fictional, the personal and the collective, in a context where the reconstruction of the past, especially if it is an unspeakable one, that has long been repressed, is a painful endeavour. In this study, I will demonstrate that the interference created by interlacing the visual and the textual, which makes the text simultaneously fictional and autobiographical, is maintained throughout the novel. Bey uses a variety of narrative techniques that allow her to confront, even allusively, the meandering past, and to dissect some of its aspects in order to understand the consequences of that which she testifies in the present. This junction also provides the necessary distance that is needed to come to terms with History, both personal and collective, which had remained, on the French as well as the Algerian side, stifled for many decades. Secondly, I will argue that Bey's novel perfectly illustrates the concept of ‘collective autobiography’ since it suggests a possible remediation of official history's deficiencies that are designed to prevent the repetition of the horrors of colonisation and to offer the possibility of reconciliation as a means of moving forward.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.