Ali al-Du‘aji and al-‘alam al-adabi (The Literary World): a voice of the Tunisian avant-garde under colonial rule (1930–1936)

ABSTRACT

Under French colonisation, Tunisian intellectuals, with al-Snusi at the head, sought to create an Arabic language literary periodical al-‘alam al-adabi (The Literary World) in the 1930s that attempted to create a national identity and define a national culture within an international context. A border zone, using Walter Mignolo’s term, opens where colonial knowledges and local knowledges come together fuelling debates. This article examines the literary contributions of Ali al-Du‘aji to a nationalist intellectual project that made use of a monthly, then weekly periodical. Al-Du‘aji made use of literary colonial knowledge by subverting it to local knowledge in order to create a modern text that broke with traditional Arabic literary forms.

KEYWORDS:

• Ali al-Du‘aji
• Tunisian colonial literature
• French Empire
• colonial literary periodicals
• Tunisian short stories
• Mediterranean travel literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I define ‘national consciousness’ as the intellectual movement which surrounded border knowledges, particularly the relationship between ‘National Consciousness’ and the avant-garde literature. The 1930s witnessed a resurrection of the importance of carving a national (and eventually nationalist) identity as opposed to Tunisia remaining a French protectorate.

2. The English translation of Dhaouadi’s book is Below the Rampart Literary Group, in which he examines the works and lives of the members of this avant-garde group.

3. Classical Arabic literature is dominated by metred poetry while the prose is only in literary Arabic (fusha). Al-Du‘aji and several other avant-garde Tunisian writers wrote in colloquial Tunisian dialect, which was considered a literary deviation.

4. Interview with Mohamed el-Mayy, 15 July 2012, Tunis, Tunisia.

5. See Mohamed Hamdane’s Guide des périodiques parus en Tunisie de 1838 au 20 Mars 1956: Guide des périodiques en Arabe et en Judéo-Arabe, 1989: Fondation Nationale de Carthage Beït al-Hikma.

6. It is important to note that in the 1930s, periodicals were the main print form for writers. In fact, Ali al-Du‘aji’s short stories did not appear in a collection until 1962.

7. French term used in French journals to refer to North Africans as the indigenous population.

8. Under ‘Egypt’ we find several paragraphs on poetry, followed by ‘The Novel in Egypt’, and ‘The Egyptian University’. A section with literary news from Iran follows (al-‘alam al-adabi, number 2, 1930, 30–31).

9. Mission statement written by founder Zin al-‘Abdin al-Snusi’ in al-‘alam al-adabi, issue 14, 1932.

10. Highest religious authority in Tunisia. It lost its strength after independence as Bourguiba sought to reduce its social influence and power.

11. Interview with Moncef Ben Salem on the electronic journal nawaat: http://nawaat.org/portail/2011/05/03/le-professeur-moncef-ben-salem-ministre-de-lenseignement-public/.

Interview with Samir al-Wafi on Hannibal TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdJoTkCWfmA.