Reading Joyce in Algiers

ABSTRACT

Maghrebi Studies often struggles to situate cultural production from North Africa. Some scholars advocate a Mediterranean approach, while others reposition the field along an East-West axis. Novels like Daoud's Meursault, contre-enquête¹ have once again foregrounded the colonial legacy, while at the same time, pop culture has taken a transnational turn. Eager to replace the nation as the primary referent, new approaches honor the multidirectional flow of texts and have recast Maghrebi cultural production as fluid. This paper proposes an interpretive frame constructed around postcolonial affinity, linking cultural production from North Africa to other postcolonial spaces. Specifically, it considers the role that Irish literature has played in post-independence Algeria. While previous studies have compared the political tactics used by anti-colonial forces in both contexts, I consider the reception and adaptation of Irish literature in modern Algeria. Joyce's Ulysses was a model for Salim Bachi's Le Chien d'Ulysse (2001); Beckett continues to be performed in Algeria; and Irish literary figures appear in novels by authors like Mustapha Benfodil. I look at how Irish texts have been reformulated by Algerians and propose a new way of thinking about intertextuality across national and linguistic contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Algeria
• Ireland
• Salim Bachi
• transnationalism
• intertextuality

Notes

1. Daoud, Kamel. Meursault, contre-enquête. Algiers: Éditions Barzakh, 2013.

2. In an essay on William Butler Yeats, Edward Said writes that “For an Indian, or Irishman, or Algerian, the land was and had been dominated by an alien power, whether liberal, monarchical, or revolutionary” (Culture and Imperialism 221).

3. McDougall, James. History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

4. Tamalet Talbayev, Edwige. The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean. New York: Fordham UP, 2017.

5. Murphy, David, ed. The First World Festival of Negro Arts: Dakar 1966. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2016.

6. Sansal, Boualem. 2084: La Fin du monde. Paris: Gallimard, 2015.

7. Schlink, Bernhard. Le Liseur. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.

8. Crowley, Patrick, ed. Algeria: Nation, Culture, Transnationalism 1988–2015. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2017.

9. Gallimard publishes Bachi's novels and Ulysses was first published in serial form in a New York journal called The Little Review in 1918, and as a book, by Sylvia Beach, in Paris, in 1922.

10. Orlando, Valérie. “The Truncated Memories and Fragmented Pasts of Contemporary Algeria: Salim Bachi's Le Chien d'Ulysse.” International Journal of Francophone Studies 6.2 (2003): 103–118.

11. Bachi, Salim. “James Joyce.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20.1 (2016): 150–160.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Corbin Treacy

Corbin Treacy is Assistant Professor of French at Florida State University. His research focuses on the interplay of aesthetics and politics in Maghrebi literature and film, with a particular emphasis on contemporary Algerian cultural production. His forthcoming book, Aesthetics and Aftermath: Algerian Literature and Film in the Twenty-First Century (Liverpool UP), describes how recent Algerian novels and films constellate a set of aesthetic practices that respond to the compounded aftermath of the War for Independence and the civil war of the 1990s. He currently serves as Book Review Editor for literary history and criticism at The French Review.