The Critical Pulse of the Contre-enquête: Kamel Daoud on the Maghrebi Novel in French

ABSTRACT

In his apparent send-up of Camus' colonial classic L'Étranger, first-time Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud produces a far more ambiguous document. Meursault, contre-enquête perhaps the most famous Maghrebi novel of the early 21st century, subverts is own ostensible goal of critiquing Camus while also using the genre of the “postcolonial remake” to make a broad comment on literature itself. Exceptional in many ways, Daoud's novel nonetheless may be read as emblematic: it appears to exceed its cultural origins while all the while gesturing back to them and resincribing the Maghrebi novel's ability to resonate on both local and universal levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Francophone postcolonial
• adaptation
• postmodern literature
• Algerian novel
• postcolonial remake

Notes

1. Indeed, one of the grand narratives of the North African novel in French may be its unremitting interrogation, in various forms and venues, of its conditions of survival and relationship to France. For a small sampling of predictions and prescriptions by Maghrebi authors, see: Memmi; Haddad; Khaïr-Eddine; Khatibi.

2. MCE was published in 2013 by Editions Barzakh (Algiers) and in 2014 by Actes Sud (Arles). Although the two editions are essentially identical, a few ostensibly minor changes are worthy of note, among the title used to refer to Camus' novel. In the Barzakh edition, the book is titled L’Étranger, in clear reference to the actual text; the Actes Sud edition uses the title L'Autre in order to steer around intellectual property issues. (See Kaplan, forthcoming)

3. Page numbers refer to the Actes Sud version, and are followed by references to the English translation.

4. For Linda Hutcheon, this is the very nature of postmodernism, which “ultimately manages to install and reinforce as much as undermine and subvert the conventions and presuppositions it appears to challenge.” (1–2). Derek Attridge makes a similar observation about the aporia of “counter discourses,” which “in seeking to challenge the values on which a canon is established, cannot help but reinscribe the canon, but they do so in new, and newly critical, ways” (Quoted in Sanders 105).

5. “Writing back,” now nearly a commonplace, first gained traction as a concept in The Empire Writes Back. Of course, not all “writing back” takes the form of a “remake,” and “postcolonial remakes” themselves are not produced exclusively by former colonial subjects.

6. I recognize, of course, that scholarly conversations have trended away from this avenue of inquiry, preferring to highlight minor transnational/transcolonial relationships, or models that leverage “the Mediterranean” as a space of encounter. Posing questions that return us to the France-Maghreb binary admittedly provokes a sense of déjà vu; if I do so here, however, it is precisely because the obsessive rehearsal of Daoud's debt to L’Étranger (particularly in literary critiques that highlight his “bravura” in “hijacking” or “regurgitating” Camus) rekindles an “influence discourse” that many scholars had hoped to leave behind. See Assouline, Arvet, Petetin.

7. The concept is Djebar's in Ces voix qui m'assiègent… en marge de ma francophonie (233). For an erudite analysis of its implications, see Harrison.

8. Those who have noted (and/or critiqued) Camus' representation of indigenous characters include Algerian novelists (Djemaï (109); Feraoun (54); Kateb (9)), as well as Saïd (Culture and Imperialism (169-187); “Anthropology's Interlocutors” (223)). For an overview of Camus' reception amongst the Algerian literati, see Mathieu-Job.

9. This has also been noted by Kaplan (forthcoming).

10. Moussa, (or Mūsa in standard romanization), is the Arabic name of Moses, the most oft-cited prophet in the Koran.

11. Defoe's eighteenth-century novel has been the object of numerous remakes, including by J.M. Cotezee, Michel Tournier, and Derek Walcott.

12. Using “Meursault” as a synecdoche for Algerians is not a new maneuver for Daoud. His op-ed piece “36 millions de Meursaults” describes the Algerian people as so many Meursaults, monadic and alienated in a world without reason.

13. There is a small (but not insignificant) inconsistency in the English translation. In the original, it is the story of Musa that takes on a different form according to the mother's whims, whereas the English iteration makes Musa the object of the action—it is he “who took a different form every time.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lia Brozgal

Lia Brozgal is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA. She is the author of Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory (Nebraska UP, 2014) and co-editor of “Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture and Politics” (Liverpool UP, 2016). Her essays on Maghrebi film, beur literature, October 17, and Judeo-Maghrebi memoir appear in SCTIW Review, South Central Review, French Studies, and French Forum.