“On peut apprendre de la littérature à se méfier”: Writing and Doubt in the Contemporary Algerian Novel

ABSTRACT

In his study of the Maghrebian novel and decolonization, Le Roman maghrébin, Abdelkébir Khatibi clearly allies literature with revolution. Indeed, according to Khatibi, the mission of the novel at that time was to “exprimer le drame d'une société en crise” [“represent the drama of a society in crisis”] (11). Since the horrors of Algeria's “décennie noire,” however, and in particular in response to the war waged against liberal and francophone intellectuals during this period, the francophone Maghrebian novel as it is represented in Algeria has expressed an increased sense of unease towards own status and power. This article will investigate the representation of political dissidence and doubt in the Algerian novel in the most recent period both by examining the way in which contemporary writers express their motivation for literary writing, and by exploring how writers use structure and form to convey doubt towards deterministic and ultimately oppressive forms of historiography and imposed knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Literature
• doubt
• politics
• dissidence
• form

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Notes on contributors

Jane Hiddleston

Jane Hiddleston is Professor of Literatures in French at the University of Oxford, England, where she has been teaching French and francophone literature since 2005. She has published several books on francophone literature and postcolonial theory, including: Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria (Liverpool UP, 2006), Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: The Anxiety of Theory (Liverpool UP, 2010), and Decolonising the Intellectual: Politics, Culture, and Humanism at the End of the French Empire (Liverpool UP, 2014).