Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (Tulane University)

Monday, 06 October, 2014 5:00 pm

Diffenbaugh rm 009

“Je ne demande rien: seulement qu’ils nous hantent encore, qu’ils nous habitent … Oh, mes amis, pas le blanc de l’oubli, je vous en prie, préservez-moi !” 

(Assia Djebar, Le Blanc de l’Algérie 56).

By investigating feminine engagements with the symbolic and aesthetic aftermath of the black decade, this lecture aims to identify new modes of writing that have emerged in post-1990s Algerian fiction. In patent contrast to the model of femininity pandered by mater dolorosa icons such as the widely-circulated 1997 “La Madone de Bentalha,” which came to epitomize the condition of the Algerian woman throughout the conflict, these texts propose an alternative rendering of feminine identity and civic agency resting on the interrogation of the complex relationship between gendered individuation and the enduring legacy of violence. Directly addressing the imperative of memorialization as the basis for any post-traumatic form of female self-definition, these narratives delineate an alternative poetic of mourning moored in the charged differential space between oblivion and excessive, pathological remembering. This new liturgical model calls into question the constitutive repression at the heart of the 1999 State amnesty, adopting instead an ethical politicized mode of remembrance attendant to the specters of the past against any authoritative ready-made form of public memory.

For more information contact: 
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics

Florida State University

Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1540

Telephone 850.644.7636

Fax 850.644.9917

E-mail icffs@mailer.fsu.edu

Website www.winthropking.fsu.edu