Women Writing War

Women Writing War

The Life-writing of
the Algerian moudjahidate

Caroline E. Kelley

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kelley, Caroline E. (Caroline Elizabeth), 1973- author.

Title: Women writing war : the life-writing of the Algerian moudjahidate / Caroline E. Kelley.

Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018042627 | ISBN 9783034308618 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Algerian literature (French)--Women authors--History and criticism. | Algerian literature (French)--20th century--History and criticism. | Algeria--History--Revolution, 1954-1962--Personal narratives, Algerian. | Algeria--History--Revolution, 1954-1962--Women. | Women revolutionaries--Algeria--Biography--History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PQ3988.5.A5 .K395 2019 | DDC 840.9/92870965--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042627

Cover picture: ‘Effe’ © Eddit Milkovitsch.

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

ISSN 2235-4123

ISBN 978-3-0343-0861-8 (print)  •  ISBN 978-1-78707-787-4 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78707-788-1 (ePub)  •  ISBN 978-1-78707-789-8 (mobi)

DOI 10.3726/b11487

© Peter Lang AG 2020

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Caroline E. Kelley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Caroline E. Kelley holds a D.Phil. from the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. She is an independent scholar and a lecturer at the Institut Catholique de Paris (Faculté des Lettres) Paris, France.

About the book

Women Writing War focuses on the life-writing of the moudjahidate, the women veterans of the Algerian war of independence (1954–1962). The author offers close readings of memoir, testimonial, poetry and drama by Jacqueline Guerroudj, Louisette Ighilahriz, Anna Gréki, Zhor Zerari and Myriam Ben, all of whom are documented moudjahidate and self-identify as Algerian. Reading their life-writing through the prism of theories of intertextuality, ‘minor’ literature and the dialectics of memory and trauma, the author explores the relationship between writing, resistance and political action. Since they compose their work in the first-person voice in the context of the Algerian war, this book argues that their writing operates collectively as a form of counterdiscourse, opening up a textual space where experiences that were previously silenced or marginalized might be expressed.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

A Note on Translations and Transliteration

Introduction

Chapter 1

Contexts

Chapter 2

Re-membering War: Memoir and Testimonial by Jacqueline Guerroudj and Louisette Ighilahriz

Chapter 3

Poetry and Intertextuality: Anna Gréki’s and Zhor Zerari’s Autobiographical Poems

Chapter 4

Toward a Minor Theatre: Myriam Ben’s Algerian Antigone

Conclusions

Bibliography

Index←v | vi→ ←vi | vii→

Acknowledgements

This book is the culmination of years of research and writing. It has accompanied me from its beginnings as a doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford to Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles, to the HUMlab in Umeå, Sweden, and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute in Montreal, Quebec, and, finally, to the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense and the Institut Catholique in Paris, France. A study of the life-writing of the Algerian moudjahidate, the women veterans of the war of independence (1954–1962), it also represents a significant part of my own life. Along the way, I have been fortunate to meet a number of people who have contributed to, nurtured and helped me to realize this project.

I must express my gratitude, first of all, to Gill Rye at the Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing, University of London, and the editor of Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing (Peter Lang, Oxford), for including my book in this series, as well as for the opportunity to organize the symposium, ‘War Stories: Reading the Postcolonial Text’, which took place on 1 May 2013 at the Senate House, University of London. I want to extend a heart-felt thanks to Laurel Plapp, Senior Commissioning Editor at Peter Lang, for her patience, encouragement and support. The careful feedback of the anonymous readers at Peter Lang has also been of great value and is much-appreciated, as well as the meticulous copy-editing work of Michael Garvey.

The publication of this book was made possible in part by the generous support of Adrian Piper and the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation (APRAF) in Berlin, which awarded me a multi-disciplinary fellowship in 2013. I am deeply grateful to Adrian for seeing the merit in this scholarship and supporting the final stages of its writing process.

I owe a special debt to my doctoral supervisors at Oxford University, Cathie Lloyd and the late Elizabeth Fallaize, for their support of this project through untold close readings, constructive criticism and research and methodological guidance, as well as my thesis examiners Jane Hiddleston and Margaret Majumdar, for overseeing the oral defence and for serving as←vii | viii→ intellectual inspiration for my research. Likewise, Michael Willis and Toby Garfitt provided useful advice at the confirmation of status defence.