Abstract:
South African author André Brink and the Algerian Assia Djebar have been described as a
duo of literature and struggle. Various parallels exist between the authors’ oeuvres: both
authors strive to create a chain of voices for those who have been ignored or silenced;
they attempt to re-evaluate the colonial experience while problematising the complexities
of present-day South Africa and Algeria; their narratives foreground language, space, and
power struggles between coloniser and colonised, master and slave, man and woman.
Their characters represent a desire for freedom and the need for resistance in the quest
for liberation. In this article I focus on the comparable role of space, and more specifically
spaces of exclusion, in a selection of the authors’ works. Postcolonial theories serve as
a framework for establishing Brink and Djebar’s similar stance regarding the notion of
exclusion. Amongst others, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘beyond’ and Édouard Glissant’s
notion of ‘relation’ are employed to strengthen arguments made concerning the characters’
desire for movement which results from them being excluded from certain spaces. In this
article I demonstrate how their characters feel attracted to cross borders that exclude in a
quest for inclusion. An endless, open, and powerful movement is the result of the opposing
forces of exclusion and attraction their characters experience.
Description:
This article is based on my PhD dissertation, “Movement through space in the works of
Assia Djebar and André Brink”, completed under the supervision of Prof. Willie Burger
at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. The degree was awarded on 16 May
2022.
All English translations of excerpts from the novels are my own.
