Movement through space in the works of Assia Djebar and André Brink

Abstract

Algerian author Assia Djebar and the South-African André Brink have been described as a duo of literature and of struggle. Various parallels exist between the authors’ oeuvres: Both authors strive to create a chain of voices for those that have been ignored or silenced; they attempt to re-evaluate the colonial experience while problematizing the complexities of present day Algeria and South Africa; their narratives foreground language, space and power struggles between colonizer and colonized, master and slave, man and woman. Their characters represent a desire for freedom and the need for resistance in the quest for liberation.

This thesis will focus on landscape, place and space in Djebar and Brink’s work. Numerous investigations on space in both authors’ individual œuvres have been conducted but none of these compared the role of space in their work. In this comparative study space will be explored from two perspectives: firstly a ‘typical’ post-colonial framework will be used. The analysis will draw on the work of postcolonial theorists such as Ashcroft, Glissant, Bhabha, Said, Pratt and Schama. Secondly, I will make use of an alternative ‘postcritical’ approach to examine the role of space in Djebar and Brink’s novels. This second ‘postcritical reading’ will be based on the work of, among others, Felski, Latour, Macé and Citton who advocate modes of interpretation that emphasize the coproduction between the text and the reader. This approach will focus on the role of the reader as a ‘coactor’ with regard to space in the texts.

This study will make a twofold contribution: While a comparative study will provide fertile insights into both these authors’ work and thus contribute to the body of critical work on their œuvres, and in the process allow for a comparison of the postcolonial experiences in Algeria and South Africa, it will also explore the current theoretical debate concerning “critical” and “postcritical” approaches to literary studies from a “global South” perspective.