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  • Encontres méditerranéennes: littératures et cultures France-Maghreb
  • Jane Hiddleston
Encontres méditerranéennes: littératures et cultures France-Maghreb By Mireille Rosello Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. 272pp. ISBN 2-296-01466-6. €23,50.

If terms such as "hybridity" and "transculturation" have turned into rather facile buzzwords too often bandied about by postcolonial critics, then Mireille Rosello's new study Encontres méditerranéennes offers a refreshing alternative framework for the theorisation of intercultural exchange. In the place of any implication of smooth cultural transfer, Rosello's "encontre" names an ambivalent encounter and conveys both communication and conflict. Playing both on the negative connotations of the phrase "à l'encontre de" 'contrary to,' and on the use of the term as a synonym for the more conciliatory "rencontre" 'meeting,' Rosello suggests that "encontre" might name a new form of interaction potentially amalgamating dialogue and divergence. This encounter would also be based not on hackneyed cultural oppositions but on the shock resulting from the creation of unforeseen combinations: "l'encontre est le nom d'un des types de rencontre qui se produit au sein d'un flot turbulent où l'observateur ne voit qu'un chaos informe, indifférencié et agité" 'the encounter is the name for one of those types of meeting which [End Page 239] happens in the middle of some turbulent stream where the observer sees only a formless chaos, undifferentiated and agitated' (14). Rosello's concept does not shy away from figuring violence and conflict, but celebrates at the same time the alternative forms of identification and creativity that can emerge from this vibrant meeting. The focus of the analysis is above all on interactions between France and the Maghreb, but one of the commendable ambitions of the book is to propose a new, theoretically sophisticated concept able to cope with the ambivalent cultural production of postcoloniality. Laden with neither positive nor negative value, "l'encontre n'a rien d'une entente cordiale. Elle est faite d'un désir inextinguible et violent de rencontres qui dépassent les conditions de la rencontre" 'the encounter has nothing in common with the entente cordiale. It is created out of a tireless and violent desire for meetings that exceed the conditions of the meeting' (26).

This illuminating and rigorous framework informs the analyses carried out in the rest of the study. Rosello's material is diverse and wide-ranging, but in each chapter she carefully teases out the perplexing and ambivalent effects of the Franco-Maghrebi encounter. Chapter one discusses the complexity of the construction of 2003 as "l'année de l'Algérie en France" and goes on to use the encounters between the French and the Algerian football teams as an example of this fluctuation between mediation and division. In the second chapter, Rosello offers a careful reading of Djebar's "Le corps de Félicie" and suggests that the story encourages us to think through a form of encounter between France and Algeria that neither promises fusion, nor sets itself up as a universal solution. Chapter three asks whether Abdelkebir Khatibi and Fouad Laroui can be seen to propose a particular form of "créolité" specific to the Maghreb, and chapter four analyzes the negotiation with historical narrative figured in Lallaoui's La colline aux oliviers. Chapter five is one of Rosello's most philosophically complex sections, and discusses spectral encounters across time in the work of Djebar, Charef and Benguigui. Finally, chapter six uses the figure of the acrobat to evoke cultural mobility and flexibility in tandem with corporeal reinvention. In every section, Rosello combines close knowledge of her material with acute theoretical exegesis, and this succeeds giving the work a particular dynamism and energy. This is a highly original and intelligent study that significantly develops the field of francophone criticism and takes it to a new level of sophistication.

Jane Hiddleston
Exeter College, Oxford
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