Tradition and Transgression in the Novels of Assia Djebar and Aicha Lemsine

Man is the outer lamp, woman is the inner lamp.

Proverb

Language is no longer linked to the knowing of things, but to human freedom.

Michel Foucault

Feminist and postcolonial theories alike have begun by simply subverting images of existing hierarchies (gender/class/culture/race) in a patriarchal or colonial setting. This strategy was not very effective, because a person may belong to more than one group simultaneously, as Trinh Minh-ha suggests by proposing the "triple bind" (6) in which women of the so-called Third World ¹ may find themselves—being colonized once by the colonizer then by the patriarchal order—caught between the problems of race and gender. Women writers face these predicaments in addition to the ambivalence vis-à-vis the language in which they write: "Writer of color? Woman writer? Or woman of color? Which comes first? Where does she place her loyalties? On the other hand, she often finds herself at odds with language, which partakes in the white-male-norm ideology and is used predominantly as a vehicle to circulate established power relations" (Minh-ha 6). Contemporary authors have attempted to articulate personal, individual theories on identity politics, theories through which they hope to be able to express the totality of their identities as they create new methodologies for others who wish to grapple with the continually shifting discussion of identity. ² Gloria Anzaldúa and Eva Hoffman, in their respective texts, Borderlands/La Frontera and Lost in Translation, attempt to articulate how their identities are constructed and contribute "to paradigmatic shifts in theorizing difference" (Yarbro-Bejarano 7). These authors approach the problem of constructing a politics of identity from a transnational perspective, recognizing and foregrounding the historical specificity of their individual experiences and asserting that in a responsibly transnational critique of constructions of identity, historical contexts cannot be dismissed. Their texts share a focus on transnationalism, an emphasis on the historical, global, and contextual specificity of experience, particularly as it relates to questions of language. They respond to Gayatri Spivak's injunction that "one needs to be vigilant against simple notions of identity which overlap with language or location" ("Poststructuralism" 201) by beginning with discussions of language and then building on those discussions to create their larger theories of identity.

Identity may be linked to tradition, which in turn may be understood as a system of long-established beliefs and customs, which plays an essential role in creating identity. Tradition, however, has other definitions as well—"any unwritten religious teachings regarded as coming from the founder or earliest prophet of a religion" (Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd concise ed., 1982). The application of the term in this paper corresponds more to the latter definition.

Tradition has been portrayed as a negative force when it comes to the Third World. Fatma Müge Göçek considers that "[Western] studies on the Third World often contain Orientalist elements that treat social processes in cultures and societies other than itself as static or, at best, as derivative" (5). Raymond Williams reveals the reasons tradition is such an important element of so-called "traditional societies," as many of the Third World societies are labeled by Western critics. This label is the result of a homogenization of the so-called peripheries embedded in the Western mind. ³ Williams notes that tradition legitimates hegemony, thus reproduces power and keeps power relations intact: "Tradition, as an active coping agent, is the most powerful means of societal incorporation" (111). However, it may also be a form of resistance by enhancing the difference between postcolonial and Western societies, as it does not encourage non-Western societies to fall prey to consumerism, dictated by the endless appetite of the economies of the so-called Industrialized World. In gender relations tradition keeps patriarchy alive, and women in postcolonial societies may not escape the "double" or even "triple bind." In conclusion, traditions...