Algeria "Revisited": Imperialism, Resistance, and the Dialectic of Violence in Mohammed Dib's The Savage Night

Writing in the midst of one of bloodiest conflicts in the history of postcolonial Algeria, Mohammed Dib probes the brutalities of war, exploitation and the isolation of economic marginalization, and the complexities of postcolonality in his The Savage Night. For Dib violence is not an inexplicable component of human society, but the outcome of systemic conditions that continually work against the concept of humanity itself. The relationship between writer and society for Dib is less a process of conscious alignment than it is a means of nurturing the dialectical relation that emerges when texts collide with history. In this collection of stories, Mohammed Dib overcomes the existentialist abandonment of the uncommitted writer to confront what he calls the "invisible prison" of systemic violence by offering a model for aesthetic confrontation based on intellectual engagement and the awakening of the reader to the accountability of the text.