Vol. 4–5 of Itinéraires et Contacts de Culture by Littératures du Magherb (review)

B ook R eviews pages) to go uncommented on, prevent the development, here again in Volume II, of a pur­ poseful argument, apart from polemics such as the following: “Pour lui, l’oeuvre ne doit jamais être séparée de la vie, bourgeon terminal détaché, élixir quintessencié. Elle n’a pas de sens si elle ne porte en elle l’ambition de changer la vie, de transformer le monde.” The detailed discussion of Kateb’s transition to popular theater, on the other hand, will be of great interest to Kateb scholars, although description and analysis of his work since his definitive return to Algeria lie outside the scope of Arnaud’s thesis. This study, then, is indispensable for readers who want to “live” Kateb’s writing—less so for those who simply want to understand it. Louis T r e m a in e University o f Richmond L i t t é r a t u r e s d u M a g h r e b , vol. 4-5 of I t i n é r a i r e s e t C o n t a c t s d e C u l t u r e . Paris: L’Harmattan, 1984. Pp. 393. 95 FF. Littératures du Maghreb brings together a collection of 14 essays on francophonie, Arabic, and oral Maghrebian literature. Predictably, those most affected by recent struc­ turalist and deconstructionist developments, and indeed the most intellectually challenging, are located in the section “Etudes Littéraires” dealing largely with Algerian authors. A number, like the first piece by Christiane Achour, defy simple categorization by their originality. In a study on Feraoun, Achour considers the manner in which schooltexts influence the act of writing, especially within the context of colonialism, and the way in which literary texts are manipulated in the process of being transformed into extracts for schooltexts so as to take on certain ideological characteristics. The creation of schooltexts would seem to have the purpose of perpetuating the very values which lay at the origin of the author’s schooling. Those values, initially colonialist, now liberal-humanist, echo each other in frightening fashion. In a rich study on Kateb, Réda Bensmaïa goes over the issue of language in Algerian literature, and the loss or fragmentation of culture experienced by the audience. Bensmaïa is concerned especially with the masses of people themselves since he is treating Kateb’s theatre and the problem of surmounting the difficulties posed by “de-territorialization.” Kateb’s project is to recreate both an audience and a new possibility for culture—a “re-territorialization.” The community aspects form a new type of political theatre, while the problems posed by the use of French are resolved by the deconstruction, defamiliarization of the language—not a technique that harmonizes easily with the goal of re-territorialization of culture for the masses of the people. Gaha’s essay on Kateb analyzes three levels of representation: metaphor, symbol, and narration. The transformation of a confused metaphorical level through the utilization of a biographical optic, to a polysemantic symbolic narrative, is ably demonstrated. The two essays on Farès cover similar ground, but with vastly different effects. Begin­ ning with a complicated series of observations on orality, Raybaud develops a dense, not very lucid, analysis of the poem “Le Travail du poème” in Champs des Oliviers. Drawing upon similar notions, especially Bakhtin’s idea of the carnavalesque, Anne Roche proceeds to show how the obscurities of the Farèsnian text are made comprehensible when viewed from the angle of a genre which turns the world, its values, and the text, topsy-turvy. At the heart of her cogent analysis of Farès, as well as of Meddeb, is to be found the recurrent problem of how subversion and language are related. François Desplanches addresses the issue of writing itself as a theme in Dib’s work— considering not the meta-textual statements but the intra-textual references. Desplanches suggests that the very key to Dib’s work is coyly concealed behind this unobtrusive theme. Vol.XXVI, No. 1 95 L ’E sprit C réateur As he deciphers...