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  • Polygraphies: Francophone Women Writing Algeria by Alison Rice
  • Anne Donadey
Polygraphies: Francophone Women Writing Algeria by Alison Rice Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2012. x + 243 pp. ISBN 9780813932927 paper.

Polygraphies focuses on similarities among works by seven contemporary women writers who all have a connection to Algeria, write in French, and include autobiographical elements in their fiction. Rice is an Hélène Cixous and Assia Djebar specialist whose theoretical framework is heavily influenced by another thinker born in Algeria, Jacques Derrida. The book devotes significant space to these two major women writers. The works of Maïssa Bey and Zahia Rahmani are also given full consideration. Rice argues that the seven writers highlight the relational aspect of their autobiographical fictions in order to testify to the importance of subjugated voices.

In the first of four sections, Rice focuses on a variety of meaningful relationships in the autobiographical fictions of Cixous, Djebar, and Bey. She highlights the importance of solidarity with others and of bearing witness to distress and death. In the comparative chapters that make up part two, she addresses Marie Cardinal, Cixous, and Djebar’s representations of Algeria as mother and Bey and Djebar’s engagement with Albert Camus through his love for his mother and for Algeria as metaphorical mother. Part three focuses on the body, with a chapter on how Cixous’s representation of the body—one of her major themes—has evolved to include the body in pain, aging, and illness. Another chapter highlights how Bey, Djebar, Malika Mokeddem, and Leïla Sebbar attempt to write about sexual pleasure in a context in which this is not perceived as appropriate, including by one’s own father. In the final section on various relationships, Rice highlights how Djebar tends to portray love relationships that do not endure. These endings are presented as new beginnings that create possibilities for movement into the open, a figure for liberation in Djebar’s works. The next chapter demonstrates how going back to the homeland in Mokeddem’s fiction turns out to be a return that is not due to gender issues. Chapter nine on Rahmani’s beautiful texts reveals how she brings into history the story of her silent and shamed harki father, with whom she [End Page 189] identifies. Unlike most scholars, Rice also insightfully analyzes the importance of the mother. The final chapter emphasizes allegories of woman and nation in Bey’s works. Several marginalized female characters who are all either parentless or childless learn to forge new, horizontal networks of solidarity and affiliation that provide female-centered models for the Algerian nation.

Each chapter is convincingly argued and develops important points. The comparisons between Cixous and Djebar in chapter one, based on sophisticated close readings, are particularly compelling. Rice makes a significant and original contribution to the very large scholarship on both authors and to the emerging scholarship on Bey and Rahmani. However, including original French quotations (and not simply their English translations) would have allowed readers to fully appreciate the stylistic originality of the works.

Anne Donadey
San Diego State University
ADONADEY@MAIL.SDSU.EDU
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