Écrire l'inattendu: les 'Printemps arabes' entre fictions et histoire ed. by Elena Chiti, Touriya Fili-Tullon, Blandine Valford (review)

This book follows in the footsteps of recent publications reading francophone texts in light of the revolutionary ethos fostered by the Arab uprisings — among them Faustin Mvogo's Le Printemps arabe: prémisses et autopsie littéraires (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012), Wassyla Tamzali's Histoires minuscules des révolutions arabes (Alger: Chihab, 2012), and Samia Kassab-Charfi's special issue of Expressions maghrébines., 14.2, 'Mascunin/fémilin: sexte et révolutions' (2015). With illuminating forays into Arabic and various non-literary forms of artistic expression (graffiti, lexical creativity on social media, film, and videotaped testimonies), the volume showcases contributions rooted in disciplines as varied as history, semiotics, sociolinguistics, visual arts, cultural studies, and literary studies. Thinking the 'Arab Spring' through the concept of the unexpected ('l'inattendu') affords a two-pronged approach that informs the authors' reading of the revolution as contemporary 'event' (Derrida) and fosters a retrospective reflection on the poetics of the unforeseen in francophone literature. Charles Bonn's prefatory piece heralds the volume's deep emphasis on francophone Maghrebi writing by tracing the centrality of the concept of the unexpected to the critic's study of Algerian literature. The authors bring the focus on epistemological and historical reflections on the power of language and literature in a revolutionary context. Through a recalibration of the unexpected as rupture (Elena Chiti), transgression (Khalid Zekri), or a heuristic device to think the dialectic of memorialization and history-writing (Kmar Bendana), the volume reflects on the purview of literary writing in the face of an irrupting event whose meaning cannot yet be parsed out. Several chapters examine the perils of writing about contemporary circumstances in the absence of reflective distance and probe the specific aesthetics that the situation induces (Sonia Zlitni Fitouri's analysis of post-revolutionary testimonial literature in Tunisia and Touriya Fili-Tullon's reading of prosopopoeia and the writing of utopia in post-revolutionary francophone writing from the Arab world). The book also engages the longue durée of history by bringing to light the long-standing reflection on individual rights underpinning francophone Maghrebi literature. Contributors thus read recent post-revolutionary poetics alongside Jean Sénac's promotion of 'nouvelle poésie algérienne' in the 1970s (Blandine Valfort), the corpus of Moroccan littérature carcérale (Abdellah Baida on Abdellatif Laâbi and Jeanne Fouet-Fauvernier on testimonial narratives written by former Tazmamart prisoners), and literary reflections on transgressive subjectivities tearing asunder political consensus (Zekri on the blurring of Maghrebi gendered identities and Mohamed Bahi on the critique of totalitarian states in Tunisia and Egypt). This deep historical contextualization lends legitimacy to readings of the uprisings as impactful revolution rather than as a short-term, disorganized revolt doomed to limited political longevity. Whether 'reconfiguration du sensible' (Zekri, p. 84) or premonition of the upheavals to come (Bahi, Baida), the focus on literary writing lends the 'Arab spring' historical density. This variegated volume also provides rich, comprehensive bibliographical notes on post-revolutionary cultural production. This is a momentous historical juncture for the Arab world, which, as this volume demonstrates, is leaving its mark on the literary and cultural production of North Africa. This is an exciting and timely book that will be of interest to anybody invested in the study of francophone literature and postcolonial aesthetics.