Algerian Imprints: Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous by Brigitte Weltman-Aron (review)

Algerian Imprints: Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous is a must read. Brigitte Weltman-Aron has provided scholars specializing in the writing of Assia Djebar and/or Hélène Cixous with eloquent insights into the works of these two celebrated francophone writers, who are only rarely discussed together. Even the general reader who is interested in francophone writers, most especially in women writers, will find a treasure trove of analysis and close reading that delivers a complex yet complementary grounding of the ever-present Algerian element in the work of these two writers.

The figure of Algeria looms large in both the lives and writing of Cixous and Djebar. The ways in which the history, languages, and geography of Algeria supply a rich source of creation for these two writers have been studied by many but usually in the context of either Djebar or Cixous alone. Weltman-Aron has managed to metaphorically invite both writers into our mental space and, through an elegantly written, jargon-free analysis of a well-chosen selection of their texts, provide fresh and provocative insight into the Algerian impulse that has motivated the central concepts of their writerly itineraries.

It is fair to say that many will approach this book as primarily a reader of either Cixous or Djebar. I myself am much more familiar with the works of Cixous, less so with those of Djebar. Yet from the introductory pages of Algerian Imprints, where Weltman-Aron underscores her interest in the concept of dissensus, a term designating “antagonism within a discourse” or “dissent, nonconformity with predominant views in a community,” readers are drawn into a critical reading process that will yield both new revelations about the texts of the better-known writer of the pair and a wealth of information and inspiration about the work of the other (p. xi). For readers who are already conversant with the writings of both Djebar and Cixous, the contrastive analyses set forth will be both extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

Weltman-Aron has divided her book into two main parts: “Colonial Demarcations” and “Poetics of Language.” In her discussions of the primordial function of the colonial in Cixous and Djebar, she focuses on two principal areas: first, the importance of writing the body (in terms of both Djebar’s and Cixous’s textuality) and their approaches to “rethinking spatiality by examining scenes in which the body’s ascription to a place becomes untenable” (p. xvi); and second, the critical nature in which the legacy of colonial education in French Algeria has left traces throughout their writing, where “the literary space they started approaching at school exemplifies the calling into question of cultural and linguistic boundaries” (pp. xvi-xvii).

In discussing poetics of language relating to the two authors, Weltman-Aron has chosen to devote two thematic areas to Djebar—the “Poetics of the Trace” (in chapter three) and “The Sound of Broken Memory: Djebar’s Women Fighters” (in chapter five)—and two to Cixous—“Language as Hospitality” (in chapter four) and “Allergy in the Body Politic: War in Cixous” (in chapter six). She argues that both writers are consistently engaged in the exploration of language and the act of writing not through questions of “a national language or a mother tongue” but in a much more interesting and complex questioning of “a cluster of languages that advances the evaluation of Algeria as heterogeneous plurality and asserts the political benefits of suspending allegiance and identification” (p. xvii). These six anchoring chapters furnish readers with not only an overarching discussion of basic themes but also sufficiently detailed theoretical material to access the precisely detailed close readings of individual texts, allowing the basic concepts of the “ethical space” in the two authors’ works to unfold logically and with admirable clarity.

Weltman-Aron’s...