Jean-Paul Sartre's famous question, "For whom do we write?" strikes
close to home for francophone writers from the Maghreb. Do these writers
address their compatriots, many of whom are illiterate or read no
French, or a broader audience beyond Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia? In
Experimental Nations, Réda Bensmaïa argues powerfully against the
tendency to view their works not as literary creations worth considering
for their innovative style or language but as "ethnographic" texts and
to appraise them only against the "French literary canon." He casts
fresh light on the original literary strategies many such writers have
deployed to reappropriate their cultural heritage and "reconfigure"
their nations in the decades since colonialism.
Tracing the move from the anticolonial, nationalist, and arabist
literature of the early years to the relative cosmopolitanism and
diversity of Maghrebi francophone literature today, Bensmaïa draws on
contemporary literary and postcolonial theory to "deterritorialize" its
study. Whether in Assia Djebar's novels and films, Abdelkebir Khatabi's
prose poems or critical essays, or the novels of Nabile Farès,
Abdelwahab Meddeb, or Mouloud Feraoun, he raises the veil that hides the
intrinsic richness of these artists' works from the eyes of even an
attentive audience. Bensmaïa shows us how such Maghrebi writers have
opened their nations as territories to rediscover and stake out, to
invent, while creating a new language. In presenting this masterful
account of "virtual" but veritable nations, he sets forth a new and
fertile topography for francophone literature.
