An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Abdelbaqi Ghorab (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-25)
Writing the National Crisis: A Comparative Literary Approach to the Algerian Black Decade and the South African Apartheid
For many African nations, the move towards a supposed postcolonial world has been riddled with significant socio-political challenges related to issues of ethnicity, indigeneity, language and religion. In my project, I explore the postcolonial instability of Algeria and South Africa, as two major African nations with relatively different decolonisation processes that produced two distinct social outcomes, to highlight the inherent coloniality of the concept of nation in its current configurations. I employ the literary production of the two nations, during their respective national crises, to discuss the idea of national literature as an antithesis to national identity. In this talk, by looking at Yasmina Khadra’s A quoi rêvent les loups (1999) and Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story (1990), I attempt to challenge the language-literature lens that informs how literature is produced or critiqued in Algeria and South Africa. This language-literature approach is an extension of a problematic nation-building process that is informed by a colonial model. I discuss how literature resists this model and accentuates the overlooked socio-cultural specificities of postcolonial Algeria and South Africa.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83015772676
Passcode: b1QpaAD7