Writing Beyond Trauma: Assia Djebar, Maissa Bey, and New National Identities after Algeria's Civil War

Abstract

As they confront the convergence of political terror and religious fanaticism in their literary works, Assia Djebar and Maïssa Bey mobilise ethical values to articulate a scathing denunciation of violence and terrorism. Their fiction presents new and decolonised forms of Islamic and national identity within traditional Algerian society. This article examines how two authors respond to terrorism and authoritarianism by rethinking and rewriting the question of identity in Algeria in terms that escape the oppressive rhetoric and future imposed either by fundamentalists or the state.