"Assia Djebar and ""La Ville Blanche"": Writing in and on the *City"

I demonstrate how Algiers itself, by virtue of its historical double-ness, serves as cipher for the double subject. In addition, the geophysical configuration of Algiers, with its steep streets and stairways, and its ubiquitous view onto the Mediterranean, becomes complicit with the characters' yearning to tumble down the slope and take off over the water, a recurring image in a number of Djebar's novels. This deployment of Algiers stands in contrast to much Algerian literature, which tends to depict the city as an alienating and hostile space, or with regard to much colonial literature, as a paradise of innocent pleasures. For purposes of condensation, I identify the movement of the subject through the city as starting in the Casbah, embodiment of Algiers past, continuing down the hillside to the modern city and ending at the port, a site that Djebar revisits in several of her works, and which serves as the interface between self and other.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Kuntz, Jane Theresa

Contributors dc:contributor

• Accad, Evelyne

• Language, Modern

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3070019

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86261