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.

Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb (Translation/Transnation)

Literature & Fiction

Bensmaïa, Réda

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

The Barthes Effect was first published in 1987. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The author acknowledges the essay as an eccentric phenomenon in literary history, one that has long resisted entry into the taxonomy of genres, as it concentrates on four works by Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text, A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida. Maintains that with Barthes the essay achieves a status of its own, as reflective text.". . . a study rigorously conscious of the critical maneuvers  it executes and, more importantly, questions as critical practice . . . " Bensmaïa's  strategy produces a successful investigation of the interstices and slippages  of meaning which Barthes addressed in his work." SubStanceReda Bensmaia is associate professor in the departments of French and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, and translator Pat Fedkiew, a graduate student in French at Minnesota. Michele Richman is associate professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Reading Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift.

The Barthes Effect: The Essay As Reflective Text (Theory & History of Literature)

Univ of Minnesota Pr

The Barthes Effect was first published in 1987. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The author acknowledges the essay as an eccentric phenomenon in literary history, one that has long resisted entry into the taxonomy of genres, as it concentrates on four works by Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text, A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida. Maintains that with Barthes the essay achieves a status of its own, as reflective text.
". . . a study rigorously conscious of the critical maneuvers it executes and, more importantly, questions as critical practice . . . " Bensmaïa's strategy produces a successful investigation of the interstices and slippages of meaning which Barthes addressed in his work." SubStance
Reda Bensmaia is associate professor in the departments of French and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, and translator Pat Fedkiew, a graduate student in French at Minnesota. Michele Richman is associate professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Reading Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift.

The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text (Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 54) (Volume 54)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University of Minnesota Press

This novel is a tale of exile and passage. The narrator is a North African, now living in the United States because he has been condemned by religious fanatics after the publication of his novel entitled Dead Letters. He is disillusioned with literature, and his life events are beyond his control. He can only write, and he fabricates material from trends imposed on him by the American academy. Reda Bensmaia's knowledge of the history, the literature, and the philosophical ideas of our times underlies the novel. He offers, among other things, an important reflection on U.S. political culture, touching on issues ranging from foreign policy in the Middle East to the media's role in alternately demonizing Muslim cultures and fostering ignorance of them.

Year Of Passages (Volume 5) (Theory Out Of Bounds)

Contemporary

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Gilles Deleuze, Postcolonial Theory, and the Philosophy of Limit (Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought)

Does a philosopher have an 'identity'? What kind of 'identity' is mobilized when the work of a philosopher becomes a major reference for certain schools of thought, as in the case of Gilles Deleuze and postcolonial theory? Have the promoters of a generalized Deleuzeanism taken care their usage of his specialized work does him justice? Few exponents of postcolonial and subaltern theories now dispute the influence that Deleuze's work exerted on the intellectuals and theorists who developed those theories. However, this book contends that postcolonial and subaltern theorists have engaged with Deleuzean thought in ways that have perhaps produced a long series of misunderstandings – for which Deleuze himself is not responsible. By engaging with recent innovations in North African culture and by examining the dissemination of Deleuze's identities across a broad range of postcolonial theory, Réda Bensmaïa shows that the 'encounter' between Deleuze and the postcolonial movement can only be understood through the idea of a 'transcendental' field, in which Deleuze and his postcolonial followers find themselves captured.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Bloomsbury Academic

Does a philosopher have an 'identity'? What kind of 'identity' is mobilized when the work of a philosopher becomes a major reference for certain schools of thought, as in the case of Gilles Deleuze and postcolonial theory? Have the promoters of a generalized Deleuzeanism taken care their usage of his specialized work does him justice?
 Few exponents of postcolonial and subaltern theories now dispute the influence that Deleuze's work exerted on the intellectuals and theorists who developed those theories. However, this book contends that postcolonial and subaltern theorists have engaged with Deleuzean thought in ways that have perhaps produced a long series of misunderstandings – for which Deleuze himself is not responsible. By engaging with recent innovations in North African culture and by examining the dissemination of Deleuze's identities across a broad range of postcolonial theory, Réda Bensmaïa shows that the 'encounter' between Deleuze and the postcolonial movement can only be understood through the idea of a 'transcendental' field, in which Deleuze and his postcolonial followers find themselves captured.

Alger ou La maladie de la mémoire (Awal)

Social Sciences

L'Harmattan

Beirut-born artist Mona Hatoum has been known, since the early 1990s, for large-scale poetic and politically-minded installations in which she transforms domestic objects such as chairs, cots and kitchen utensils into implements that connote torture or incarceration. This volume documents Hatoum's works shown at the historic Fondazione Querini Stampalia Museum. Included here are photos of the museum, of the cities where her meetings with biennial curators took place (Venice, Berlin, New York, London and Amman) and images from Lebanon of historical documents used in the project. In addition to this new commission, the book illustrates other recent works, in a diverse range of media, including installation, sculpture, video, photography and works on paper that demonstrate Hatoum's nimble fusion of Minimalism's pared-down aesthetics and the absurdist spirit of Surrealism.

Mona Hatoum: Interior Landscape

Arts & Photography

Bertola, Chiara

Individual Artists

Charta

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