Call for Papers – Turath N°5: Mohammed Dib: From the Paradigm of the Original Matrix

 Coordination: LAKHDAR BARKA Sidi Mohamed

"In terms of meaning, concerning novels, or drama, the last word so rightly does not belong to the author, but to the reader, the spectator, a last word, so to say, different from one reader to the other, from one spectator to the other” (Dib Mohammed, 2006:115)

Mohammed Bib belongs to his readers and certainly more to his time, to a common and shared History by the two communities of readers who may legitimately claim him as a patrimonial legacy: one from a linguistic point of view (French) and the other from a cultural one (Algerian). The author, himself ‘torn’, represents a literary enigma, a human drama that future generations should acknowledge and then know. His works as enigmatic as beautiful by their subtlety and stylistic refinement, transcribe a verb, emotionally pregnant, a social and historical moment, which to this day, has not finished summoning us, as the literary text remains open to infinite reading horizons, in essence. It would be vain to pretend introduce this prolific writer with an abyssal allegorical depth, in a few lines.

Yes indeed, all or about all has been said, written and/or interpreted on his works, yet to the subjection (without any value judgement!) of his linguistic exile corresponded the freedom of speech of the “parresiast” (Balibar, 2018:87) on the one hand and the trans-generic freedom as himself defined “One had to find a hazardous way of writing as well, where the meaning shifts constantly, where the meaning is not contained in the word itself – is not confined within one word or in one sentence – where the meaning shifts non-stop” (CELFAN, 1983:25). His cultural essence was partially occulted if not under-estimated, for the re-owning of his works canonized as a product of ‘French Literature’.

By analogy, his contemporary Y. Kateb, conscious and witty forerunner of this misunderstanding stood against this form of epistemicide about Nedjma, he insisted that the historical message of the novel be distinguished from its language as a vehicle (be it reduced to its Latin letters grapholect, if needed). He permanently reaffirmoed that his novel belonged to the ‘Algerian Literature’ per se, i.e. a full and entire literary tradition, to be split from the ethnic or ethnographic[1] heterotopy (Foucault, 1967:5)[2] and acknowledged a genre as such, inviting his compatriots to explore its historical perspectives, rather than its strictly discursive ones.

The factual hegemony of the French native locutors and literary institutions in any case, could neither ignore the ‘dual culturality’ (Savill-Troike, 2003:46) of this literature, nor claim the monopoly of an exclusive reading. The North Mediterranean hemisphere readers have a lot to say on what is expressed in their language, but it happens that its colonial and specifically Algerian past, give to this language too, the immense possibility to express other visions of the human and cultural fields the South hemisphere readers could perceive. The cultures this language may express are not coextensive of the total number of sociolinguistic registers of its rich social diversity. We are not asked to re-read Dib outside the literary category in which he was enshrined, but to re-think him in his primordial matrix, even if it entails to re-codify the discursive reality inherent to the system of the borrowed language which he formulates as such It is taking a photography in this sense And this kind of photographic writing was simply borrowed to the western way of writing (CELFAN, 1983:21)

This author was born, grew up and lived in a particularly remarkable and remarked city for its Arab-Islamic history, a time-space that will never leave him. This reality was not totally denied, but it was often interpreted according to a discursive reality Genres just like any speech-act, come from the codification of discursive features (Todorov, 1987: 37). Dib’s dual-culturality owes to historical reality too, as defined by Todorov as follows On the one hand authors write according to the […] existing generic system, what they may be witness of  in the text and outside it … And on the other, readers read according to the generic system, they know through criticism, the school, the system of book distribution or simply through hear-say, they do not have to be necessarily conscious of this system (1987: 34). Hence for all the readers outside the system of discursive codification, natives of Dib’s social background and sharing his mother tongue, it would be a theoretical literary paradigm, to set off primordial schemata underlying the stylistic concretions of his poetic richness.

This issue of Turath devoted to Mohammed Dib today is a call to all potential readers (and/or researchers) convinced there is still an enigmatic dimension yet to be unveiled in his works, to grant it with another sense, maybe new, or at least different once transcribed into its endogenous context.

• Submit contributions before April 30, 2025.

Contributions are accepted in Arabic, French, and/or English according to the publication standards of Turath journal. See the website:
https://journals.crasc.dz/index.php/turath/template

• Contributions should be submitted via the following link:

https://asjp.cerist.dz/en/PresentationRevue/920

REFERENCES

• Balibar, E. (2018) : Libre parole, Paris, Editions Galilée.
• CELFAN Revue : « Interview accordée par Mohamed Dib », (propos enregistrés le 7 juin 1982 à La Celle Saint Cloud), In CELFAN Review (Centre d’études sur la littérature Francophone de l’Afrique du Nord, N° II : 2 (1983), Philadelphia, Temple University, Department of French and Italian.
• Dib, M. (2006) : Laëzza, Alger, Editions Dahlab.
• Foucault M. (1967) : « Des espaces autres, Hétérotopies », (Dits et écrits 1984, conférence au Cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967), in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n°5, octobre 1984, pp. 46-49.
• Montero, R. (2015) : L’idée ridicule de ne plus jamais te revoir, Paris, Métailé. (Traduit de l’Espagnole par Myriam Chirousse)
• Boaventura De Sousa Santos (2016) : Epistemologies of the South. Justice against epistemicide, London, Routledge.
• Saville-Troïké M. (2003): The Ethnography of Communication, London, Blakwell Publishing.
• Todorov, T. (1987) : La notion de littérature. Et autres essais, Paris, Ed. Du Seuil.

[1]  Claire Delannoy in her post-face of Laezza “Up to his death, he was soaked of Algeria, his past, his present, his becoming, and his representation. Being reduced to his identity, he suffered a lack of consideration due to this identity, as if being Algerian, Maghreby, lessened you compelling you to talk only about this.”

[2]  “But these crisis heterotopies disappear today and replaced, I think, by heterotopies we may call of deviation: those in which we place individuals whose behaviour is deviant as to the average or the required norm. These are the rest houses, the psychiatric clinics, as these are understood, we may add prisons, retirement houses, which in a way are at the limit between the crisis heterotopy and the deviation heterotopy, since after all, elderness is a crisis and a deviation as well, since in our society leisure is the rule, idleness is a kind of deviation.”