Transfigurations of the Maghreb : feminism, decolonization, and literatures / Winifred Woodhull.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Woodhull, Winifred, 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

North African literature (French)--Women authors--History and criticism.

North African literature (French).

Feminism and literature--Africa, North.

Feminism and literature.

Women and literature--Africa, North.

Women and literature.

Decolonization in literature.

North African literature (French)--Women authors.

Africa, North--In literature.

Africa, North.

North Africa.

Colonies in literature.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 233 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [1993]

Summary:

This work presents a critical perspective on many of the best-known texts of Algerian literature in French. It also discusses Maghrebian immigration into France; contemporary French writing about the Maghreb; and "nomadic" poststructuralist theories of language, subjectivity and sociality. Woodhull offers a thorough and detailed exploration of the historical context and the ways in which femininity has been represented in the texts of North African and French writers since the mid-1950s. She aims to provide an important corrective to some (male) models of anticolonialist ideology. Through informed readings of texts by "metropolitan" writers such as Le Clezio, Tournier, Cardinal, and Sullerot, Woodhull challenges the sterile dichotomies which continue to occur in the institutional organization of French departments - namely, the separation between French and Francophone literatures and cultures. In her refusal to allow nationalist concerns to take precedence over the needs of women, Woodhull breaks away from traditional Marxist readings of literature. "Transfigurations of the Maghreb" reveals how Maghrebian texts challenge the very existence of a repressive paternal law, while also attending to the historical contexts from which Maghrebian writing emerges, and the national and global conflicts that encumber its efforts to displace restrictive identities of sex, class, race, nationality and language.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0816620547

0816620555

OCLC:

27264753