Algerian Imprints

Brigitte Weltman-Aron is associate professor of French at the University of Florida and the author of On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century England and France.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Dissensus: The Political in the Writings of Djebar and Cixous Part 1. Colonial Demarcations 1. The Gravity of the Body: Djebar's and Cixous's Textuality 2. Going to School in French Algeria: The Archive of Colonial Education Part 2. Poetics of Language 3. Vanishing Inscriptions: Djebar's Poetics of the Trace 4. Poetic Inc.: Language as Hospitality in Cixous Part 3. Algerian War 5. The Sound of Broken Memory: Djebar's Women Fighters 6. Allergy in the Body Politic: War in Cixous Conclusion: The Logic of the Veil; or, The Epistemology of Nonseeing Bibliography Notes Index

The advantage of Algerian Imprints is that it activates and animates the texts of two important contemporary female Francophone authors in favor of serious reflections concerning their corporeal and scriptural 'origins,' relations to language, questions of testimony and hospitality, and the sexual politics of resistance. This is a book that many, both scholars and students, will want to read. -- David Wills, Brown University Compellingly argued, Algerian Imprints brings together in novel ways two leading francophone writers, Helene Cixous and Assia Djebar. Working at the intersection of literature, history, and theory, Brigitte Weltman-Aron shows convincingly how these women write from their marginal positions to create a politics of dissensus -- Verena Conley, Harvard University Weltman-Aron draws on close reading and cogent theoretical sources to make a substantial and original reflection on the 'politics of memory' (Derrida), (un)veiling as a figure of both vision and blindness, and nonbelonging as a basis for a new understanding of community. -- Marta Segarra, Universitat de Barcelona Brilliantly argued and beautifully written, Algerian Imprints is a powerful and daring book that provides a radical rethinking of the work of two major writers. Weltman-Aron's subtle and minutely detailed analysis helps us reconfigure and conceptualize the concepts that are at the heart of their aesthetics and political views. This book is the first to unravel the complex relationships that Cixous and Djebar have developed between body and language, writing and gender, and, above all, the connections between literary theory and the history of postcolonial relations between Algeria and France. -- Reda Bensmaia, Brown University Scholarly and an excellent read... Highly recommended. Choice