Africanías. Revista de Literaturas

Trauma, memory traces and patriarchy in Assia Djebar’s narratives

2026-05-19T09:15:12+00:00

Djebar continues to explore her status as a woman through a style of writing that constantly shifts between the generic framework of fiction and the unexpected emergence of painful episodes from her past. This article identifies the traumatic events explicitly described in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père (2007), from which we can trace disguised, narrativised and even altered traces in L’Amour, la fantasia (1985) and Ombre sultane (1987). Furthermore, we analyse the figure of the writer’s father who, through his ambiguity and patriarchal authority, triggers the traumas that paralyse the movements and fulfilment of Djebar as a woman. We observe that her writing becomes a scar, an indelible mark left by a wound after healing, and that it presents itself as a true pharmakon within the contradictory space of mnemonic traces, which are at once present and absent, poisonous and healing.

Leïla Slimani and the Revelation of Moroccan Women’s Voices through Sexe et mensonges (2017)

2026-02-26T11:03:51+00:00

Leïla Slimani, a Franco-Moroccan writer, explores the lived realities of women in her book Sexe et mensonges (2017), a work of literary reportage based on testimonies of Moroccan women about their sexuality. Drawing on intimate narratives, the book highlights the double life many women are forced to lead, hiding behind a façade that conforms to patriarchal norms while secretly asserting forms of rebellion and everyday resistance. By addressing taboo topics such as sexuality, the representation of the female body and the constraints imposed by family, law and social morality, the text offers a bold account of the contradictions of contemporary Moroccan society. Slimani criticises in particular the laws that criminalise sexual relations outside marriage and restrict access to abortion, underlining how women’s bodies belong more to society than to the women themselves. In this sense, the book raises crucial questions about women’s place in the public sphere and about the strategies of resistance they develop in the face of patriarchy, thus contributing to ongoing debates on feminism, emancipation and sexual rights in the Moroccan context.

Angone, Odome. ¿De qué color son los blancos? Un decálogo de herramientas sobre justicia epistémica (2025). Bellaterra Edicions, 292 págs.

2026-02-12T17:49:38+00:00

Djandué, Bi Drombé, Maroto Blanco, José Manuel y Diallo, Karidjatou. Relaciones entre España y costa de marfil. Caminos que se cruzan más allá de la enseñanza (2026). Ediciones del Serbal, 352 págs.

2026-05-31T17:21:49+00:00

Vast is the Prison, Assia Djebar. Palimpsest Project

2026-05-19T09:15:14+00:00

Assia Djebar’s situation can be described as one of cultural contact. Of Algerian origin, she chose to settle in France as an act of protest against repression in Algeria. In her writing project, cultures intersect and interact in complex ways, while seeking to transcend geographical, linguistic, and symbolic borders.

The notion of the palimpsest acquires particular importance in her work, notably in the novel Vaste est la prison (1995). It refers to a superposition of fragmentary narratives in which traces emerge that may signify “something else.” This process allows the writer to follow little-explored paths in order to give an account of a controversial History, which she deterritorializes and reterritorializes so as to offer a critical reinterpretation.

In this presentation, we focus on the palimpsest understood as a process of erasure, as well as on the writing strategies deployed by the author to construct her own Francophone path—and voice—which she herself designates as “Francography.”

The aim is to identify forms of history elaborated by literary fiction in order to analyze how the dialectic of identity and otherness unfolds, through an examination of the strategies by which Djebar constructs a textual space imbued with profound consolation. This space awakens the subject to an awareness of a power that is uniquely her own and grants her the legitimacy of a recovered authority: the power to create new texts.