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

Abstract

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.