Book Description
Colonial and Anti-colonial Discourses: Albert Camus and Algeria underscores the relationship between literature, history and politics. The comparative historical-cultural analysis of the works of Albert Camus, Mouloud Mammeri, Mouloud Feraoun, and Mohammed Dib provides not only interesting perspective from which to re-evaluate Camus' fiction, but also an extremely valuable insight into the colonial history and politics of Algeria. The author examines the ideological parameters - colonial history, French assimilationist practices, politics of citizenship, etc. - that provide a generative context for the birth of Algerian Literature in French. The work's strength and contribution to scholarship, particularly, to the growing field of post-colonial cultural critique, lie in its attempt to read the fictions of Camus from the perspective of North African literary tradition as opposed to a French literary tradition. It brings his writings into a mutual dialogic interrogation with those of Indigenous North African writers, whose fictions articulate a state of cultural heterogeneity at the very moment when they confront the problem of Western - particularly French - hegemony. This book is of interest to scholars and graduate students of French literature, Francophone African literature, and Cultural Studies.


About the Author
Ena C. Vulor is Assistant Professor of French at Marietta College in Ohio.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Colonial and Anti-colonial Discourses: Albert Camus and Algeria underscores the relationship between literature, history and politics. The comparative historical-cultural analysis of the works of Albert Camus, Mouloud Mammeri, Mouloud Feraoun, and Mohammed Dib provides not only interesting perspective from which to re-evaluate Camus' fiction, but also an extremely valuable insight into the colonial history and politics of Algeria. The author examines the ideological parameters - colonial history, French assimilationist practices, politics of citizenship, etc. - that provide a generative context for the birth of Algerian Literature in French. The work's strength and contribution to scholarship, particularly, to the growing field of post-colonial cultural critique, lie in its attempt to read the fictions of Camus from the perspective of North African literary tradition as opposed to a French literary tradition. It brings his writings into a mutual dialogic interrogation with those of Indigenous North African writers, whose fictions articulate a state of cultural heterogeneity at the very moment when they confront the problem of Western - particularly French - hegemony. This book is of interest to scholars and graduate students of French literature, Francophone African literature, and Cultural Studies.

Author Biography: Ena C. Vulor is Assistant Professor of French at Marietta College in Ohio.

FROM THE CRITICS

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