Towards an appraisal of the African past: a postcolonial comparative study of Franco-Algerian and Anglo-Nigerian literatures from subalternity to ‘hybrid affirmation’

Salhi, Sourour (2023). Towards an appraisal of the African past: a postcolonial comparative study of Franco-Algerian and Anglo-Nigerian literatures from subalternity to ‘hybrid affirmation’. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

Salhi2023PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis develops a comparative framework between postcolonial Francophone Algerian literature and postcolonial Anglophone Nigerian literary production, engaging with a body of twelve novels that reveal people's trajectories resulting from the colonial experience in Algeria and Nigeria from pre-independence until post-independence. It is based upon a corpus of postcolonial Francophone Algerian novels starting in the 1950s until the 2010s, such as La Grande Maison (1952), L’Incendie (1954), Le Métier à Tisser (1957), Ce que le Jour Doit à la Nuit (2008), Puisque mon Coeur Est Mort (2010), and Bleu Blanc Vert (2006) examined in parallel with postcolonial Anglophone Nigerian works, such as Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), A Gift from Darkness: How I Escaped with my Daughter from Boko Haram (2017), and Americanah (2013). This project transcends the limits of language to examine the historical and literary aspects of these novels that engage with the correlative questions of colonial domination, independence and cultural and socio-political emancipation. Both countries under study are the product of different communities that share common political and cultural concerns due to their experience of colonial subjugation. This literary contribution which, for the first time, juxtaposes Franco-Algerian with Anglo-Nigerian postcolonial literatures, not only creates a new comparative paradigm, but also highlights major historical moments, such as the period of colonisation, the period of revolution and independence, and the period of post-independence. Through these three trends, the thesis analyses inter-related themes and features between these works and offers an interdisciplinary study that analyses historic events —from the nineteenth century until the twentieth century according to the settings of the novels, with complementary insights from sociology, politics, and literary theories. This thesis draws upon the above-mentioned corpus and will rely mostly on theoretical works, primary sources —including memoirs, and essays to analyse the novels. However, despite the wide-ranging and comprehensive literature review, the works that were examined bring into focus the quest of identity, the feminist cause or the question of language choice at the centre of their study. As its findings disclose under-represented aspects in the postcolonial text, this thesis analyses the development of the postcolonial subject from a state of subalternity during colonisation to that of ‘hybrid affirmation’ during the post-independence: the focus of the thesis is on the ‘hybrid affirmation’ of the postcolonial subject. As an expression, ‘hybrid affirmation’ re-imagines postcolonial criticism so that new characteristics such as strength and determination become attributed to the postcolonial individual, instead of the more frequent attributes of loss, disillusionment and displacement.

Chapter One establishes literary, theoretical and critical frameworks to analyse the postcolonial fiction in the following chapters. Chapter Two juxtaposes Mohammed Dib’s trilogy, Algérie, and Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy to analyse the conditions of the native populations during the moments of colonisation. Chapter Three examines Yasmina Khadra’ s Ce que le Jour Doit à la Nuit and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun to evaluate the characters’ agency and their ability to gain independence. Chapter Four studies the bloody years of terrorism in Algeria and Nigeria and the violence inflicted upon these peoples after independence in the works of Maïssa Bey Puisque mon Coeur Est Mort and Andrea C. Hoffmann and Patience Ibrahim A Gift from Darkness: How I Escaped with my Daughter from Boko Haram. The fifth and final chapter will, then, analyse the ‘hybrid affirmation’ of Algerian and Nigerian native peoples in Maïssa Bey’s Bleu Blanc Vert and Adichie’s Americanah.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):