A palimpsest of voices and sounds : transcribing orature in assia dJebar's l'Amour, la Fantasia

Abstract EN

Assia Djebar's foray into cinematography enabled her to challenge canonical forms of representation by constructing a linguistic space where the Arabic language, 'her mother tongue', and the French language, her 'step-mother tongue', may coexist.

To reach women as audience, the novelist steered towards the art of filmmaking.

She directed her award-winning docufiction La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua in 1978 in which el-mujahidat [the revolutionaries] remember the war.

To foreground women's contribution to the liberation struggle, Djebar transcribed the oral testimonies of the widows of the revolution into her novel L'amour, la fantasia (1985).

The present paper examines the use of the strategy of relexification in order to arabize the French language so it may host the trauma of the war.