Reading trauma and cultural hybridity in Malika Mokeddem's N’zid (2001)‎

Abstract EN

This article deals with the effects of the Black Decade on the Algerian women's narratives.

As an artistic response to the traumatic events, Algerian woman writers coped with the eventful Algerian history by writing to remember, heal, and construct their identities, as well as to revoke the image of Algerian women, limited to private space.

Focusing on Malika Mokeddem's N'zid (2001), this article is to underline the connection between two common features, namely trauma and cultural hybridity.

With reference to critical observations on trauma in exilic writings in general and contemporary Algerian female fiction in particular, it is necessary to demonstrate how Malika Mokeddem uses memory loss as a narrational trope to provide anti-amnesiac testimony of the trauma of the crisis in order to restore Nora's hybrid identity.

In this case, it is capital to suggest that identities of trauma are not necessarily marked by compulsive responses resulting in dysfunctionality and rupture.