Friday, July 14, 2017
Melville Room (University of Glasgow)
My paper focuses on the inclusion/exclusion dynamics that shapes the question of identity in migration literature and the development of hybridity as a possible counter-narrative. In Assia Djebar’s story “Le corps de Félicie,” the children of Félicie and Mohammad are the children of two national cultures and identities. Each are given two names (one Christian and one Muslim) in an attempt towards hybridity—but whereas hybridity seeks to disturb hierarchies, the examples in this text belie the specters of hierarchy that remain, haunting the subjects. In grappling with the discord in their identities, each child deals with his or her name in different ways; some reject the failed hybridity given by their parents, while others alter it. Nor do those who have migrated to France—Félicie’s birth-land—respond similarly to their torn identities: Armand/Karim, the narrative voice with the most presence, takes a third name, a nickname, while his sister Marie/Khadidja ‘crosses out’ her Muslim identity. Their younger sister, Ourdia/Louise takes yet a different path, proposing a name that works in both cultures before declaring that she will only be called Ourdia that prompt the literary critic Mireille Rosello to suggest that “[t]his text is not about métissage, it is about fréquentage or cohabitation, about the endless continuation and reinterpretation of the supposedly original encounter” (Rosello 73). This project seeks to build upon and challenge Rosello’s analysis by exploring the cohabitation of identities, cultures, nations, and names, as well as what work the slashed name, as opposed to the hyphenated name, performs.
