Mohammed Dib's Short Stories on the Memory of Algeria

Summary

The work of the contemporary Algerian author Mohammed Dib defines the notion of colonial and postcolonial terrorism in Algeria and their impact on Algerian identity. I use the term ‘terrorism’ in this paper in keeping with Martha Hutchinson's definition that takes terrorism as ‘acts of emotionally or physically “destructive harm”‘ (1978: 18). Accordingly, I classify terrorism in Algeria as coming from two different directions: the French colonial terrorism of the 1950s and the extremist terrorism of the 1990s. Both types involve ‘acts of [physically] atrocious or psychologically shocking violence’ (19) that are destructive to Algerian identity. Dib's short stories reflect what Dominick LaCapra describes as ‘“writing trauma” [that] involves processes of acting out, working over, and to some extent working through in analysing and “giving voice” to the past’ (186). This article is a study of Dib's literary representation of the Algerian trauma through four short stories: ‘Naema- Whereabouts Unknown,’ ‘The Savage Night’, ‘The Detour’, and ‘A Game of Dice’. The paper is in three parts. Part 1 gives a historical background from the French colonization of Algeria in 1830 up to the 1990s civil war. Part 2 is an analysis of Dib's vision of French colonial terrorism and its impact on Algerian identity through ‘Naema–Whereabouts Unknown’ and ‘The Savage Night’. Part 3 examines Dib's literary perspective on extremist terrorism through ‘The Detour’ and ‘A Game of Dice’.