Abstract: Tactical Silence in the Novels of Malika Mokeddem

Jane E. Evans, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Michel de Certeau's model of strategies and tactics, applied to a postcolonial assessment of both Algerian literature in French as well as Algerian women's sterotyped silence, has prompted this exploration of how the manipulation of silence may be used to challenge a gender-differentiated power system. This book considers the effects of practical silence on the lives of Malika Mokeddem's female protagonists in the following novels: <Les Hommes qui marchent> (1990), <Le >Siècle des sauterelles> (1992), <L'Interdite> (1993), <Des >Rêves et des assassins> (1995), <La Nuit de la>lézarde> (1998), <N'zid> (2001), <La Transe des insoumis> (2003), <Mes hommes> (2006), and < Je dois tout à ton oubli> (2008).