RECLAIMING, NARRATING, AND REINTERPRETING ASPECTS OF RELIGION IN TAOS AMROUCHE, HÉLÈNE CIXOUS, AND ASSIA DJEBAR BY NICOLA CHARLOTTE DACH DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Laurence Mall, Chair Assistant Professor Jane Kuntz, Co-Director of Research Assistant Professor Alain Fresco Professor Waïl S. Hassan ii Abstract This dissertation investigates the ways in which three francophone Algerian women authors, Taos Amrouche, Hélène Cixous, and Assia Djebar, approach their respective religions and portray them in their works. Through textual evidence from their fictional works, I show how the problematic of religion in Algeria – where the three Abrahamic religions have been in tension at different times in recent history – has underpinned these authors’ sense of self and being in the world. I examine how they all redefine religion out of a feeling of exclusion and traumatization and add female and woman-centered voices to a larger conversation on the nature of religiosity. All three of these authors are feminists, yet they embrace religion, all the while defining their own understanding of it. In order to do this, they reread the original texts of their religions, as well as the cultural texts surrounding them. Taos Amrouche, caught between the European culture to which she is drawn because of her family’s Catholicism, and the Muslim-Berber culture of her ancestors, expresses a constant feeling of alienation, and portrays a trauma that she attempts to heal through the use of autobiographical writing. Competing cultural influences and hurtful encounters with a racist French Catholicism lead her to elaborate an alternate concept of Christianity. She recreates herself as the alternative messianic figure of a mystical, sensual, and inclusive religion. Hélène Cixous suffers from a similar situation of exclusion, although she is a member of a religious group that situates her in the colonial crossfire, between Muslims and Europeans. She engages in a process of dismantling and reconstructing religion in a style that is characteristically subversive and highly challenging. With the aid of a language that, according to her, has divine qualities, she mocks established religion, highlights the human, bi-gendered qualities of God, and calls for a religion of love and inclusion. Assia Djebar insists on placing iii her rereading of religion in its historical context, one that has made religion a wounding experience for her, but that also provides examples of strong Muslim women engaging in exegesis. Emphasizing her use of the original scriptural sources, she breaks down androcentric interpretations of religion and condemns fundamentalist violence, and reinterprets Islam with an emphasis on female corporality, women’s solidarity, dialogue, and inter-religious tolerance. Although these authors employ different strategies to proffer a new understanding of their respective religion, all three agree that a religion welcoming to women should be genuinely dialogic, inclusive, and conducive to personal, mystical, and/or sensual experiences. Having been placed at the cultural crossroads of Algeria by history, they all show an awareness of the necessity to creatively unite disparate elements, textual and cultural, in order to construct a conception of religion that is not only acceptable, but also enriching for them as women. iv Acknowledgements Sincerest gratitude, first and foremost, to Professors Jane Kuntz and Laurence Mall, without whose untiring work this dissertation could not possibly have been completed. Their inspiring discussions, clear guidance, and encouraging words are all a doctoral candidate could hope for. I also heartily thank Professor Waïl Hassan and Professor Alain Fresco for their patient work and invaluable suggestions. I am much indebted to Professor Adlai Murdoch for all the help and recommendations provided. I thank Professor Valerie Hoffman for her excellent classes that remain unforgettable to me, and Professor Kamal Salhi for believing in my ideas and for helping me formulate them. Thanks also to Evelyne Accad for her inspiration as an artist-scholar-activist. Many thanks to the Department of French at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, my home for many years – above all to Professors Karen Fresco and Marcus Keller for their tireless and admirable support. Heartfelt thanks to Patricia Dimit, Jenelle Grant, Lizzie Black, and Juliette Dade for their wonderful support. Many thanks to Jane Marshall and Mandy Tröger, my intrepid writing companions. I would also like to thank the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois for supporting my studies in North Africa. Many thanks to everyone at Qalam wa Lawh Center for Arabic Studies in Rabat, crossroads of scholars, and above all to Jessica Malaika Freeland, entrepreneur extraordinaire. Thanks also to Ustadh Hassan and Ustadha Zineb, to Rowan Gould, Brynna Rafferty-Brown, Mariame Farqane, and Ariela Marcus- Sells for their brilliant discussions and their friendship. I am also forever indebted to the Marouazi family of Rabat, Morocco for their wonderful warm-hearted welcome – Kalthoum, Ali, Nadia, Karim, Amina, and Mohammed. v Much gratitude goes to Irmgard and Wolfgang Haken for being both my Germany in America and my “intellectual family”. Love and thanks to the whole Haken family, especially Rudolf, Armgard, and Lippold. Warmest thanks to Claudia Dach for being my compass and my sounding board; to Johannes Dach for following in my footsteps and letting me follow in his; to Peter Dach for his intellectualism and gentle humor; and to Ingeborg Dach for always being there. Heartfelt thanks to Shad Sharma for his unconditional support and belief in me. I am also grateful to Professor Bénédicte Ledent and everyone at the English Department of the Université de Liège for a fresh look on academia and for believing in my ideas. Thanks also goes to Amine and Farah Kesseiri, Sahand Hariri, Dervis Can Vural, Kendra Salois, Souad Massi, and Ghalia Benali for their musical inspirations along the way. Warm thanks to Peter Folk, Cecilia Gonzalez, Zhenya Tumanova, Hyeri Kim, and Juliana Rose for their enduring friendship and support. Finally, many thanks to the tango community of Champaign-Urbana, the Bandoneon Massacre, Tangotta / Almost “A” Quartet, and the Big Bang Band for Nerds, and to everyone at WEFT 90.1 FM for showing me different audiences and missions. vi Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 I. Problem Outline and Historical Background................................................................2 II. Justification of the Corpus.......................................................................................... 13 III. Conclusion................................................................................................................. 28 Taos Amrouche : The exile’s refuge in trauma........................................................... 30 I. The Amrouches: Christian Berbers in Colonial Algeria.............................................. 36 II. A Subtly Subversive Autobiographical Style............................................................... 40 III. Four-way-streets: Amrouche caught between Muslim and Christian Cultures........ 46 A. No Longer One of Us: Cultural Rejection from Berber Country................... 47 B. No Longer One of You: Othering Her Ancestral Culture............................... 49 C. Not Yet One of You: The Inability to Integrate to European Culture............. 52 D. Not Yet One of Us : Othering, Misunderstanding, and Racism..................... 58 IV. Bilateral Rejection as the Mother of Creativity: The Amrouchean Synthesis........... 61 A. Cultural Crossings: A Necessary Hybridity.................................................... 61 B. Moral Code and Gender Roles....................................................................... 65 C. A Self-guided Religiosity, Rooted in This World............................................ 69 V. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 79 Hélène Cixous: Victim of History, Playing with God................................................ 82 I. Growing up Between “Holocausts” and the Feminist Project.................................... 89 II. Torn in Triangulation: The Need for Reevaluation.................................................... 93 A. A Lack of Arrival: Rejection by Muslim Algerian Society.............................. 94 B. “[C]ette France qui nous répudiait”: Rejection by Pied-Noir Society.......... 96 III. Toying with Language, Toying with God: The Cixousian Subversion...................... 100 IV. Religion as an Institution: Mocking Divinity............................................................. 117 V. God as Writing, God with Human Traits: Reading A Bisexual Deity of Love............ 128 VI. Conclusion................................................................................................................. 141 Assia Djebar: A Muslim Feminist Engaging in Ijtihad.............................................. 143 I. Assia Djebar: The Oeuvre of a Muslim Feminist........................................................