From journalistic writing to novel writing: the Conquest of Algeria in Assia Djebar’s fiction

Abstract

This study focuses on the colonial intertexts in Assia Djebar’s novel L’Amour, la fantasia and on the manner in which they are inserted in the text. It shows that Djebar’s novel tends to privilege direct discourse and narrated discourse in order to comment on the representation of the conquest of Algeria in the military press of the 19^th century. In drawing attention to the state of the press during the colonisation of Algeria, this study draws a parallel between the narrative strategies at work in L’Amour, la fantasia and those exploited by literary journalism. Polyphony and intertextuality prove to be valuable not only in the fight against censorship but also in the struggle for freedom, whether this freedom be freedom of speech or political and social emancipation