SOURCE: Erickson, John. “Women's Space and Enabling Dialogue in Assia Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia.” In Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers, edited by Mary Jean Green et al, pp. 304-20. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Erickson discusses the juxtaposition of written French language and oral Arabic language in L'amour, la fantasia as a narrative and metaphorical device for breaking the imposed silence and isolation of Algerian women, both collectively and individually.

Assia Djebar's 1985 narrative, L'amour, la fantasia, comprises three parts, titled respectively “The Capture of the City, or Love-letters,” “The Cries of the Fantasia,” and “Voices from the Past.”¹ The titles of these parts suggest the main story: the clash of aggressor and aggressed during the colonial period from the fall of Algiers to the French in 1830 through the Algerian Revolution; and a concomitant story: the shrouding of voices in opposition (the French title...