SOURCE: Fielder, Adrian V. “Historical Representation and the Scriptural Economy of Imperialism: Assia Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.” Comparative Literature Studies 37, no. 1 (winter 2000): 18-44.

In the following excerpt, Fielder discusses the problem of historical representation and fictionalized accounts of imperial conquest, as illustrated by Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

Pour lire cet écrit, il me faut renverser mon corps, plonger ma face dans l'ombre, scruter la voûte de rocailles ou de craie, laisser les chuchotements immémoriaux remonter, géologie sanguinolente. … Et mon corps tintinnabule du long éboulement des générations-aïeules.

[To read this writing, I must turn my body inside out, plunge my face into the shadows, scrutinize the vaulted roof of rock or chalk, lend an ear to the whispers that rise up from time out of mind, this blood-slaked geology. … And my body reverberates...