The Bildungsroman in Makhlouf Amer

Abstract

The question of the Revolution within academic periodization raises a ready-made epistemological question concerning the identity of the Algerian novel, as the revolutionary façade is clearly invoked to periodize the novel from a colonial perspective. Basing periodization on the Revolution thus extends a hybrid conception of the Algerian novel and covertly reproduces the colonial narrative in the construction of the concept of the Algerian novel. From this critical awareness, the Algerian novel is written as the eye of the Algerian nation: narratives of colonialism are dismantled as an epistemological model of periodization, while the novel is established as a distinctive model that defines its position in the world, away from the system of the colonial centre and its traditions. Instead, it emerges within conventions and periodizations that articulate representations of its unsettled identity as a national novel.

The concept of the novel as an art of the incomplete (Kundera) wagers on accompanying human beings in their ultimate questions. Its specificity is therefore closely connected to the extent to which it refers to the political, cultural, and social space of the narrative environment through the contractual pact between narrative and the poetics of periodization within which it is viewed. The novel possesses an open configuration, capable of being written through symbolic representation. This problematic will pursue the various colonial burdens attached to what is called the Algerian novel.