La disparition de la langue française (2003) d’Assia Djebar : donner voix aux spectres du passe
The Disappearance of the French Language (2003) by Assia Djebar: Giving Voice to the Specters Of The Past

Summary/Abstract: La Disparition de la langue française (2013) is a novel written by the Franco-Algerian author Assia Djebar. The novel follows the journey undertaken by an Algerian man named Berkane to reconnect with his native country after spendingtwenty years in France. The novel sheds light on the character’s impossible returnhome. Berkane's Algeria is both a tangible place and a figment of his imaginationtainted by his childhood memories. Additionally, Berkane and Algeria share a similarlinguistic cartography, characterized by the dichotomy between the Arabic of privatespaces and the French of public spaces. In the novel, characters integrate theirpersonal stories into a “third space” and thus through various inventive uses oflanguage. This study intends to demonstrate, by borrowing from Bhabha, thatlanguage permits the characters in the narrative to abolish the established boundariesbetween the two linguistic spaces that mark the Algerian territory and its inhabitantsthus bridging the gap between Algeria as a phantasmagoric space and a “perceived”space.

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