"JE SUIS UN COWBOY DU FAR WEST": A STUDY OF TEXTUAL MÉTISSAGE IN DJANET LACHMET'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL 'LE COW-BOY' (1983)

Authors

  • Caroline E. Kelley Umeå Universitet

Keywords:

comparative literature, life-writing, Algerian literature in French, intertextuality, Algerian Revolution, popular culture

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of métissage – a kind of intertextuality – as it has been theorized by Françoise Lionnet (1989) through a close reading of Le Cow-boy (1983), an autobiographical novel by Djanet Lachmet about the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962). Lionnet (1989) describes métissage as a textual weaving of traditions in order to reintroduce oral Creole customs and to re-evaluate received Western concepts. The term carefully links issues of race, politics, reading and writing. Described as a «life-story», Lachmet’s Le Cow-boy is the story of Lallia, a young girl growing up during the Algerian liberation struggle of the 1950s and sixties. Providing both a critique of métissage and study of its possible manifestation in the novel, I ask whether life-writing is – in this case – a kind of stratagem that opens up ambiguous spaces of possibility where a subject of violent history and an agent of discourse might engage with one another; where new modes of interaction between the personal and the political might be meaningfully explored.

Author Biography

Caroline E. Kelley, Umeå Universitet

D.Phil. (Oxford), Umeå Universitet

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How to Cite

Kelley, C. E. (2014). "JE SUIS UN COWBOY DU FAR WEST": A STUDY OF TEXTUAL MÉTISSAGE IN DJANET LACHMET’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL ’LE COW-BOY’ (1983). 452ºF. Revista De Teoría De La Literatura Y Literatura Comparada, (3), 85–101. Retrieved from https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/452f/article/view/10792

Issue

No. 3 (2010): Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature

Section

Monograph

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