Le système kyriarkal à l‘épreuve de l‘abjection chez Tahar Ben Jelloun et Assia Djebar

Abstract

This article analyzes what we interpret as a prison-abject (kyriarkal abject) present within Cette absence aveuglante de lumière (2001) by Tahar Ben Jelloun and “La femme en morceaux” (1997), a tale published in Oran, langue morte by Assia Djebar. We examine these two works of francophone literature under the ultra-contemporary theoretical paradigm of the kyriarkal system, which Behrouz Boochani and his translator, Omid Tofighian, respectively explore in their theoretical fiction (No Friend but the Mountains, 2018) and research. This theory allows us to question the relationship between the abject and the unspeakable, the contamination of the abject at a generic level in these works, as well as its spatio-temporal connotations in the works of Djebar and Ben Jelloun. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which the unspeakable functions in relation to the colonial language; the textuality of the abject—and the attempt to create a text-as- prison—as well as the ambiguous territory shared by the prison and the abject where being and non-being unite, and where the liminal space between subjectivity and alterity dominates.