M. GOUFFI Mohammed

This research considers the representation of cultural deracination in Mohamed Al 'Ali 'Ar'Ar's novel Mā lā Tadhruhū al-Riyāḥ. The book engages with the discourse of colonial mimicry bringing to the surface the bitter ramifications of asymmetrical construction of the colonized's identity. In his depiction of the "mimic man" in colonial Algeria, Ar'Ar calls for his readers to probe into the experience of his protagonist, al-Bashir, whose dazzlement of the colonizers' power brings him under France's "mission civilisatrice." Following a Conradian journey to Paris, as a soldier in the French army, al-Bashir has to face a civilizational shock. In placing the novel in conversation with Bhabha's mimicry, the research traces how the text interrogates the implications of colonial mimicry on a character entirely fraught with futility and lack of certainty that stem from his self-immersion in Ngũgĩan "cultural Parrotry." Correspondingly, the protagonist experiences cultural depersonalization, which inevitably leads him to undergo an "identity shift" in order to abolish stigmatization. The study thus follows al-Bashir's rebellious metamorphosis from being the metonymically Westernized similar-but-not-quite "interpreter" to being the "civilized master." Interestingly, the article concludes that the protagonist's name change accelerates his mimetic conversion to produce a blurred copy of the colonizer: "al-Bashirturned-Jacques" emerges as a fully-fledged oppressor whose subjugation of his fellow countrymen is hard to ignore.

The present paper seeks to shed light on the role of the novelistic production in mapping the Palestinian Nation through narration in Elias Khoury's epic novel Gate of the Sun (1998).
In view of literature's capability to operate as a signifier of national identity, novelists direct their pens to write the nation. In a similar vein, Khoury writes in protest against the currents of physical displacement but more importantly against the systematic obliteration of all that is “Palestinian” by the Israeli Occupation. In his representation of the New Palestinians’ predicament, Khoury engages the reader in the experience of his protagonist Khalil who keeps vigil at Yunes, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter lying in a coma. As the story unfolds, the novel presents Khalil as a stunning storyteller who masterfully connects the story of the Palestinians born in refugee camps while also recalling Yunes's own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun. Through a text, Khoury artistically fuses collective memory, trauma and storytelling not merely to challenge the Zionist narrative, but also to construct a genuine Palestinian counter-narrative that answers the identitarian dangerous question: “Who are we?” In adopting a Bhabhasque approach to Khoury's work, the study aims to unravel the power of storytelling in mapping the nation through narration. In other words, while Bhabha avers that “it is from […] literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea” (Bhabha Nation and Narration 1), the study concludes that Khoury's work is a pure form of resistance, whose power of representation allows the pillarization of the Palestinian nation.
Key Words: The Palestinian nation, the novel; Bhabha; Nation and Narration; Resistance; Third Space

In America, they say “Publish or perish!”
The Algerian researchers are haunted by the burning desire to publish research in prestigious and well-founded journals. (high-impact journals)
The difficulty of publication, the quality of research, the standards of publication and slow and clumsy process of production hinder Algerian researchers from publishing excellent papers and research articles in Algerian journals. Ambitious researchers look beyond national borders to carve for themselves a niche in the world of western academia. But publishing a research articles proves not to be an easy task. Evidently, the higher requirements in American, British, or the Dutch journals class “A” most of the time result in the rejection of the submissions. This more often creates a feeling of disillusionment among the Algerian researchers. Nevertheless, smart and wilful researchers are the ones who find in the reviewing disappointing comments a stepping stone towards a new experience of submission. In so doing, they tend to invest in the corrective spirit of reviewing course to publish in journals “A”. This communication is meant for responding to the following question:
How can Algerian researchers go beyond the confines of disappointing reviewing, investing the corrective spirit of reviewing course to publish in journals class A?

The present paper seeks to shed light on the representation of Algerian women in an excessively turbulent era of Algeria’s bloody decade with a special reference to Fadhila El Farouk’s Feminine Shame (2002). In her novella, Fadhila invites the readers to consider Algeria’s 1990s political malaise that deepened the suffering of women who find themselves victims of double oppression: traditional patriarchy and radical Islamist patriarchy. The paper therefore aims at bringing to the surface these injustices from a postcolonial lens. It also endeavors to unveil the author’s artistic engagement in which the text presents a stern, but artful condemnation of violence against the vulnerable female while at the same time celebrating women through a feminine narrative voice-the journalist Khalida-that recounts the brutalities and horrors that the victim Yamina is subjected to by terrorists. Finally yet importantly, the communication seeks to show how writing can help the Algerian oppressed female negotiate an identity balance though riding the crest of the “Third Space”, a space for contesting patriarchy and constructing identity.

Since early days of independence the Algerian postcolonial literature was, and still is, preoccupied with coming to terms with the colonial anxieties and their lingering effects on identity construction whose most remarkable feature is border crossing of the colonized to the metropole. More specifically, the Algerian Arabophone novelist Mohamed El Ali Ar’Ar takes such a significant moment to call into question the Conradian Journey and the contamination of cultural identity by colonial influences in his novel Ma la Tadhruhu al-Riyah (What the Winds Cannot Wipe off 1972). In this regard, Ar’Ar’s novel evokes an important issue regarding the direct contact of the Algerian individual– the protagonist al-Bashir– with the French colonizer during the colonial era and the drastic change of his identity upon the protagonist’s passage to the West. In reading the novel through a postcolonial lens of Bhabha’s mimicry, the present paper endeavors to examine al-Bashir’s civilizational shock following his journey to Paris, as a soldier in the French army. This shock brings about a sense of insecurity that leads Ar’Ar’s protagonist to disavow his Algerian origins and to adopt a French lifestyle instead. The article concludes that the burden of representation propels Algerians authors to alert us that identity conversion–in Ar’Ar’s case for instance– does not furnish the individual with a sense of security. Rather, westernization more often produces blurred copies that would fall into abyss of existential “nada”.
Key Words: The Conradian Journey; Crossings: Identity (In)security; the Algerian Arabophone Novel

The unprecedented levels of technological advance brought about radical change to every aspect of life, teaching is no longer immune to such kind of innovations. Hence, some experts such as the British education expert Anthony Seldon predict that robots will assume the main job of transferring information instead of human teachers who will work no more than assistants to the robot. However, with the explosion of artificial intelligence, some people today go beyond the possibility to imagine courses being delivered by a robot teacher, to have the courses delivered directly by AI generator like Chat GPT. Thus, is Chat GPT a friend or a foe for teachers today? How can teachers adapt the rapid changes in the AI field?

Giving presentations and defending scientific research is part of the job for academics and researchers worldwide. But to be honest, many people who work in these fields prefer the quiet company of a few lab partners over the spotlight of the stage. When it’s time to stand in front of an audience and talk about one’s work, he/she may be one of the many people who experience stage fright. Stage fright can harm our confidence and reduce our self-esteem, leaving us feeling shame and embarrassment.


As teachers and supervisors, I always encounter questions from students and candidates who are on doors of oral presentations or dissertation defense on the best ways to beat Stage Fright as a one necessary step toward a confident presentation. The questions that usually circulate can be raised as follows:

Question I: Can you help me? My viva is programmed for next week, but I am so concerned over my performance. I mean I always feel anxious and get into panic the instant I am called upon to perform before an audience on stage. On previous occasions, I never managed to free myself from the fright that haunts me in such occasions. Please, tell me what should I do?

Question II: I fear my defense. I am so scared of questions I cannot answer. I am terrified of criticism from the jury. The idea of being publicly humiliated paralyses me and blatantly restricts my performance. Please give me tips and recommendations that can help me change my mind-set.

The present essay scrutinizes the subversion of the Western Eurocentric discourse of civilizational supremacy in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). It attempts to trace the way Golding delineates the deviation of the European society from the world of order and civilization that is referred to here as ‘the heart of whiteness’ into the world of disorder and savagery or what is labeled here as ‘the heart of darkness’ to create a form of internal colonization. Put under a postcolonial microscope, the study attempts to show how the Western Eurocentric view of civilization is undermined in such a way the conflict is described as a sort of internal colonization. As a picaresque text, the novel offers the readers an opportunity to probe into the experience of children group who—when are evacuated from Britain because of a nuclear war—find themselves stranded in an uninhabited island after the crash of their airplane and the death of all the adults. In dealing with the new situation, the schoolchildren decide to fashion a utopian society, but their attempts at establishing a social order gradually devolve into savagery when some of them turn into internal colonizers in a Darwinist fashion. Finally abandoning all moral constraints, the colonizer-boys commit murder and lead a mutiny against democracy’s camp before they are rescued to return to civilization.

Since early days of independence, the Algerian postcolonial literature was, and still, preoccupied with coming to terms with the colonial anxieties and their lingering effects on identity construction whose most remarkable feature is a deep sense of malaise and insecurity. More specifically, the Algerian Arabophone novelist Mohamed El Ali Ar’Ar takes such a significant moment to calls into question the distortion of cultural identity by colonial influences in his novel Ma la Tadhruhu al-Riyah (What the Winds Cannot Wipe off 1972). In this regard, Ar’Ar’s novel evokes an important issue regarding the direct contact of the Algerian individual– the protagonist al-Bashir– with the French colonizer during the colonial era and the drastic change of his identity. In reading the novel through a postcolonial lens of Bhabha’s mimicry, the papers endeavours to examine al-Bashir’s civilizational shock following his journey to Paris, as a soldier in the French army. This shock brings about a sense of insecurity that leads Ar’Ar’s protagonist to disavow his Algerian origins and to adopt a French lifestyle instead. The article concludes that the burden of representation leads Algerians authors to alert us that identity conversion–in Ar’Ar’s case for instance– does not furnish the individual with a sense of security. Rather, westernization more often produces blurred copies that would fall into abyss of existential “nada”.
Key Words: Civilizational Shock; Identity (In)security; Burden of Representation; the Algerian Arabophone Novel;

In view of the fact that language is the soul of the nation, the present study considers the burning issue of language politics and national identity in postcolonial Algeria in Ahlem Mosteghanemi’s The Bridges of Constantine. Since the early days of independence, Algeria was divided against itself vis-à-vis the language of Algerian literature. In this regard, some authors opted for French and others for Arabic as modes of literary expression. However, the peaceful co-existence between the two camps seemed to appease the problem temporarily. However, the outset of Algeria’s tumultuous nineties brought to the surface the dialectics of national and foreign languages. One of its most important manifestations is the appearance of Mosteghanemi’s The Bridges of Constantine as the first Algerian novel to be composed by an Algerian female in such a way its fictional texture reflects the ideologically wide gap between the two camps. Just like Mosteghanemi herself, the protagonist Khaled, whose French-background education created an identity split, decides to become a writer in Arabic. In so doing, he succeeds in dismantling his linguistic exile to compose a novel by the end of the narrative. In placing the novel in dialogue with Ngugi’s theory of language: Decolonizing the Mind, the article aims to respond critically to the following questions: how does the novel reflect the cultural malaise and re-stage the deep-seated linguistic drama in postcolonial Algeria? How does The Bridges of Constantine constitute a venue to decolonize the Algerian mind from colonial influences?
Key Words: Politics of Language; Arabic; Algerian novel; Decolonizing the Mind; Cultural malaise; linguistic exile

While Prison Literature worldwide stands straight on the stem of the literary pursuit qualities, it is not the case for this genre in the Arab world and more specifically in North Africa. However, Tunisia was the exception since it was able to bring prison literature out from the dark with the Samir Sassi’s exceptional work Burj al-Rumi: Abwab al-Mawt (‘Borj Roumi: The Gates of Death’, 2011). Although the novel is not the first to chronicle prison brutalities in post-independence Tunisia, but it is the first excruciating testimony that brings to view the horrors of torturing political prisoners and Islamic opponents during the era of ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Being himself a political prisoner, Sassi uses his narrator Fakhr al-Din (Sassi’s political nickname) as an autobiographical mouthpiece to disclose the "ruthless abuses" that he and his prison-mates were subjected to during a ten-year detention in Ben Ali’s “most preferred inferno”: a prison called Burj al-Rumi. Hence, the present study aims to show how the novel exposes in an artistic fashion the cruel methods of systematic torture practiced during Ben Ali’s era. The study will also looks into the way Sassi’s characterization is manipulated as a major force not to fascinate the readers, rather to shock them with the amount of unbearable pain and horrendous suffering that prisoners experienced. The study also endeavors to show that Sassi’s work should not only be read as a literary narrative that reflects a geographically restricted Tunisia, but it can also serve a gruesome metaphor about falling victim to prison in Africa and the Arab world. Furthermore, it may stand for whole Third World in its artistic struggle to lay bare the crippling legacy of tyranny and dictatorship.

Keywords:
Prison Literature, North Africa, Tunisia, Burj al-Rumi torture, esthetics,

The present thesis scrutinizes the crucial role that creative writing– the postcolonial novel in particular– plays in asserting national identities in post-emancipation African America and post-independent Sudan, Kenya and Algeria through analysing four works of fiction: Native Son, Season of Migration to the North, Matigari, The Bridges of Constantine, written respectively by Richard Wright, Tayeb Salih, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Ahlem Mosteghanemi. Amid the tremendously sweeping currents of subversive discourses of mimicry, neocolonialism and displacement that circulate and collide with the challenges of nationhood, the postcolonial individuals were, and still are, cautious when it comes to the authenticity of independence. While the theme of nationhood, which against the post-emancipatory exigencies and expectations, receives less attention in postcolonial critical studies of Wright, Ngugi, Salih and Mosteghanemi, this research calls into question the overarching role of the postcolonial novel and novelist in the national construction, throwing lights on the cultural vestiges of mimetic discourse. This paper traces the ways in which the works under scrutiny interrogate the neocolonial discourse and its detrimental effect on the individual and the nation. The work also delves into the concept of displacement as one major national preoccupation of the postcolonial novel in the erstwhile colonies. The study shows how the authors engage with displacement in such a way the characters’ personal displacement echo and mediate powerfully and artistically with the nation’s sense of political, cultural and the national estrangement. By opening the four novels to a rigorous comparative study, the work aims, within the contemporary galvanizing issues of postcolonialism to discuss language politics that is symbiotically linked to the harmony existing between nationalism, culture, literature. Centered mainly on postcolonial frameworks –borrowed from Bhabha, Fanon Nkrumah, Ngugi– the study settles on a consistently eclectic approach. It combines multiple theories and sociological concepts such as Benedict Anderson’s most influential paradigm of nationalism that, when grouped together, can generate a richer understanding of the novels in question. The findings argue that Wright, Salih, Ngugi, and Mosteghanemi are not merely creative authors, they are rather national soldiers of a sort in the frontlines of national resistance. They steer their literary trajectory towards crystalizing national consciousness, decolonizing the mind to establish imagined communities.

The present paper considers Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s revolutionary vision vis-a-vis the burning question of the language of African literature. Following independence, Africa has found itself already baptized into various European languages. Some authors like Chinua Achebe, in response, adopted English as a mode of literary expression arguing that steering a trajectory toward the Africanization of English language allows writing back to the colonizer in the language of the colonizer. English in, this regard, is seen as an enabling tool to carry the weight of the African experience and to present the African cultural heritage to the other. However, Ngugi’s appearance to the scene was a hallmark as his thought and entirety of writings marked the outset of a vernacular revolution, a revolution whose crux is writing literature in African languages in order to truly transcend the colonial ruination and decolonize the African mind. Ngugi emphasized that the brilliance of African culture had been buried under the western representations and tropes of colonialism. Thus premised on the axiomatic connectedness of language and culture, the study looks at how Ngugi’s logic considers language as not “a mere string of words. It [rather] had suggestive power well beyond the immediate lexical meaning” (DTH 11). In view of the fact that language is a paramount medium of cultural self-definition, the study demonstrates how the linguistic dependence represents Africa as though it were in an endless need for the Occident. In some senses, to keep writing in European languages is a systematically cultural deracination and a blatant self-distanciation of the African individual from the African roots and reality. The study equally shows the reasons why Africa does not exist and live in the European languages and that the quest for African authenticity entails writing African literature only in indigenous languages. Correspondingly, the research aims to highlight the particularity of the African selfhood via Africa’s vernacular languages and cultures, which nurtured, and still, the author’s imagination, giving them an African sense of originality. Ngugi’s project found avenue to realization with his far-reaching linguistic conversion, wherein he had officially and completely switched to the Gĩkũyũ language with a play entitled I Will Marry When I Want. In order for the reader to glean an understanding of Ngugi’s vernacular revolution and its libertarian discourse, the paper engages critically with his Matigari.

Since their inception, modernity and postmodernity have radically transformed the way we perceive and experience place. In this regard, Angelika Bammer in her book entitled Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question argues that displacement “is one of the most formative experiences of our century” (xi). Consequently, we are only now beginning to truly appreciate centrality of exile as one the several patterns of displacement. Exile is highly relevant today because of the enormous range of ramifications that it leaves on the lives of an ever-increasing number of exiled people worldwide.
Be it physical, social or cultural, exile opens up the most absorbing questions vis-à-vis belonging, nativism, alterity and alienation of the individual. However, literature, the novel to be exact, is one of the most important literary forms that undertakes the expression of the human experience of exile. Consequently, the novelistic representations of exile function as powerful tropes in the cultural production of modernisms. In this regard, Jan Felix Gaertner considers “exile as a common metaphor for the alienation and estrangement of modern and postmodern intellectuals” (01).

The present article puts flesh on the bones of central questions regarding “neocolonialism” and “unhomeliness” in Ahlem Mosteghanemi’s The Bridges of Constantine. In her fictional renditions of the unhomely condition, Mosteghanemi invites the reader to delve into the life of her protagonist Khaled, a veteran in the Algerian War of Independence, whose left arm was amputated after two bullets had become embedded in it. Once independence is achieved, he finds himself skeptical about his Algerianness. The novel displays an aura of estrangement seen by a protagonist striving to grapple with what Bhabha would call “unhomeliness”. The paper examines Khaled’s diasporic journey toward the metropole, wherein the politics of “home” and cultural dislocation are always at the forefront. With a special focus on the author’s esthetic dramatization of unhomeliness, the article is keenly interested in revealing the novel’s masterful mediation of the political and the national experiences through the characters’ personal ones. In other words, it stresses how Khaled’s romantic fiasco to marry the heroine “Hayat” broadens his unhomeliness, heralding an identity crisis. The article argues that Khaled’s intricate task of identity construction propels him to write a novel, where he is provided a space to undertake the uneasy negotiations between an appalling neocolonial burden and a world of utopian essences. The epistolary novel in this respect allows the establishment of a psychological refuge for unhomely self.

The central purpose of this paper is to throw light on the aesthetics of Psychoanalysis in the American Novel through psychoanalyzing two works of fiction Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and William Faulkner’s As I lay Dying. It goes without saying, when analyzing a literary text, the psychoanalytic theory can be invested in the sense of decoding or interpreting the masked connotations within a text, alongside a better grasp of the author's motivation and intentions, or to elicit the effect of texts and its performances on an audience. Indeed, the application of psychoanalytic philosophies to the study of literature was introduced primarily by Freud and later on and in other directions, by Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida have equally written extensively on how psychoanalysis aesthetically informs literary analysis. This paper correspondingly applies three Freudian Psychoanalytic principles: the Unconscious Mind Theory, Interpretation of Dreams and Death Drive Theory. Hence, it psychoanalyzes the main characters Clyde Griffiths and Addie Bundren of An American Tragedy and As I lay Dying respectively. It delves notably into the life of Clyde Griffiths to decipher the unconscious motivation which traps him in a web of tribulations leading to his tragic death. Besides, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams theory is utilized to help clarify Griffiths immersing in an incessant day-dreaming. According to Freud, dream is an outcome of psychic activity that every dream represents the fulfillment of a repressed wish and in view of that susceptible to analysis. In another dimension and by means of using Death Drive Theory, the paper psychoanalyzes a mostly absent protagonist Addie Bundren, who sets a journey of death in order to retrieve the lost meaning of life in twentieth century American society harrowingly traumatized by economic depression.
Key words: Freudianism- Psychoanalysis- Aesthetics- Criticism- Unconscious- Dreams- Death Drive

Due to Africa’s geographical situation and its richness of natural resources, Africa has largely been a subject to western colonialism. Imperial greed spurred on the Europeans to subdue that continent and plunder its wealth. This resulted in a crippling legacy of unending problems that Africa is still facing today. By the end of World War II, most of the African colonized nations began to gain independence and this coincided with United States of America getting out of its isolationism. Yet, for more than four decades, USA policy towards Africa was enveloped in vagueness and lacked dynamism.
However, 1996 elections were a watershed. After Bill Clinton had taken office as president of USA, the American Foreign policy makers commenced to energize interests in having military footholds in Africa. For them, Africa is momentous because of (1) the American multidimensional view of security including fighting terrorism and extremist Islamist groups requires escalating presence in North Africa (2) Africa’s richness of natural and mineral resources fueled Washington’s projects for domination (3) China's breakneck expansion into Africa alarmed USA that it would be neutralized in the region (4) the importance of North Africa in implementing the American projects in the Middle East such as “New Middle East” or “the Big Middle East”.
Hence, in order to carry out those ambitions, the American foreign policy makers devised vital plans for achieving hegemony. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is one of overarching tools. The AFRICOM was founded in 2007 and its headquarters is located at Kelley Barracks, near Stuttgart in Germany and USA is thinking seriously of conveying it into Africa. Morocco was a first option, yet Moroccan authorities rejected the idea. Eventually, Senegal will host the AFRICOM. In fact, AFRICOM has thousands of troops stationed in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti as well as other low-profile intelligence stations, airstrips and naval operations with the aim of getting much deeper and more direct involvement in African affairs.
In another dimension, Algeria grew especially concerned about the increasingly mounting interests of USA in extending the AFRICOM to its neighboring countries. Algerian officials disapproved of any military presence in North Africa whatsoever the motivations. They believe that fighting terrorism and extremism does not entail the foundation of American military bases on African lands. They are so cautious that any military presence would threaten the political, geostrategic and economic interests of the entire region.
Practically, USA project for having a military presence started to be achieved in the neighboring Tunisia. According to Algerian secret reports, two military bases have been founded in Tunisia; one in Zarzis and a second in the South. Though the Tunisian Government denied, Algerian press rang the alarm bells about the presence of the CIA commanders and AFRICOM soldiers on the Tunisian ground; just meters away from the Algerian borders. Consequently, a silent tension emerged between Algeria and Tunisia. The Algerian attitude can be justified by the fact that Algeria has indoctrinated a tenet of non-interventionism that it does not interfere with the others’ affairs and no other state has the right to intervene in its own affairs. This can obviously be proved with the Algerian Army which is not allowed by the constitution to fight or deploy forces outside the Algerian borders.