“Fugitive Without Knowing it”: Language, Displacement and Identity in Assia Djebar’s Autobiographic Narratives

Oct 15, 2026

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A writer who chooses to write in a language other than her mother tongue experiences displacement, shaped by the interplay between language, self, and identity in a geography-centered world. In Assia Djebar’s autobiographic narratives, the written word complicates this dynamic through tensions between an oral maternal Arabic/Berber language and a written paternal French. The paper examines how autobiographical genre and linguistic hybridity enable her to manage double exile, mourn the maternal tongue, and achieve linguistic and cultural reconciliation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time12 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Language, oppression, and colonial legacies

Personal is political and postcolonial language politics

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 Vol. 6 No. 4; August 2015 Australian International Academic Centre, Australia “Fugitive Without Knowing it”: Language, Displacement and Identity in Assia Djebar’s Autobiographic Narratives Lobna Ben Salem Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities, Manouba University PO box, 2010, Tunisia E-mail: [lobna.bs75@gmail.com](lobna.bs75@gmail.com) Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.4p.20 URL: [http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.4p.20](http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.4p.20) Received: 01/03/2015 Accepted: 10/05/2015 Abstract If in Edward Said’s words,“everyone lives life in a given language; everyone’s experiences therefore are had, absorbed, and recalled in that language”(Out of Place, 1999: 217), a writer who chooses to write in a language other than themother-language is inevitably a victim of displacement. In a geography-decentred world, being linguistically out of place is usually accompanied with a physical displacement, issuing into a problematic interplay between language, self and identity. In Assia Djebar ’s autobiographic narratives, the role of the written word is made more complex, not only because Djebar is a Muslim woman, but also due to the conflict between her oral ‘maternal ’Arabic/Berber language, and the written‘paternal ’ language which is French. Djebar has a complex relationship with these two languages in and between which she lived; two languages that worked in tandem, but also Othered each other in a shifting myriad of experiences and forms of being and becoming. This paper aims at discussing the intersectionality of language, identity and displacement. It starts with the view that the written word separates the writer from her maternal language, and her expression in French has become a source of anxiety. Knowing that her association of language and home underlies her double displacement both linguistically and geographically, how does Djebar come to terms with the anxiety of a double exile? At what point was she able to proclaim that writing in “the enemy’s language” heralds the self’s plurality, positionality, alterity and uniqueness. What role has the autobiographic genre played in this self-fulfilment? The paper postulates that linguistic hybridity is the only possible venue for Djebar when it comes to escaping the alienation inherent in her expression in the enemy's language. The integration of orality in Djebar ’s (written) autobiographies allows the author to surmount her linguistic exile, to properly mourn the loss of the maternal tongue, enhancing a linguistic and cultural reconciliation. Keywords: Linguistic exile-female collective memory-displacement-Algeria-French language “So far, I have only been able to use a language that enslaved me, and therefore, the messengers of my mind always come shackled. Ama Ata Aidoo1 1. Introduction There is nothing new in having writers of the oppressed culture writing in the oppressor’s language. A sweeping look at Anglophone postcolonial literature shows that it is a commonplace practice by writers as versatile and universal as Yeats, Joyce, Conrad, but also more eclectic and ambitious as Achebe, Rushdie and Head. Francophone postcolonial literature is not spared this lot. North African writers like Ben Jalloun, Memmi, and Dib made their way into international fame while their language is that of the colonizer. Assia Djebar, the Algerian female writer, figures among the list of Maghrebian writers who use French as a medium of expression, and whose complex relationship to language is burdened by gender prerogatives and by the assumption that women, in traditional societies, are bearers of language. In view of this, identity fulfilment for both the “daughter of the nation”(Boehmer 106) and the exiled writer announces to be complex, bearing in mind that any identity quest has inevitably to filter through language. A Muslim woman bred in the Arabo-Berber tradition but s

FAQs

How does writing in a non-mother tongue create displacement in Djebar’s case?

The paper argues that adopting another language inevitably produces displacement, because experiences are lived and recalled through that language. In Djebar’s autobiographic narratives, French intensifies anxiety linked to a sense of being linguistically out of place.

What conflict does the paper highlight between maternal and paternal languages?

It distinguishes between Djebar’s oral maternal Arabic/Berber language and the written paternal language, French. This produces a shifting tension where the two languages both coexist and estrange one another.

Why does the paper emphasize autobiography as a response to linguistic exile?

It states that to disclose experiences and come to terms with linguistic exile, Djebar resorts to autobiography. The integration of orality in her (written) autobiographies is presented as a way to surpass linguistic exile and mourn the maternal tongue.

Oct 15, 2026

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