• Is there Tunisian literature? Emergent writing and fractal proliferation of minor voices

    Author(s):
    Ewa Lukaszyk (see profile)
    Date:
    2013
    Group(s):
    CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century, CLCS Mediterranean, TM Literary Criticism
    Subject(s):
    Comparative literature
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Maghrib, minor literature
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6Q88F
    Abstract:
    Is There Tunisian Literature? Emergent Writing and Fractal Proliferation of Minor Voices. The article presents the Tunisian literature from the non-local perspective of the global literary market and the circulation of translated literature. The minor status of the studied phenomenon becomes obvious even when the Tunisian literature is compared with the Moroccan one. What is more, this comparison helps to understand the consequences of some choices made by the Tunisian writers, choices that established diverging directions of literary quest and caused the ambivalent aspiration of belonging both to the Arabic and the French linguistic and cultural zone. This basic ambivalence is treated in the article as an essential fissure and a kind of fractal principle, conducing to the proliferation of minor voices, instead of synergistic pattern of development leading to the synthesis of cultural contradictions. Some of these voices, such as Abdelwahab Meddeb, try to inscribe themselves in the universalist, gallicized context, while others, such as the emigrant Arab-speaking writer Hassouna Mosbahi, find in the translation a chance of reaching new readers and the promise of escaping the status of minor or emergent writers. Key words: Tunisian literature – emergent writing – francophone literature – translated literature – Abdelwahab Meddeb – Hassouna Mosbahi
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Journal article    
    Status:
    Published
    License:
    Attribution

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