Étude comparative sur le rôle de la langue et du lieu dans les œuvres autofictionnelles de deux auteures postcoloniales, Nina Bouraoui et Marita van der Vyver.

Abstract

This dissertation compares and contrasts Nina Bouraoui and Marita van der Vyver, exploring the role of language and place in their quest for identity and a feeling of belonging. It provides three key theoretical insights into the role of language and place in their inner journeys from past (Africa) to present (France). The first is Edward Saïd’s concept of Orientalism and the claim that the North considers the people of the South to be inferior. The second theoretical insight is Bhabha’s claim that post-colonial authors construct an interstice in which colonizer and colonized co-exist and build hybrid identities. The third is Derrida’s argument that language and culture are imposed on us, producing a permanent state of alienation that cannot be expressed in the language of the Imperial Other, the Metropolis. This research concludes that Bouraoui and Van der Vyver use autofiction to bridge the gap between their past and present Self. Bouraoui is the Eternal Outsider. Her mind and body are the sites of her eternal identity crisis: trapped in the interstice between Algeria and France, between the guidance of her Algerian father and the protection of her French mother, between the language of her childhood and her adulthood, and between her sex, her sexuality and her gender. In contrast, Van der Vyver identifies herself as Afrikaans and does not see her mother tongue as an obstacle to self-exploration and self-expression. Her autofiction depicts her as a Boer in exile. She is critical of gender relations rather than of apartheid. Both writers on the other hand use their bedrooms as an interstice in their inner journeys through space and time. Both of them are alienated from French, the language of the Other. Both love Africa. Neither belongs to the continent.