Speaking Sovereignty: The Plight of Multilingual Literature in Independent Israel, Morocco, and Algeria
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Comparative Literature
First Advisor
Hever, Hannan
Abstract
This dissertation shows how multilingual literature in independent Israel, Morocco, and Algeria, challenged these three new states’ monolingual aspirations. It analyzes literary oeuvres that infiltrated the national monolingual canon and offered a more inclusive, multilingual definition of the citizen. Multilingual literature is rooted in a linguistic shift – often, a constant one. It is therefore characterized by fluidity and instability. Multilingual authors use this instability to undermine the prevalent notion of the modern nation-state’s monolingual citizen, rooted in the monolingual national model. Across three main sections, I offer six chapters investigating the appearance of multilingual literature in post-independence Israel, Morocco, and Algeria. I analyze literary journals, novels, and translations, all rooted in multilingualism(s) composed of two or more sets of different alphabets – namely Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin – as well as oral languages. The first two chapters are dedicated to bilingual literary journals in 1960s Morocco and Israel, and particularly to Moroccan Souffle-Anfas (1966-1971) and Israeli Eked Poetry Quarterly (1960-1971). Despite the journals’ different political affiliations and inclinations, both portray bilingual literature as a genre feeding on collaboration and more so on a sense of profound, continuous instability – political and otherwise. Chapters three and four examine the novels Nulle part dans la maison de mon père (Nowhere in My Father’s House, 2007) by Algerian author Assia Djebar, and Kol Tseadeinu (The Sound of our Steps, 2008) by Israeli author Ronit Matalon. The two novels showcase a layered form of multilingualism, with three different languages built one on top of the other. This unique linguistic fusion demands an unusual and unclassifiable literary form which fuses together various genres, linguistic registers, and even material textual elements, such as fonts. The two final chapters center around the role of translation in multilingual contexts. They explore Arabic-to-Hebrew and Arabic-to-French literary translations by Palestinian author Anton Shammas and French-Algerian translator Marcel Bois. I argue that those translations are able to underscore and represent the pieces’ multilingual context of production further than is expressed in the original. My work joins the growing academic focus on multilingual literature and tries to comprehend and define such texts on two levels: I wish to understand what drives their production, and to explore their political implications, once published. Through the lens of the Israeli-Maghrebi comparison, I consider Maghreb and Mashreq as part of one cultural, political, and geographical continuum, while rethinking the literary canons of the newly formed states in relation to one another. The multilingual texts I explore reveal the unique challenges posed to young national sovereignties by ethnolinguistic multiplicity. Israel, Morocco, and Algeria were each trying to implement national monolingualism using different language planning policies. This meant that authors of multilingual literature were not easily accepted by these countries’ literary establishments and were often rejected from the national canons. However, the particular multilingual writings I explore represented a linguistic multiplicity which was the concrete national reality. I therefore maintain that those who wrote them were genuine and influential narrators of their nations – and should be regarded as such.
Recommended Citation
Abazon, Lital, "Speaking Sovereignty: The Plight of Multilingual Literature in Independent Israel, Morocco, and Algeria" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 917.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/917
