الرسائل والأطروحات الأكاديمية
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يسمح هذه المجموعة الأعمال الأكاديمية بالحفاظ والأرشفة واسترجاع والوصول الى كل الرسائل الجامعية وأطروحات الدكتوراه المجازة في جامعة الجزائر 2 ؛ وتشمل كل تخصصات الجامعة الحالية والمستقبلية
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Item TRADITION REGENERATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S POST-COLONIAL NOVELS: NO LONGER AT EASE, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH(جامعة الجزائر2 أبو القاسم سعد الله Algiers2 University Abu El Kacem Saad Allah, 2024) Chenane شنان, Hizia حيزية; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)تعالج هذه الأطروحة الإشكالية البوستكولونيالية لإحياء التراث و الشخصية الثقافية في الروايات الثلاثة الأخيرة للكاتب النيجيري شينوا أشيبي : لم يعد هناك إحساس بالراحة ، رجل من الشعب ، كثبان النمل في السافانا. فروايات أشيبي تعبّر بقوة عن فهمه للإشكالية الموجودة بين الفرد و المجتمع، و المرتبطة أساسا بالتجربة الثقافية المعقّدة التي نتجت عن احتكاك الفرد الإفريقي بالثقافة الغربية. فقد لمسنا في رواياته كيف أنّ الأدوات الجمالية و الأنماط التعبيرية تصوّر بشكل كبير التجارب الاجتماعية و التاريخية التي تقوم بسردها. هذه العلاقة الفنّية بين النّص و السياق الواقعي المسرود هي خاصية واضحة و مميّزة في روايات أشيبي، فالعناصر الفنّية لرواياته مثل تمثيل الشّخصيات، المواضيع المعالجة و البنية السّردية كلها تعكس التوجهات الفكرية و المواقف الاجتماعية الثقافية التي يحاول تسليط الضوء عليها فكريا و أدبيا. ففي هذا الإطار، قام الكاتب بنقل قضايا الصراعات الثقافية إلى مجال الخيال و المجاز ، حيث أبرز دور الأدوات السّردية و الجمالية في الربط بين نظرته لإحياء الثقافة و البنية الهجينة للنّص. فقد استحضر الكاتب قصص و أساطير ثقافته الشّعبية و أدمجها بالعناصر الفنية لرواياته، و أكسبها بذلك بلاغة أدبية مميزة، جاعلا بهذا البنية السّردية لرواياته أداة أساسية للخوض في المواضيع الثقافية و الاجتماعية This thesis deals with the post-colonial issue of cultural identity in the last three novels of the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah. Achebe’s novels convey forcefully his apprehension of the problematic relation between the individual and his community, given the complexity of the cultural condition arising out of the African’s absorption of Western culture. In Achebe’s novels, the experimentation at the level of aesthetic devices, the complex narrative structure, and the hybrid mode of expression are themselves the manifestation of the social and historical experiences which they narrate. He demonstrates the aesthetic possibilities in which his message of cultural regeneration can be related to the hybrid structures of the text. Stories and myths of the writer’s culture are brought to the novel form and give it a significant literary rhetoric, embroidering and transforming its narrative structure and making it an important medium for exploring social and cultural themesItem Rural and Urban Environments in Realist and Naturalist Literatures: A Comparative Study of Selected African and American Novels(جامعة الجزائر2 أبو القاسم سعد الله Algiers2 University Abu El Kacem Saad Allah, 2023) BEZZAZI بزازي, Amina أمينة; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)The primary focus of this research is the binary opposition countryside-city, or province-metropolis, in a set of realistic and naturalistic novels from American and Anglophone African literatures, including an examination of the representation of each part’s most significant components, namely the milieu (space and atmosphere) and its inhabitants. The rural environment dealt with here in both literatures is the pastoral agrarian milieu, that is, the small town with farm lands as well as its people. As to the metropolitan environment treated in both literatures, it consists of the modern City, with its component elements –including its dwellers– and its predominant capitalist aspects among which are commerce, industrialisation, and consumerism يتعامل البحث الحالي بشكل نسبي مع تمثيل البيئات الريفية والحضرية في مجموعة من الروايات الواقعية والطبيعية من الآداب الأمريكية والأفريقية الناطقة بالإنجليزية. ينصب التركيز الأساسي لهذا البحث على ثنائية الريف - المدينة، بما في ذلك فحص تمثيل المكونات الأكثر أهمية لكل جزء، أي البيئة (الفضاء) وسكانها. البيئة الريفية التي يتم تناولها هنا في كلا الأدبين هي البيئة الزراعية الرعوية، أي المدينة الصغيرة ذات الأراضي الزراعية وكذلك سكانها. أما البيئة الحضرية التي تمت معالجتها في كلا الأدبين، فهي تتكون من المدينة الحديثة، مع عناصرها المكونة - بما في ذلك سكانها- وجوانبها الرأسمالية الغالبة ومن بينها التجارة والتصنيع والاستهلاكItem The Morality of Fiction(UNIVERSITY OF ALGIERS 2. Faculty of Foreign Languages, 2018) Adjout, Asma; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This thesis is an investigation into the morality of fiction, which consists in the exploration of the complex connection between art and ethics. The purpose it to consider the presence of moral discourse in creative writing and the importance of taking it into consideration in literary criticism. The aim of this study is to re-adapt the claims of ethical criticism to a growing complex modernity following the tenets of John Krapp’s responsible ethical criticism. Indeed, the latter developed a new approach to ethical criticism through avoiding an oversimplified and monological treatment of texts, and establishing a balance between the ethical and the aesthetic dimensions. This work thus provides a study of six novels from English, American and African literatures, ensuring thus a diversity of socio-historical contexts to provide our claims for morality in literature with a broader relevance.Item THE POLITICS OF IRONY AND SATIRE IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S DEVIL ON THE CROSS, AND WOLE SOYINKA'S THE INTERPRETERS(University of Algiers 2. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2012) Ferache, Waheb; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)The guiding principle underlying this dissertation is to cast a critical eye on the politics of irony and satire prevailing in three famous African novels: Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross, and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. These highly satirical texts expose, through different techniques of derision, the evils of authoritarian power that followed the departure of the white man from Africa. The tree novels mentioned apply derision to some of the contemporary power elites for betraying the promises of independence. Politics is kept by Machiavellian power-despots from being an arena of meaningful social relations and practices and becomes instead a hermetic ivory-tower where they have locked themselves and proved to be more corrupt, absurd, grotesque and brutal than their predecessors – the departed imperialists. My intention in this dissertation, via the three outstanding fictional works and other related texts, is to probe the game of politics and the way it is deconstructed in African literature. Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka employ diverse techniques of the satiric spectrum ranging from irony to ridicule through laughter and cynicism in order to blow the whistle on the growing crisis which is inflicted by the body politic. They exploit the gap between the exploiting “haves” and the exploited “have nots” which widens and bring to light uncertainty, dejection and bitter cynicism. Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka claim that African literature exists in a historical continuum. Neo-colonialism infected post-colonial Africa as a cancer or a severe form of imperialism where the neo-colonial hegemony assume a kind of power without responsibility or exploitation without restitution owing to the continuation and perpetuation after independence of economic, political and social practices established by the old-fashioned colonialism. It will be shown that the language of irony and satire is skilfully employed by Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka to express their bitter disillusionment and that of most African peoples and to denounce the shortcomings and flaws of contemporary Africa in its dealing with neo-colonialism. For this purpose, I shall resort to a variety of theoretical notions that will support my analysis of satire and show how this particular writing strategy has informed and enriched the post-colonial African novel. It has also provided a wealth of insights in what it means to write satire, to be ironic, and to surmise to satire’s social or political purpose. The three canonical texts of African literature selected, share a number of affinities at the linguistic, aesthetic, and ideological levels, as I will attempt to demonstrate. Chapter One will be devoted to the discussion of Achebe’s techniques of irony and satire in A Man of the People. In this novel, Achebe draws humorous and grotesque portraits of post-colonial Nigeria through his witty foreshadowing of the crisis of leadership facing it. His satire derives from the duality intrinsic to the Igbo world view and best illustrated in the Igbo proverb that advocates the idea that whenever something stands, something else will stand beside it, and 6 The Politics of Irony and Satire in Achebe’s MOP, and Ngugi’s DOC traditional modes of representation of derision constitute the essence of Achebe’s satiric spectrum, and in each of these, a norm is transgressed and a gap is constructed to strengthen the satiric intent. Chapter Two follows on with Ngugi, who introduces Religious Allegory, grotesque body and satire in Devil on the Cross as potential threats to Kenya’s mundane reality and most significantly to capitalism in a totalitarian state. In his ritual of anatomizing the monster capitalism in his novel, Ngugi’s satire is didactic and polemical to the point of transgressing the boundaries of conventional creative writing. He is particularly mocking the gullibility and insatiable envy of those members of Kenya’s capitalist bourgeoisie, thus he enters into a brutal and savage satiric exposure to disclose their inanities and immoral actions. Chapter Three will focus on the use Satiric Humor and Laughter in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters. The novel is, without question, a linguistically rich and sharp satiric representation of the new, hybridized culture of post-colonial Nigeria. In this polyphonic and highly rhetorical work of art, Soyinka juxtaposes existentialist philosophy and indigenous myths, creating thus memorable satiric passages fused with humor, sophisticated wit and memorable laughter. The ultimate objective of this dissertation is to study the discursive strategies stressed by Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka based on irony and satire, in order to generate an opposition to despotic abuses of power. Their crucial purpose is to move the African audience to scrutinize and denounce the flaws and shortcomings of post-independence politics.Item African women’s search for [re]insription in modern Africa(University of algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر 2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2018) Azzoug, Fatima; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This thesis aims at dissecting the workings of the patriarchal ethos as denounced by the two African women writers, the Nigerian Buchi Emecheta and the Algerian Malika Mokeddem. The corpus is selected on the basis of a variety of literary sub-genres: autobiography, fictional narratives and war novels. This corpus falls in the category of resistance literature as the novels selected portray women’s victimization by patriarchy and women’s attempts and ways to stand against it. Consequently, the study is backed up by the feminist, postcolonial and psychoanalytic tools of analysis that explain how the girl/woman is conceived of by the patriarchal society and how the woman inverts this image as both an expression of her rejection of this ethos and an articulation of her selfhood. This study is also based on the comparative approach. It highlights that though the two women writers belong to different countries and eras, they are similar in more than one aspect in their reflection of how patriarchy frames the girls’/women’s existence in the family and in society as a whole. The study also shows that Buchi Emecheta and Malika Mokeddem are different in the intensity of their refutation of patriarchyItem An Afro-centrist Perspective of cultural affirmation and social progress in p'Bitek's Song of Lawino and Song of ocol and Ngugi's I will marry when I want(University of Algiers. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2009) Boucherifi, Boualem; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation studies the militant socio-cultural and political positions of Okot p'Bitek, as well as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii. The focus is on Okot's long poems Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, and on the Ngugi play I Will Marry When I Want. S L and S O truly epitomise Okot's philosophy of 'Africa's Cultural Revolution'. In S L, the poet charges his epic character, Lawino with the mission of presenting, interpreting and eventually defending the traditional aspects of her community. Equipped with a remarkable charisma, eloquent words and a lucid vision, Lawino expresses her sympathies and anxieties through describing Acoli food, dances, aesthetics, medicine, beliefs, rituals, religion and many other aspects. S L constitutes a solid argument centred on the idea of a 'search' for an African identity. As this dissertation suggests, Okot's cultural insights impress even non-Acoli readers, because of Lawino's particular use of figurative language, similes, metaphors, irony, mockery and satire. Its publication in 1966 inspired other African writers to evoke the richness and originality of their cultural heritage. In his rejoinder Song of Ocol, Okot sketches Lawino's husband like an adamant figure embracing Western values, ideals and culture. If Lawino stands for traditionalism, Ocol represents the African educated 'élite' attracted by modernity and the European lifestyle. Ocol's stand point is hyperbolically dramatised by his negation of his own culture, his own people, his wife and even himself. The caricature is carried further when Ocol takes the advantage of his Western education to become a ruthless political leader striving for power and money. Instead of promoting justice and progress, Ocol shocks his audience by his indifference to poverty, disease and ignorance. By making him a symbol of Africa's cruellest dictators, Okot criticises the hypocrisy of Africa's national leaders and points at their failure to meet social aspirations. I W M by the two Ngugis deals with the socio-economic reasons for the down fall of the Kiguunda family. In accordance with the 'people's theatre' or the 'theatre of the oppressed', the dramatists portray the life of the Kiguunda family who fail to pay back a bank loan. Their situation is complicated when their land is sold at auction, their daughter falls in prostitution and Kiguunda sinks into alcoholism. In fact, Ngugi is implicitly accusing the western capitalists and their local collaborators of impoverishing peasants and workers. Thus, the two Ngugis attempt to re-define the priorities of the national independence through their political activism in Kamiriithu theatre with peasants and workers. Adopting a socialist ideology, the dramatists describe a kind of class struggle between the Kiois and the Kiguundas, i.e., the bourgeois and the peasants. While Okot lays the stress on Uganda's need for a cultural revaluation, or indeed revolution, Ngugi is more concerned to consider culture as a basis on which to construct a just and democratic society in post independent Kenya.Item The Concept of Nation-State in the African Novel(University of algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر 2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2015) Babkar, Abdelkader; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)The idea of the nation in Africa has been widely dealt with in modern African literature, arising from the fact that writers are bent on expressing their concern about the future of their countries. Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Kofi Awoonor are some such writers, as witness their efforts at conceiving of Afrotopia, or at best viable socio-political systems in the wake of colonial situation. The present research work aims to examine closely these novelists’ ideological convictions as they are expressed in their fictions and often shown to be in opposition to the practices established by the state apparatuses in place. My study shows how the African situation has been characterised in African novels by both a common continental experience and a number of facts that dramatise the historical predicament of slavery, colonialism and a problematic independence. These representations carry dialogical voices which underpin the authoritative voice of the authors. The narratives of the nation are shown to be ambivalent, for they seem to act in defence of the novelists’ culture, yet they jettison its very quintessence in the sceptical view they reflect about its significance in modern times.Item ON MOVING THE CENTRE OF NARRATION AND DISCOURSE(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Letters, 2009) Chaabane Ali, Mohamed; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation is intended chiefly to study Ngugi’s literary response to the Western culture of domination, which manifests itself in a set of hegemonic views about the non-Western communities generally, and the African in particular. While forming the ideological basis for the growth of classical European Empires overseas, this culture for him still continues to impose its standards on the global order, and thus on the post-colonial world. In his most proletarian novels, Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, and Matigari, Ngugi has a “literarypolitical” project of “revisiting” the cultural and political authority of the imperial powers. This project is mainly intended to restore his people’s freedom of thought and action so as to resist the power of the hegemonic interests of Western-oriented international capitalism. Ngugi’s presently discussed novels, by bringing to the fore a set of heated issues bearing on history, culture, and the nation, reverse colonial binarisms in order to combat the hegemonic interpellations of the neo-colonial regime. In Petals of Blood, the idea of history is brought to prominence as Ngugi argues strongly for a radical reinterpretation of Kenya’s working people’s history. In fact, Karega, evidently the mouthpiece of the writer, stresses that the rewriting of Kenya’s history is an important undertaking, but by no means sufficient, to support what he foresees as the class struggle waged by the “wretched of the earth” against the neocolonial regime run by the new “bloodsuckers”. Similarly, Ngugi, through such characters as Nyakinyua and Abdulla, argues clearly for the significance of Kenya’s “oral history” and the heroic history of Kenyans’ resistance to the imperialist “marauders” for today’s struggle which, at all events, runs the risk of being overwhelmed by a false conception of Kenya’s both precolonial and colonial past that is touted by a corrupt ruling elite. In his next novel Devil on the Cross, however, much emphasis is placed upon the indigenous culture of the population, even though Ngugi is very often thought to prioritise political and economic struggles over cultural retrieval. This novel interestingly shows that we can never diminish the instrumental value of culture as a political weapon against imperialism it its neocolonialist stage. This study makes thus the claim that the indigenous culture of the masses can be used in the very definition of the downtrodden classes, to say nothing about the use of such aspects of folk culture as songs, proverbs, and traditional stories as a means of communication with the audience, of whom the “illiterate” masses form the majority. In addition, DOC displays a concern for certain forms of cultural hegemony exercised by such institutions as the school, the media, and the Church. In this novel, indeed, my contention is that the neocolonial ideology is supported in part by the imposition of the Western cultural 7 models on the African people. Consequently, Ngugi’s disapproval of the white culture is an explicit attack on the whole system of the neocolonial power. But, at the same time, nowhere in his novel is there any explicit call for the return to some pristine pre-colonial culture. In Ngugi’s opinion, this atavistic view is not founded at all. Ngugi’s first novel in exile, Matigari, solidifies Ngugi’s immense project of “de-centring” the Western hegemonic political discourse by expressing the felt need for the regeneration of the post-colonial African nation. Ngugi decries violently the currently established Kenyan nation because of its degenerate state that manifests itself clearly in the falsity of foundations upon which it is based. Matigari, the hero of the narrative, represents the daunting challenge of the establishment of an egalitarian society, and the fact that he ultimately falls back on a military action indicates strongly that the nation cannot be “regenerated” unless an armed rebellion of the masses, similar to the epic Mau Mau insurrection, breaks out once again. In general, Ngugi’s literary -and political- project of redefining the narrative discourse about Africa in the post-independence era has to be envisaged within the theoretical framework of postcolonialism and the political framework of his Marxist-based ideology. Ngugi revisits in his works a number of crucial concepts, which include history, culture, nation, with a very clear objective in mind: the political, economic, and cultural autonomy of the Africans and the non-western people at large. This objective has to be achieved, as indicated, whether explicitly or implicitly in all his “popular” novels, as they have come to be called, by the downtrodden people’s resort to armed resistance.Item WOMENS' POSITIONS AND ROLES IN CONTEMPORARY GHANA IN AMA ATA AIDOO'S NOVELS(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Messaoudi, Lila; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)An examination of the existing scholarship on African women writers shows that the question of negotiating the past and the present in the contemporary period is one of the crucial discussions in African women's literature. However, this negotiation is hardly dealt with as an issue that can potentially lead to the re-evaluation of women's roles and status in contemporary Africa, so as to break away from the nostalgia for pre-colonial women's images and roles and to cast a critical eye on Western imported lifestyles. As social change occurs, women's position in Africa is undergoing an ever changing redefinition especially when it is considered within the larger scope of nationalism. This is what this dissertation proposes, a re-reading of Ama Ata Aidoo's novels, through the new prism of women's roles as part of the cultural negotiation in contemporary Ghana. In doing so, the dissertation goes beyond the paradigm of binary opposition that undergirds the critical field concerning writings by African women in favour of the innovative concept of negotiation. In addressing women's issues such as marriage, polygamy and love within the broader context of nationhood and nationalism, this study puts forward the argument that Ama Ata Aidoo has devised a space of creativity for herself through an innovative aesthetic vacuum, hitherto the preserve of men, and from which she poses, discusses and addresses through negotiation, those cultural issues affecting her and her female characters. Chapter One presents a theoretical basis for this study by providing a frame of discussion regarding the concepts of Feminism, Womanism, Gender, Socialization as well as Aidoo's commitment to these concepts, her commitment to the nation in order to explain how she is able to negotiate her commitment to both African women's issues and nationalism. Chapter Two deals with the dilemma posed in Our Sister Killjoy; Nationalism is discussed specifically in relation to women's issues, as well as to Gender and Identity. Through this association, we discuss the contentions as well as the negotiation of these two crucial issues in African literature, particularly in African women's literature. Chapter Three engages both the personal and the political in Changes, as it questions the notion of education and redefines the practice of polygamy to suit women's needs and identities in contemporary Ghana. Chapter Four explores Aidoo's style in handling the issues discussed in the above chapters, and her successful attempt in negotiating traditional storytelling and modernist techniques, as a vivid example of how to negotiate past and present. Aidoo thus makes a literary compact with her bold views concerning the role of an intellectual woman in Ghana, by engaging in a mode of writing combining post modernism with traditional orature.Item MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND TRAGEDY IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S LORD JIM AND CHINUA ACHEBE’S NO LONGER AT EASE(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Adjout, Asma; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation approaches the problem of morality and social responsibility as two related elements which have been a theme treated by many writers, notably in the Western world and Africa. I set out to discuss here two novels, namely Conrad's Lord Jim (1900) and Achebe's No Longer at Ease (1961), which provide a platform for discussion of morality and its relevance in the modern context. This research work attempts to bridge cultural, social, and historical differences separating the two works, and brings to light the universality of morality, and the importance attributed to it by writers anxious to reassert traditional moral values in a degenerate present. The changes which have ushered in the modern world have had an important impact on traditional morality. The basic precept of morality, crystallized in 'The Golden Rule': 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', is increasingly challenged by the modern conception of the individual's right to pursue his own happiness; moral behaviour does not always involve self-sacrifice for others, but when it does so, we are more able to recognize its worth and admire its beauty. Glorification of money and materialism, chaotic transformation under the impact of speed, hugeness and standardization, intellectual and scientific revolutions shaking prior conceptions of human nature, are characteristics of the modern word, in the face of which traditional morality is losing its hold on the individual. Moral failure is the main theme addressed in the two novels. The two authors investigate the reasons for this failure, without, however, bringing clear-cut conclusions. The two approaches used in this work, namely, the socio-ethical and the tragic, is an attempt to cover the possible reasons of the protagonists' moral failure as advanced by the two authors. While Conrad and Achebe present a universal view of morality, i.e., the need to assert such notions as social responsibility and self-sacrifice, the socio-cultural factors play a crucial role in shaping the protagonists' destinies within their respective communities. While the two authors 'agree' on the basic tenet of morality, they are aware of the changes in the societies they live in. Western society as portrayed by Conrad is characterized by moral anarchy and skepticism. Conrad is aware of the difficulty of keeping to traditional moral values in view of the new modern realities, and deplores the Western society's loss of fortitude and spirituality. On the other hand, African society as portrayed by Achebe is losing its traditional cohesion due to its encounter with Europe, and is in search of a more tenable modernity. Achebe is aware that the path towards change is inevitable, but warns against a blind adoption of modern Western cultural precepts, and points out the importance of maintaining in some degree traditional identity and moral values. In view of the similarities highlighted, and despite the differences noted, Conrad and Achebe transcend the disillusionment imposed by a chaotic present, and attain the stature of moral teachers.