Strategies of Subversion and Transgression in the Novels of Assia Djebar and Gloria Naylor

Abstract

Through a comparative perspective, and within the theoretical framework of post-colonial feminism, the present thesis aims at analysing the strategies of subversion and transgression in selected novels by contemporary Algerian francophone female novelist Assia Djebar and African American woman writer Gloria Naylor. The research aims primarily at demonstrating that despite the distinct and distanced contexts of the two writers, the double marginality of their female group communities -a marginalization based simultaneously on race and gender- urges the two authors to use similar strategies to voice the concerns of long silenced and excluded minorities. The examination of novels such as Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980), L’Amour la fantasia (1985), Ombre sultane (1987), Vaste est la prison (1995), and La Femme sans sépulture (2002) by Djebar, and The Women of Brewster Place (1983), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe (1992) by Naylor, shows that the subversive and transgressive strategies employed by both Djebar and Naylor operate at the levels of both form and content. This reflects already in the linguistic dimension where Djebar and Naylor challenge the dominance of the major languages they are employing, i.e. respectively French and English