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
