States of emergency and Algerian literature in French after the 1990s

What is it about?

This article is about the intersection of literary and political discourses around states of emergency during and after the 1990s in Algeria - also known as the "décennie noire" - a time of political upheaval and violence. The article tracks the language of the press, the government and of writers themselves, before seeking, through a reading of one recent writer, Mustapha Benfodil, to ask of how an aesthetically challenging literature written after the 1990s comes to contest a set of articulations of "urgence" - the emergency - and recast a vision of Algeria and of Algerian literature outside a previously reductive lens depicting the country, and its literature, as concerned uniquely by violence.

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Why is it important?

The article is important in its reading of a recently published writer little known outside Algeria; the article includes the writer's own perspective by citing an interview conducted between the article author and Benfodil in 2014. It also begins to assess how political and literary discourses have interacted during a time of political upheaval and hence contributes to an important and ongoing debate in postcolonial studies surrounding the intersection of literature and politics.

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