ABSTRACTS

LITTERATURE MONDE AND TRANSNATIONALISM: NINA BOURAOUI'S TRANSNATIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE

Christine O'Dowd-Smyth
(WATERFORD INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY)

The New Wave of Littérature-monde has opened a window onto the wider world for all writers of French expression, thus creating a necessary trans-national space for a writer such as Nina Bouraoui, who defies easy categorisation as either a "French" or a "Francophone" writer by having an Algerian father and a French mother. Bouraoui, who was born in France but spent a formative childhood in Algeria, has refused to be labelled either French or Algerian. She has always resisted being marginalised as a "Francophone" writer, insisting that her cultural memory is not the same as either the Algerian born or the 'beurs' - the children of immigration to France.
Nina Bouraoui has dealt with personal issues of being between two cultures in both her autobiographical work and her fiction, but her recent, and arguably most interesting work has been her continuing confessional narrative of her journeys of self-discovery into both her homosexuality and her ongoing psychoanalysis.
This is world dimension writing on topics of global significance and meaning, and cannot be limited to an outdated and increasingly reviled binarism of writers from the so-called 'margins' writing back to the so-called 'centre'. As the Manifesto for a Littérature-monde states: "le centre est désormais partout, aux quatres coins du monde". A postmodern analysis of Nina Bouraoui's writing can arguably start with the centre of the Self, and then examine the nomadic nature of the narrative continuum which is not confined to the mere historical or even the postcolonial context of Nina Bouraoui's complicated, yet fascinating cultural matrix.
In short, to qualify Nina Bouraoui's writing as either French or Francophone is to engage with the debate that Charles Bonn has described as: "dépassé". To describe her writing as "Littérature-monde" is to fully acknowledge the universality of her creation.