AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXPRESSION, FICTIONS OF IDENTITY

The initial question of defining the status of the texts under analysis here, and therefore of defining some of the aims of this book, is a complex one. The issue of attributing the label ‘autobiography’ is difficult for a variety of reasons, all interlinked and each worthy of discussion in its own right, even though the writers considered here have all, at some point, made explicit the autobiographical nature of the texts analysed here. First, none of the texts that will be discussed in the course of this book can be called an autobiography in the strictest sense of the term. Certainly none of them is described as such on the front cover, and although the subtitle of Abdelkébir Khatibi's La Mémoire tatouée describes the text as the ‘autobiographie d'un décolonisé’ (‘autobiography of a decolonised man’) on the inside cover, the term roman (‘novel’) is used on the front cover, as it is for both of the texts by Assia Djebar, L'Amour, la fantasia (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade) and Vaste est la prison (So Vast the Prison). One of the texts by Albert Memmi, Le Scorpion (The Scorpion) takes up the idea of a confession in its subtitle, and the confessional mode is often considered as one of the attributes of autobiography, but it is a ‘confession imaginaire’ – an imaginary confession. There is use made of the third person, as well as the first person, in all the texts and there is little attempt to make explicit the fact that the narrator and the author are the same person, named as such, although after publication (often long after publication) the authors have given clearer indications that these texts are indeed expressions of their personal experiences.