Interview with Dr Hedi Jaouad

Dr Jaouad is an associate Professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs (New York).

TCG:  We understand that you have founded a Center for the Study of the Literatures and Arts of North Africa. Could you elaborate?

A:  There is a major literature of French expression which has developed in North Africa over the past thirty or forty years and which is continuing to grow in quantity and quality despite predictions by some critics of its early demise.

            Unfortunately, the literature of North Africa fails to get its due attention. The area is considered by some as belonging to continental Africa (and is treated therefore as a stepchild to the vaster enity of what most critics lump under the ethnic rubric of “Black African literature”) and is considered by others as belonging to the Near and Middle East (and is treated therefore as an outer march whose activities are weak reverberations of the major cultureal thrust of that general area). The neglect of Maghreb studies in general is especially marked in the United States where ethnic populations percentages tend to place North African interests in the background.

            Relegation to a secondary position is,  however, unwarranted, since the culture of the area is complex and interesting and its literary output in French--the specific matter of conern to us her--is on a par with the output of other Francophone literatures outside France.  The literature of Algeria alone--the most important of the three Maghrebine countries, the other two being Morocco and Tunisia--matches that of, say, Quebec, Switzerland, and major sub-Saharan countries like Senegal, Cameroon, and  Ivory  Coast.

            It is the purpose of the Center for the Studies of the Literatures and Arts of North Africa (CELAAN, acronym for Centre d’Etudes des Littératures et des Arts d’Afrique du Nord) to arouse interest in and to encourage research on the literature in question.

TCG:  What about the background of these authors? Are they French?

A:  CELAAN will emphasize the literature produced by autochthonous Arab and Berber writers (those who clearly had no other home to retreat to when decolonization occured), but it will also concern itself with the works of other writers whose psyches were formed by the area, namely French writers raised in Algeria. Furthermore, some attention will be given to the role North Africa plays in the work of metropolitan French writers.

TCG:  This is all very vague to one not involved in the field. Could you provide our readers with some representative authors?

A:  Yes, of course.  The writers I have termed “autochthonous”--a term used in the field to avoid the loaded and often misunderstood words “native” and “indigène”--include such masters as Algerians Kateb Yacine (whose Nedjma is the most famous work in the entire Maghrebine corpus), Mohammed Dib (the prolific and brillian Dean of Maghreb writers), and Mouloud Mammeri (the foremost Berber novelist), Moroccans Driss Chraïbi and Abdelkébir Khatibi, and the Tunisian Albert Memmi. The French writers raised in North Africa include Nobel Laureate Albert Camus and other fine writers like Emmanuel Roblès, Jules Roy, and Max-Pol Fouchet.

TGC:  And the third category?

A:  Although we will not pay much attention to it, there is need for analysis from the “reverse angle,” so to speak, of the place and function of North Africa in the work of such belletrist tourists as Gustave Flaubert and André Gide.

TCG:  What activities does CELAAN plan to pursue?

A:  There has been a significant growth in the number of scholars in this field, especially in the United States. This phenomenon is a result of the growing importance of the cropus of primematerials and the increased awareness of ethnic authenticity--in the old days prior to independence, authors had to assume a style and subject matter acceptable in Paris if they hoped to be published--as well as a result of increased travel to the area. Many Americans working in the field got their initiation almost by accident, gaining exposure to the literature as a result of having gone to the area with the Peace Corps or as Fulbright scholars.

            There is, then, a decided place for a Center like ours.  We plan to act as a clearing house for professional information. Our main forum for dissemination of materials and information is Revue CELAAN Review, launched in Fall 2002.

For more information about the journal: www.skidmore.edu/celaan