Social Critics and the Condition of Women in Algerian Literature in Arabic: ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd Benhadūga as a Case Study
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present the work of the Algerian writer ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd Benhadūga, and to discuss how a woman’s identity and role in society are mirrored in the Algerian narrative discourse in the post-independence literature written in Arabic. In particular, I will read Benhadūga’s novel Rīḥ al-ğanūb (South Wind, Benhadūga 1972), which presents a female character who, from the author’s point of view, represents a critique of power. As in other novels by the same author written between 1970 and 1980, as well as in novels by other Algerian authors (e.g. in Al-zilzāl (The Earthquake) by At-Ṭāhar Waṭṭār and Mā lā tadruhu al-riyāḥ (What Winds cannot erase) by Muḥammad Al-‘Alī ‘Ar‘ār), South Wind’s protagonist tries to envision herself by opposing tradition, but she fails, because to succeed she would have to give up her ‘feminine’ side. Usually, Benhadūga’s novels are labeled as “regime novels”; they are not set in a specific historical background, nor do they belong to the field of interdisciplinary studies (though, as Terry Eagleton points out, “such ‘pure’ literary theory is an academic myth” (Eagleton 1997: 170). In fact, Benhadūga participated in the socialist ideal and chose to write in Arabic. At the same time, even in such conditions, the intellectual can contribute to a real change, contradicting the idea that a free intellectual can define themselves only at the margins of the literary field and is condemned to such status in order to maintain his or her freedom of thought.
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