La violence à l’épreuve de la littérature : Rencontre avec Mustapha Benfodil (Algérie) et Samir Sassi (Tunisie)
Legacies of violence leave visible and invisible traces on societies, prompting questions about their political trajectories, their effects, the sense of justice and peace, and associated creative expressions. Literature is one of the privileged domains that explores these questions. Whether fiction or non-fiction, literature addressing violence is a powerful means of expression which can reflect and link individual and shared experiences, influence and be influenced by public debates, as well as contribute to an evolving understanding of the role of public and cultural memory in dealing with the legacy of violence.
Both Algeria and Tunisia deal with legacies of violence. The literary work in Algeria and Tunisia forms part of a continued negotiation, elaboration, identification and recognition in dealing with past violence that flows over into the present in the two countries.
During this Rencontre Ibn Khaldoun, Professor Ratiba Hadj-Moussa will discuss with Algerian writer Mustapha Benfodil and Tunisian writer Samir Sassi their works and their treatment of the civil war (Algeria) and authoritarian violence (Tunisia), the impacts of the those on their personal and artistic experiences, as well as the relationships of their works with public debates in their respective countries or more broadly.
Details:
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2022, 14:00-17:00 (Tunis time)
Venue: “Soufia El Golli” Hall, Tunisian Cinematheque, City of Culture, Tunis
Presenter:
Mustapha Benfodil is an Algerian writer born in 1968. He studied mathematics and journalism in Algiers. A protean author, his writing includes novels, theatre and poetry. Benfodil has published four novels, all of which were published by Barzakh in Algiers and partly republished in France: Zarta (Le déserteur, 2000); Les Bavardages du Seul (2003); Archéologie du chaos [amoureux] (2007; Al Dante, 2012), Body Writing. Vie et Mort de Karim Fatimi, écrivain (2018; Macula, 2019, under the title Alger, journal intense). Mustapha Benfodil is also the author of a dozen plays and a collection of poetry: Cocktail Kafkaïne [**Black poetry**] (Bristol, Hesterglock Press, 2018). In 2020, he received the Mohammed Dib Prize for his novel “Body Writing”.
Samir Sassi is a Tunisian novelist and university researcher. He holds a PhD in Arabic language, literature and civilization and is a member of the research laboratory “The Religious Phenomenon in Tunisia” at the Faculty of Arts in Manouba. Among his books are three novels about torture in Tunisian prisons during the period from independence to the brink of the revolution (Borj Roumi: The Gates of Death; The Threads of Darkness; Bait Annakech) and three academic books (Citizenship between religious and political in the thought of Burhan Ghaliou; Power Legitimacy in Islamic Political Thought; and Supplication and Politics: Liberating the Public Space in Islam).
Moderator:
Ratiba Hadj-Moussa is a full professor in the Department of Sociology at York University (Toronto) in the fields of cultural and political sociology. Her work focuses on Maghrebi public spaces, particularly Algerian public spaces, cinema and media, alternative memories and radical and popular modes of expression in the Maghreb. Her research areas are all informed by multidimensional axes including gender, politics, and minority discourses and practices.