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Access Type
Open Access
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
French & Francophone Studies
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2011
Month Degree Awarded
May
Keywords
Maghreb, colonial, education, North Africa, representations, Francophone novel
Abstract
Much work exploring alterity and hybridity in the Maghreb ignores representations of education which confront seminal formative experiences, specifically education. French colonial education was problematic because it granted access to the colonizer’s culture, yet it also created a rupture in self-identity for Maghrebi students. In this thesis, I interrogate the literary representations of sites and sources of education by analyzing how these representations discuss the tension between formal French education and informal Maghrebi education.
My thesis begins with a historical overview of colonial education in the Maghreb. I then discuss literary methods of negotiating identity, contrasting Arab and Western autobiography especially. Furthermore, I compare writing practices informed by a French education and a North African upbringing. Next, I compare formal and informal sites of education—the school, home and community—which articulate sources of alterity experienced during colonial childhood. Writers interrogate formal settings, including the school, classrooms, teachers, and examinations, and gaze upon the normative space and dominant culture which contradict that of the home. Conversely, informal settings provide subversive sources of education that resist the power structures of colonial France. These sites, including parents, the home, and community, provide an oppositional education and a means of resistance to rejected systems of power.
Both settings represent spaces of cultural confrontation that serve as both a means of betrayal as well as benefit to students. The texts I consider discuss the dynamic end of the French colonial period yet were written over a period of time that allowed for personal reflection by the authors as well as for contributions by literary critics and historians that affected the perception and comprehension of the volatile period at the end of French colonialism and the fall of the Fourth Republic.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/2053674
First Advisor
Kathryn Lachman
Second Advisor
Patrick Mensah
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, International and Comparative Education Commons, Other Education Commons, Other French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons