The Iconization of Terror in the Algerian Literature of the Black Decade
After thirty years of latent post-independence crises, Algeria lapsed in the 1990s into a “black decade” of suffering from which it seemed difficult to remerge. There was a surge of violence not only against the authorities, but also against foreigners and intellectuals. Writers, in particular, were the targets of murderers in an attempt to “muzzle” the people. Their scapegoat situation notwithstanding, writers preferred to bear witness for the horror in which their country was. Threatened with death at any moment, their testimonial writing was motivated by the urge to describe a country in a state of emergency. To illustrate this view, my paper relies on Rachid Mimouni’s La malédiction (1993) [The Curse] and Yasmina Khadra’s A quoi rêvent les loups (1999) [Wolf Dreams]. In these testimonial texts ingrained in Algerian culture and ideology, the authors provide a semiotic representation of the trauma of terror. To understand their semiotic underpinnings, I will rely on Jean Baudrillard’s Esprit du terrorisme (2002) [The Spirit of Terrorism], a seminal work based on the premise that terrorism is violence vested in symbolic action.