Introduction

Summary

Maïssa Bey's novel Bleu blanc vert [Blue White Green] (2006) opens with an Algerian teacher informing his young students that they are no longer allowed to underline their writing in red pen. As the young protagonist Ali explains, Algeria has just gained its independence from France, and “if we wrote with a blue pen on the white page and then underlined in red, it would be blue, white, and red. The colors of France. Of the French flag. [My teacher] said that we’re free now” (13). The teacher's instructions produce a mixture of emotions for Ali. He delights in the chance to affirm his Algerianness and to reject any vestiges of a colonial education that denigrated his culture and language. At the same time, he wonders: will simply changing the way one writes on a page affirm Algerian freedom and a new national identity?

Describing the same time period in neighboring Morocco, the protagonist of Leila Abouzeid's al-Faṣl al-akhīr [published in English as The Last Chapter] (2000) recounts a similar transition in entirely different terms. Learning French in the colonial era was a scarring experience for the young Aisha, whereas in Arabic she wrote papers so impressive her teachers had to lock themselves in their rooms to grade them with a dictionary (26). In the afterword to the English translation of the novel, Abouzeid herself expresses gratitude that an education in Arabic kept her from writing in French and becoming what she terms “one of the post-colonial Maghrabi writers producing a national literature in a foreign language” (153). Her statement shows that postcolonial language policy raised questions regarding literary and cultural production, as well as politics. Who would write a new national literature after independence – and in what language? As administrators sought to consecrate a national canon and form new generations of readers, which texts would they use?

Both of these literary scenes engage with central questions about Arabization, a policy that entailed replacing French with Arabic as the official national language and the language of education. As a fundamental step towards decolonization, Arabization announced a firm rejection of the colonial order, while reinforcing the Arab and Muslim character that was meant to unify the newly independent nations.