Straddling the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, this rich and unconventional novel provokes thought at the turn of every page. The tale is narrated by a North African author exiled to the United States because he has been condemned by religious fanatics after the publication of his novel entitled Dead Letters. Bensmaïa's knowledge of the history, the literature, and the philosophical ideas of our times underlies the novel without intruding into it directly.

The Barthes Effect was first published in 1987. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The author acknowledges the essay as an eccentric phenomenon in literary history, one that has long resisted entry into the taxonomy of genres, as it concentrates on four works by Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text, A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida. Maintains that with Barthes the essay achieves a status of its own, as reflective text. ". . . a study rigorously conscious of the critical maneuvers it executes and, more importantly, questions as critical practice . . . " Bensmaïa's strategy produces a successful investigation of the interstices and slippages of meaning which Barthes addressed in his work." SubStance Reda Bensmaia is associate professor in the departments of French and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, and translator Pat Fedkiew, a graduate student in French at Minnesota. Michele Richman is associate professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Reading Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift.

Jean-Paul Sartre's famous question, "For whom do we write?" strikes close to home for francophone writers from the Maghreb. Do these writers address their compatriots, many of whom are illiterate or read no French, or a broader audience beyond Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia? In Experimental Nations, Réda Bensmaïa argues powerfully against the tendency to view their works not as literary creations worth considering for their innovative style or language but as "ethnographic" texts and to appraise them only against the "French literary canon." He casts fresh light on the original literary strategies many such writers have deployed to reappropriate their cultural heritage and "reconfigure" their nations in the decades since colonialism. Tracing the move from the anticolonial, nationalist, and arabist literature of the early years to the relative cosmopolitanism and diversity of Maghrebi francophone literature today, Bensmaïa draws on contemporary literary and postcolonial theory to "deterritorialize" its study. Whether in Assia Djebar's novels and films, Abdelkebir Khatabi's prose poems or critical essays, or the novels of Nabile Farès, Abdelwahab Meddeb, or Mouloud Feraoun, he raises the veil that hides the intrinsic richness of these artists' works from the eyes of even an attentive audience. Bensmaïa shows us how such Maghrebi writers have opened their nations as territories to rediscover and stake out, to invent, while creating a new language. In presenting this masterful account of "virtual" but veritable nations, he sets forth a new and fertile topography for francophone literature.

Does a philosopher have an 'identity'? What kind of 'identity' is mobilized when the work of a philosopher becomes a major reference for certain schools of thought, as in the case of Gilles Deleuze and postcolonial theory? Have the promoters of a generalized Deleuzeanism taken care their usage of his specialized work does him justice? Few exponents of postcolonial and subaltern theories now dispute the influence that Deleuze's work exerted on the intellectuals and theorists who developed those theories. However, this book contends that postcolonial and subaltern theorists have engaged with Deleuzean thought in ways that have perhaps produced a long series of misunderstandings – for which Deleuze himself is not responsible. By engaging with recent innovations in North African culture and by examining the dissemination of Deleuze's identities across a broad range of postcolonial theory, Réda Bensmaïa shows that the 'encounter' between Deleuze and the postcolonial movement can only be understood through the idea of a 'transcendental' field, in which Deleuze and his postcolonial followers find themselves captured.

The Hédi Bouraoui Collection in Maghrebian and Franco-Ontarian Literatures is the gift of University Professor Emeritus Hédi Bouraoui.

"Il n'y a pas de sujets. Il n'y a qu'un sujet : celui qui écrit ", disait Léon-Paul Fargue. Cette ambiguïté fonde, bien au-delà de la littérature, l'idée d'une "expérience esthétique ". Elle ouvre toutes les questions relatives au sujet (et aux sujets) de l'art. Envisagées tant du point de vue de l'œuvre que du point de vue de l'artiste, ces questions nous rejettent aux limites de la pensée esthétique, sur ces marges où se font et se défont aussi bien la stabilité de l'œuvre que l'individuation du créateur. Or il est remarquable que ces marges soient les lieux qu'explorent par prédilection les artistes (Proust entre autres) et les philosophes (Kant, Deleuze. ). Ce volume emprunte les cheminements croisés de la littérature, de la philosophie et de l'esthétique pour mettre à l'épreuve l'idée d'un art sans sujet. Façons de cerner mieux la place et la nature de ce concept central et incertain, massif et fuyant, nécessaire et hasardeux: le sujet de l'art.

Does a philosopher have an `identity'? What kind of `identity' is mobilized when the work of a philosopher becomes a major reference for certain schools of thought, as in the case of Gilles Deleuze and postcolonial theory? Have the promoters of a generalized Deleuzeanism taken care their usage of his specialized work does him justice? Few exponents of postcolonial and subaltern theories now dispute the influence that Deleuze's work exerted on the intellectuals and theorists who developed those theories. However, this book contends that postcolonial and subaltern theorists have engaged with Deleuzean thought in ways that have perhaps produced a long series of misunderstandings - for which Deleuze himself is not responsible. By engaging with recent innovations in North African culture and by examining the dissemination of Deleuze's identities across a broad range of postcolonial theory, Reda Bensmaia shows that the `encounter' between Deleuze and the postcolonial movement can only be understood through the idea of a `transcendental' field, in which Deleuze and his postcolonial followers find themselves captured.