| This dissertation is a study of the figure of the intruder in postcolonial francophone literature, film and graphic novels published and released in the second half of the 20th and early 21 st century which develop a discourse on the Maghreb or the Maghrebian dispora in France. Postcolonial critics have long discussed the importance of locating the subject as well as the self in the post-independence era in North Africa in relation to the French colonial power. Yet postcolonial identities are still particularly ambiguous and it has become extremely difficult to define them, as they are located at the crossroads of so many different influences (cultural, historical, racial, social, geo-political). Postcolonial identity has often been characterized by "in between" narratives, following the assumption that North-African postcoloniality is to be found somewhere between France and the Maghreb, between the French language and Arabic dialects, etc. As an alternative to such a conception, I theorize the figure of the intruder as a new way of articulating and defining postcolonial identities. The intruder, be it a character, an author, a text, a story, a foreign language, a visual image or simply a word represents the entity that does not fit in or does not belong to a particular space, system, discourse or community. I argue that the intruder constantly shifts perceptions of the very domain it occupies and questions its identity. The model of the intruder draws upon Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of the intruder which he uses to describe his transplanted heart as an intruder in his body that shifts the perception of his identity. By further developing this idea, I analyze the critical interplay of intruders and intrusions as representations and as form in postcolonial novels by Driss Chraibi, Fouad Laroui, a film by Michael Haneke and a graphic novel by Lax and Frank Giroud. |
