| My dissertation engages in a close study of the autobiographical writings of three contemporary Francophone writers from the Maghreb: Assia Djebar, Helene Cixous, and Abdelkebir Khatibi. I focus on music not only as a "theme" pulsing throughout their fictional, poetic, and theoretical texts, but also as a means of comprehending their unique, improvisational writing "styles." The title, "Time Signatures," reveals my emphasis on contextualizing these works according to the specific time period of their composers' lives and geographical location of their birthplace and subsequent itineraries. I thus take into account political and historical developments as I analyze the formal workings of the autobiographical text, ultimately hoping to echo the works of the writers examined: these writers are not satisfied to simply address topics that concern them, but know that the form of address is as significant as its content. A crucial fourth voice, that of Jacques Derrida, intermingles with the timbres of these three writers in fruitful contrapuntal passages, serving as a source of inspiration for conceptualizing language and communicating the self in unprecedented manner. I conclude that these individuals write the "self" in French in ways influenced by sensitivities acquired during their early experiences in a multicultural, multilingual "colonial" environment in which their ears were trained, and their minds tuned, for translations to come. |
