Female Voices in Revolution: Autobiography and Collective Memory in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) and Merle Collins’s Angel (1987)

Abstract

Although set in different historical and socio-political contexts, Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) and Merle Collins’s Angel (1987) are both autobiographical narratives depicting women as the protagonists of history. While Fantasia juxtaposes the nineteenth-century history of French colonization in Algeria and the war of independence, Angel describes the history of Grenada Revolution during the 1970s and the development of radical nationalism in the Caribbean country. In diverse ways, the two writers show female figures seeking to challenge the dominant power imposed by patriarchy and colonialism. Djebar and Collins share the common authorial project: attempting to recover the forgotten experiences of both Algerian and Grenadian women and conceptualizing the autobiographical self. However, the two texts show different ways to construct female subjectivity in relation to collective memories. While Fantasia portrays history as a collection of fragmented stories, Angel seeks to combine those fragments in order to create a unified community. By examining similarities as well as differences, this essay will analyze how the two narratives grapple with the complex relationship between the personal and the collective in Africa and the Caribbean.