 The
performance adapts the first chapter, “The Language
of the Dead,” from Assia Djebar’s ALGERIAN WHITE.
Djebar’s
testament is a powerful lament against the assassinations of
three beloved colleagues and friends murdered by Algerian fundamentalists.
She dedicates her book to her “dear disappeared”:
Mahfoud Boucebci, a psychiatrist; M’Hamed Boukhobza, a
sociologist; and Abdelkader Alloula, a dramatist. Djebar recalls
those Algerian writers and intellectuals whose lives were cut
short since the 1956 struggle for independence. She refuses
their final silence as she conjoins them writing Algeria into
life.
The
performance is a twilight piece, a moving account on exile, memory
and loss, summoning
the dead to bear witness. Djebar
exhumes the fallen lost to a nation at war with itself; her
disruptive retelling and listening-in on history revolutionize
how we
understand
what a nation remembers and what it forgets.
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