Memory and multiplicity in the Mediterraneanist novel : ‘The Lost Sailors’ and ‘N’zid’

Abstract

This dissertation explores representations of the Mediterranean with relation to memory and identity in the novels ‘Les marins perdus’ by Jean Claude Izzo and 'N’zid' by Malika Mokeddem. In both novels the view of the Mediterranean as a shared, and unifying space, echoing ideas of the Saint-Simonians, Gabriel Audisio and Albert Camus, is undermined by representations of tension between its shores, the violence manifested in both novels, and the protagonists’ fractured identities. This invites a rejection of fundamentalisms and proposes a hybrid, if troubled, integrating Mediterranean, open to negotiation and exchange. The Mediterranean becomes a space in which what Amal Treacher Kabesh describes as ‘shards’ of the past, either haunt or are reconciled with the present. The notion of memory as being productive and multidirectional casts light on the way narratives of the past are re-interpreted, and the present is moulded by what is remembered and what is erased. One way this is explored is by analysing how the Mediterranean, its myths and archetypes are appropriated by female characters displaying empowerment and alterability. Women are presented as engaging with these master narratives and re-writing them, in turn re-negotiating themselves as agents and re-negotiating the Mediterranean they inhabit. Multiplicity and reinterpretation become critical responses to what Michael Herzfeld calls ‘essentializing discourses’ about the Mediterranean. As a reflection of a shifting space, of an imaginary involving re-creation and transformation, here the Mediterranean is proposed as a perpetual interrogation and a critical way in which we relate with, (re)interpret and appropriate narratives and histories.