Violence and Trauma in Hafid Gafaiti's The Slit Throat of the Sun and The Return of the Damned

Abstract

The present dissertation examines the depiction of violence and trauma in Hafid Gafaiti’s The Slit Throat of the Sun (2006) and The Return of the Damned (2007). The two collections deal with the most violent events of 1990s in post-colonial Algeria; a period commonly labeled the black decade. This period was highly characterized by the rise of the tension between the rebel Islamist groups and the government. The dissertation offers a definition of violence and trauma and especially in relation to literature, with a special attention to Algerian literary works. It also attempts to provide a historical overview of the black decade and its influence on Algerian literature before it focuses on the Gafaiti’s works. The study contends that poet succeeds in inscribing violence and trauma through the use of paratextual and textual elements