L'Amour, la fantasia

Writing the Self through the Lost Collective

Authors

  • Isis Butôt Utrecht University

Abstract

With L'Amour, la fantasia, the Algerian author Assia Djebar made her first attempt at writing her autobiography, only to realize that the very language she uses – that of the former colonizer – imposes not just personal but also collective memories on her that ask for recollection: in order to write the self, she has to retrieve a collective that seems lost to her. Using Halbwach's theory about social frameworks, this essay seeks to explore the links between personal and collective memory, and how for this author they are intimately linked to each other by language.

Author Biography

  • Isis Butôt , Utrecht University

    Isis Butôt graduated for the BA's French Language and Culture and Portuguese Language and Culture at Universiteit Utrecht in 2007. She is currently working on her thesis for the Research Master Literary Studies: Literature in the Modern Age at the same university.

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2009): Life and Narrative

Section

Masterclass

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Butôt , I. (2026). L’Amour, la fantasia: Writing the Self through the Lost Collective. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 22(1), 76-88. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27485