Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, Rachid Mimouni, Rachid Boudjedra, Assia Djebar, etc., long is the list of Algerian writers who have committed themselves to the tragedies of their time. Despite being targets of political oppression, censors or religious obscurantism, often forced into exile, these men and women of letters resisted as best they could those who wanted to silence them. By analyzing two periods, that of the War of Independence then that going from the Independence to the civil war, this panel will question the role of the Algerian literary scene in the course of history and in the difficult constitution of a cultural and national identity.
While Catherine Milkovitch-Rioux will address the period of the anti-colonial struggle and Independence, Guy Dugas will evoke the literary production of the years after Independence.
The speakers

Guy Dugas
Professor emeritus of comparative literature, specialist in the Arab field and minorities in the Mediterranean, Guy Dugas directs at the University of Montpellier III an important literary collection, the "Mediterranean Heritage Fund", archives of Emmanuel Roblès, Armand Guibert, Jules Roy, Jean Sénac, Jean-Pierre Millecam, etc.
Author of Algérie, les romans de la guerre (Omnibus, 2002), he is also the literary director of the El Kalima editions in Algiers where he animates a collection of "Petits inédits maghrébins" and co-directs at CNRS editions the collection "Planète libre". Last published work: Albert Memmi, Les Hypothèses infinies. Journal 1936-1962 (CNRS ed. 2021).
Catherine Milkovitch-Rioux
Catherine Milkovitch-Rioux is a professor of French-language contemporary literature at the Université Clermont Auvergne and an associate researcher at the Institut d'histoire du temps présent (CNRS). Specialist of literature in the war, she is the author of Mémoire vive d'Algérie. Littératures de la guerre d'indépendance (Buchet-Chastel, 2012) and co-author with Isabella von Treskow of the collective work D'ici et d'ailleurs. The legacy of Kateb Yacine (Peter Lang, 2016).
Panel discussion moderated by Lakhdar Belaïd, writer and journalist (Voix du Nord).