Abstract

Representations of the Other, particularly the racialized and gendered Other remains problematic for many artists, particularly in the context of representing aspects of French colonialism. This is notably the case for French pied-noir artists who set out to retrospectively tell the history of colonial Algeria. Jacques Ferrandez, a francophone pied-noir graphic novelist, published his series Carnets d’Orient between 1987 and 2009. In the second cycle, there is one single, recurring female Algerian character named Samia who will be the focus of this article. A close analysis of Samia’s representation illustrates the degrees to which the artist exploits the medium’s specificities in order to influence the message received by their readers. The reader is required to be an active co-creator and becomes implicated from an ethical point of view in that they are asked to reflect critically on their own subjectivity and biases. In the case of Carnets d’Orient, while a reading in which the Algerian woman’s agency is foregrounded is possible, we will see that instead of giving a voice to the female Algerian character, the white male pied-noir author uses her to voice a plaintive nostalgia for an Algeria which according to some “could have been.”

摘要

对他者的表征，特别是种族化和性别化的他者，对于许多艺术家来说仍然是个问题，特别是在代表法国殖民主义的各个方面的背景下。对于法国黑斑艺术家来说尤其如此，他们开始回顾性地讲述阿尔及利亚殖民地的历史。雅克·费朗德斯（Jacques Ferrandez），一位法语黑斑图画小说家，出版了他的系列《东方卡内特》（Carnets d'Orient）1987 年至 2009 年间。在第二个周期中，有一个反复出现的阿尔及利亚女性角色，名叫萨米亚（Samia），她将成为本文的重点。对萨米亚表现形式的仔细分析说明了艺术家利用媒介的特殊性来影响读者收到的信息的程度。读者被要求成为一个积极的共同创造者，并从道德的角度受到牵连，因为他们被要求批判性地反思自己的主观性和偏见。以东方卡内特为例，虽然一种将阿尔及利亚妇女的代理放在首位的阅读是可能的，但我们会看到，白人男性黑斑小说作者并没有为阿尔及利亚女性角色发声，而是用她来表达对阿尔及利亚的哀伤怀旧之情，根据有些“本来可以”。