Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This study explores representations of the city as space, self, and identity marker in the Maghrebi Arabic novel, through a critical approach based on the analysis of selected works by Abdallah Laroui, Mahmoud Tarshouna, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Waciny Laredj, Zhor Ounissi, Zhor Karam, Hassan Nasr, and Djilali Khalas.It starts from the premise that the city is not merely a spatial frame that furnishes the fictional world, but a semantic and aesthetic structure that actively shapes narrative movement, character construction, and the articulation of worldviews.The study shows how identity is embodied in a dialectical relationship between self and city across intertwined levels: an individual identity shaped by personal experience and by one's relationship with the neighbourhood, home, and street; a historical identity preserved by monuments and collective memory; and a social identity expressed by architecture, customs, ways of life, and values of solidarity or estrangement.It also reveals the central presence of memory-individual, collective, and human-as a crucial mediator in consolidating the city's identity and retrieving its images within narrative consciousness.In this way, the city becomes a core locus where self, space, and memory intersect, and a condensed sign of an architectural, cultural, and civilizational identity with multiple dimensions.
DOI: 10.53796/hnsj71/8
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7117733672
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