De la place des sons dans l'écriture de Leïla Sebbar et Assia Djebar

This article sets out to interrogate the place and implications of sound in the writing of Assia Djebar and Leila Sebbar. By uncovering the recurring representations of the acoustic sphere and the pure auditory experience of Arabic or French voices in these writers' autobiographical works, I contend that sound, in the bilingual, postcolonial context, operates in the construction of a hybrid subjectivity. Seemingly conveying the inclination towards an original and essential identity, symbolized by the nostalgia of the female Arabic voice, as well as indicating an ambivalence in relation to both languages, the resonance of the non-semantic voice in these texts foremost seems a strategy to move beyond conflicting linguistic identities. United in the homogenous sonorous and paralingual sphere, the two languages ultimately coexist and resonate in the Francophone literary text, which resembles, in fact, "the third place."