Pertes culturelles et linguistiques dans les photoautobiographies d’Hélène Cixous et de Leïla Sebbar

The central theme of the analysis presented here is the relationship between cultural and linguistic memory in the work of two writers, Hélène Cixous and Leïla Sebbar, who experienced uprooting following the Algerian war. They share the use of words and photographs to recount their geographical and linguistic exile and their lost homeland. For both of them, this autobiographical exploration, which is declined in a series of iconotexts investigating the history of their respective families, is connoted by a nostalgia of the native land and lost languages like the language of the father, Arabic, never learned but always present. The absence of other languages lost, not transmitted, hide behind French and feed their writing in a need never satisfied to reconnect with the paternal origin.