Voice and Silence in Assia Djebar and Adania Shibli

This essay considers the works of two Arab writers, Assia Djebar and Adania Shibli, to examine how silences in their texts are signs of both oppression and of resistance and rebellion. It seeks to show how the silences as well as the cries and incomprehensible voices of the colonized defy colonial and hegemonic narratives by resisting incorporation into the order of the intelligible and recognizable. Both writers believe in the power of words, but their words, liberated from the function of signification, release silences as they release the voices of the colonized in their multiplicity. Djebar's texts present no binary opposition between silence and voice; in the continuous search for the voices of colonized women, voice and silence are inextricably intertwined. In Shibli's Minor Detail, as in many of Djebar's texts, the search for voices takes the form of a journey backward, but the voices of the colonized are not retrieved, and we are left with only their silence. Moreover, whatever audible voices there are in Shibli's text become markers of silence; it is thus silence that speaks in Shibli's text. By virtue of their very lack of discursive power, the silences and voices released in these writers' works retain the freedom that comes with transgression and remind us of the flight that writing can be.