De la résistance à l’intégration : Redéfinir l’hybridité culturelle dans les romans d’Azouz Begag

While the notion of cultural hybridity is often glorified in postcolonial theory, both the current situation of Beurs in France and the troubling themes expressed in French Beur literature since the 1980’s highlight an urgent need to redefine this notion. The goal of the present thesis is to redefine the utopian definition of hybridity by exploring its negative social and political repercussions in three of Azouz Begag’s canonical novels: Le gone du Chaâba (1986), Béni ou le paradis privé (1989) et Les chiens aussi (1995). The analysis suggests that hybridity should be seen as a socially constructed phenomenon and as such can contribute to moving beyond essentialist and absolute conceptions of marginal identities.