There are many different ways to say "I." This book examines the ways in which four contemporary women writers (Helene Cixous, Assia Djebar, Gisele Halimi, and Julia Kristeva) have written their autobiographical "I" as a plural concept. These women refuse the individual "I" of traditional autobiography by developing narrative strategies that multiply the voices in their texts. They similarly cast doubt upon current theorizations of the female self in autobiography by questioning the possibility of plural selfhood in narrative and its seemingly cathartic effects. Each writer approaches...

The Contemporary Francophone African Intellectual examines the issues with which the contemporary African intellectual engages, the fields s/he occupies, her/his residence and perspective, and her/his relations with the State and the people. In an increasingly economically deprived Africa, in which some states are ruled by dictators, what chances do people have of becoming intellectuals, using their critical faculties to challenge hegemony, enacting the transformative power of ideas in a public forum? Do intellectuals who remain in Africa run the risk of being swallowed into a vortex of...