"Only Palm Trees Have Roots": Nomadism in the Work of Malika Mokeddem

“Only Palm Trees Have Roots”: Nomadism in the Work of Malika Mokeddem explores the thematic and textual repercussions of nomadism in Mokeddem’s work. In Chapter I, “Nomadism and the Creation of Transgressive Space: Unheimlichkeit and Haram,” I examine nomadism as a theme and explain how it produces novelistic space felicitous to transgression. Nomadic movement within certain landscapes forces protagonists toward the nomadic self, and I examine how space operates within the text and on these characters. In Chapter II, “Nomadic Texts: Movement and Form,” I explore the nomadic text’s themes and structures. These texts “move” via intertextuality, literary echoes, and writerly genealogies, across the Sahara and Mediterranean, and through time. In Chapter III, “The Nomadic Self,” explores this subversive identity of refusal of hegemonic power. I show how nomadic bodies resist limitations and enlarge the possibilities for identity.