Ethos and Humanism of the Threshold at Malika Mokaddem From Revolt to Restorative Oblivion

Résumé

When literature manages to transcribe the feelings of each and every one of us, it fulfills its highest mission: to make individual experience a shared human experience. It is precisely this humanistic vocation that the work of Malika Mokaddem achieves, where personal narrative becomes an act of recognition and transmission. This article explores the development of ethos and humanism in the work of Malika Mokaddem, based on a detailed analysis of her novel Je dois tout à ton oubli(2008). In line with the trend of extreme contemporary, this formula, forged by Michel Chaillou and theorized by Dominique Viart, refers to writings that since the 1980s have focused on thinking about the fractures of today’s world: erasure of landmarks, shattering of identities, hybridization of forms. The writing of Mokaddem evolves from revolt towards reconciliation, from cry to appeased voice. This study, based on the examination of the poetics of forgetting conceived not as an erasure, but rather as a restorative action, highlights the change in the link with memory, language and the other. The author therefore reformulates the role of the writer-witness as a vector of humanity, building an authentic threshold humanism based on mobility, oral expression and mutual recognition. The article demonstrates that, in Mokaddem’s work, writing transforms into a gesture of discreet resistance and personal redefinition. Hence the term ethos in our title, where forgetting paves the way for a philosophy and an ethics of reconciliation and resilience.