The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia

The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar South African author André Brink and the Algerian Assia Djebar have been described as a duo of literature and struggle. Various parallels exist between the authors’ oeuvres: both authors strive to create a chain of voices for those who have been ignored or silenced; they attempt to re-evaluate the colonial experience while problematising the complexities of present-day South Africa and Algeria; their narratives foreground language, space, and power struggles between coloniser and colonised, master and slave, man and woman. Their characters represent a desire for freedom and the need for resistance in the quest for liberation. In this article I focus on the comparable role of space, and more specifically spaces of exclusion, in a selection of the authors’ works. Postcolonial theories serve as a framework for establishing Brink and Djebar’s similar stance regarding the notion of exclusion. Amongst others, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘beyond’ and Édouard Glissant’s notion of ‘relation’ are employed to strengthen arguments made concerning the characters’ desire for movement which results from them being excluded from certain spaces. In this article I demonstrate how their characters feel attracted to cross borders that exclude in a quest for inclusion. An endless, open, and powerful movement is the result of the opposing forces of exclusion and attraction their characters experience. I find myself abandoned from Arabian love songs. Is it due to being excluded from this amorous discourse that I find the French I use to be dry? […] Words of love rise in a desert.


Introduction
South African author André Brink (1935Brink ( -2015 and the Algerian Assia Djebar (1936Djebar ( -2015 have been described as a duo of literature and struggle (Chanda). Despite perhaps evident differences that separate these two authors of opposing poles of the African continent (the authors' different sexes, South Africa and Algeria's distinct colonial histories, systems of oppression, and literary traditions), many parallels exist in their work: both authors see writing as a form of resistance and aim to give a type of voice to the silenced and oppressed people of their countries. Due to the critical way in which their texts question colonial forms of oppression, their work can moreover be identified as postcolonial. Both writers also demonstrate a sensitivity to language and find it difficult to employ a language of oppression in their work. They also

Movement beyond the boundary
The notions of borders, boundaries, thresholds, spatial binaries, and 'inbetween' spaces are central in Brink and Djebar's work. Their characters often find themselves confined in a strictly divided space. The other side is frequently inaccessible and remains out of reach. As a result of this exclusion, their characters are often situated on the margins in an in-between space.
When considering their characters' similar drive toward the 'beyond' from a postcolonial perspective, the use of the concept of the threshold is significant. Postcolonial critics often make use of concepts such as thresholds or liminality to counter and challenge spatial binary oppositions such as the Global South and North, east and west (or 'the West' and 'the rest'), the periphery and centre, etc. (Gregory 74;McDowell 38;Wilson and Tunca 1). Wilson and Tunca describe the notion of the 'threshold' as a "ubiquitous term in postcolonial criticism, which along with cognate labels like the liminal, the interstitial and the inbetween contributes to the redefining of perceptions of space and place that is happening under globalization". They define the concept of the threshold or the liminal as a "passageway across a boundary, an opening which permits movement from one space to another; in being associated with borders and gateways it comprises […] zones of exchange and transit which signify entry into and exit from existing structures" (1). Examples of such threshold concepts in current postcolonial thinking include the notion of 'between-ness', an idea developed by postcolonial theorists and feminists of colour; and more specifically Bhabha's notions of the "middle passage" or the "middle ground" where "identities can metamorphose or be transformed and power relations negotiated […] the place where translation, migrancy, ambivalence and the transnational are reconfigured" (Wilson and Tunca 1). Bhabha develops the concept of 'between-ness', or what he calls 'in-between space' or the 'Third Space' . He explains that the Third Space "though unrepresentable in itself […] constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity […] the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew" (Bhabha 55). We can deduce that Bhabha's Third Space represents a hybrid, flexible, and innovative 'border dimension' which refuses any final and fixed meaning. Bhabha's concepts additionally involve the idea of the 'beyond', a notion he associates with the term of postcoloniality in that it embodies "restless and revisionary energy" (6). He reasons that to be in the 'beyond' is more than merely inhabiting an intervening space. "[T]o dwell 'in the beyond'", Bhabha insists, "is also […] to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither side. In that sense, then, the intervening space 'beyond', becomes a space of intervention in the here and now" (10). Bhabha raises the idea of a movement au-delà, or a movement forward which results from borderline engagements. He states: we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, in the 'beyond': an exploratory, restless movement caught so well in the French rendition of the words au-delà-here and there, on all sides, fort/da, hither and thither, back and forth (1).
In the boundary or threshold between binaries (between past and present, between inside and outside, between exclusion and inclusion) there is a ISSN: 0041-476X E-SSN: 2309-9070 The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar disaccord of opposing energies or forces. It is from this disaccord that the need for movement or action is born to pursue the au-delà, for it is from the boundary, as Heidegger (qtd in Bhabha 1) points out, that "something begins its presencing". The boundary represents a bridge or passage from where presencing, or in Brink and Djebar's characters' perspective, movement or imagination begins. This drive of their characters has parallels with the constant movement or action of postcolonial theorist Glissant's concept of relation, a notion that encompasses all the characteristics of his 'ideal' world view or tout-monde. He describes relation as "totalité en mouvement" (a totality of movement) or "totalité ouverte" (an overt totality) (Glissant 147,206) and accentuates its connection with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of rhizome due to its relational character: "Within the rhizome of the totalitémonde […] the notions of the centre and the periphery are obsolete" (Glissant 137-8, my translation). These notions should to his mind rather be considered as multiple participating elements (138-9). Glissant (147,151,206) insists that within relation, there is constant action or movement. He describes the action as a double movement resulting from opposing forces working constantly on each other. He maintains that the result is not destruction, but rather openness and creation that springs forth from the margins (Glissant 170). In describing the movement present in relation, Glissant (153) observes inter alia: "Plus il produit de l'exclusion et plus il génère de l'attraction" (the more it produces exclusion, the more attraction it generates). In the following sections, I argue that, in a Glissantian sense, the more Brink and Djebar's characters are presented with exclusions, the more they feel attracted to cross the borders that exclude them in a quest for inclusion. The opposing forces of exclusion and attraction their characters experience results in an endless, open, and powerful movement.

The need for the unreachable
In many of Brink's novels, the idea of spatial isolation is frequently portrayed in characters' search of faraway spaces from which they are excluded. In Inteendeel, Estienne describes the "thirst" he has for such spaces (28). He yearns for an "Ultima thule" or an "other Side" beyond his known borders (Inteendeel 22,27,38). In Kennis van die aand, Josef refers to how Simon Hlabeni who, 'stuck' in London and unable to return to South Africa, longs for his home country: Slegs 'n paar van ons het geweet hoe graag hy dit alles van hom wou afskuif om net weer stil tuis in die son te sit en in Zoeloe verse te skryf wat nooit gepubliseer sou word nie.

(Kennis 177)
Only a few of us knew how willingly he would have liked to push it all away just to sit in the sun at home again and to write verses in Zulu that will never be published. 1 Simon does not idealise the space from which he is excluded. He knows his country's imperfections, and yet the persistent yearning for it remains. In contrast to Simon's desire, some of Brink's characters long for idealistic spaces that are often directly equated with 'The Promised Land' ('n Oomblik in die wind 182). Other forms of 'promised lands' are conjured up in desires: Philida, for instance, dreams about an idealistic land of freedom: One day, and that I know, one day I won't be here anymore, I will be on a place of my own, a farm like Zandvliet but not Zandvliet […] all of us together, free, forever and ever with shoes on.
In Philida, the Gariep River becomes the embodiment of such a paradisial land. A place on the other side of their familiar world, the Gariep represents a paradise that welcomes all (219-20, 242-3). Similar utopian spaces are pursued in Kennis van die aand. Josef recounts how his ancestor Moos would proclaim the possibility of a free country where they would be considered equals and recalls how Moos started talking amongst the slaves: Josef himself wishes for worlds that seem dreamlike and 'out of reach' . As a child, he longs for ideal worlds that are portrayed through fiction. When he and Willem are caught in the mist on the mountain and they must spend the night alone in a cave, they talk about Robinson Crusoe (108): "en oor hoe graag ons op 'n eiland soos syne wou uitkom en vir goed daar bly woon" (and how eagerly we wanted to reach an island like his and to stay there for good). Josef, however, longs for more than a mere space in a story, but spaces of stories itself. He emphasises how, contrary to Willem, he was excluded from the fictional worlds offered by books: The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar Something like a book I never owned myself: it was part of the white man's world, like Christmas Eve concerts, and going to school, and dessert after dinner, and new clothes.
Books are part of the white man's world-a terrain that is considered forbidden. He recalls how he finally stole the book Robinson Crusoe and states: Dit was nie net gewone diefstal nie […] wat ek geneem het, het behoort aan 'n gans ander wêreld as myne, 'n terrein van volstrekte taboe. (100) It wasn't normal theft […] what I took belonged to a whole other world than my own, a terrain of absolute taboo.
In stealing the book, Josef commits a double offense: it is not only criminal, but he also transgresses enforced borders in taking something from a space which, according to the social norms of the time, should exclude him.
An additional common pursuit present in Brink's novels is couples' yearning for utopian spaces which will allow them to hide or take shelter or repose together. In 'n Oomblik in die wind, Adam and Elisabeth frequently long for a new space. On their journey, the narrator stresses how their hankering for the Cape is intensified by the cold which surrounds them: Maar stadigaan sou die triestigheid terugsyfer waar hulle vlak teen die vuurtjie in die berookte grot sit. Sommer net sit. Of praat en praat: gewoonlik oor die Kaap, nou so ver, en so begeerlik anderkant die grysheid van dié winterse dae, 'n hunkering soos wat hulle vroeër na die see verlang het. (Oomblik 110) But the miserableness would slowly filter through again where they were sitting, close to the fire in the fumed cave. Simply sitting. Or talking: usually about the Cape, now so far away, and so desirable on the other side of these grey winter days, a hankering like they had earlier for the sea.
In Kennis van die aand, the quest for a resting place is also prominent in Josef and Jessica's relationship. Josef expresses the urgent need that he and Jessica had to find a place to be alone:

Vreemd watter nood dit in ons albei was […] om by die see te kom, by 'n verlate strandjie waar ons alleen kon wees en kaal kon swem en ons skoon spoel van alles, van die hele wêreld. Maar dit het nooit gebeur nie […] Mettertyd het ons dit maar aanvaar, asof ons stilswyend besef het dat dit nie mag gebeur nie. (Kennis 336)
Strange the need we both had […] to get to the sea, to a desolate beach where we could be alone and swim naked and rinse us clean of everything, of the whole world. But it never happened […] we accepted it in time, as though we silently realised that it may not happen.
The space for which they long remains unreachable. For Josef, the longing for 'unreachable' spaces is later even depicted in his dreams (12). Unable to reach a place where they can be free and safe together, Josef and Jessica settle on the only other alternative space that will allow them freedom: death. The decision allows them to break free from the rules set by the apartheid regime, and for the first and last time, they go and buy cigarettes together. The outing allows Josef to finally get a glimpse of the space from which he and Jessica as a couple are excluded. He defines walking next to each other as a feast (390). Josef's final thoughts in prison depict the utopia of which he had a glimpse-a space that he will perhaps fully experience in death: Josef's utopia is not incredible. He merely wishes for an open, familiar space that will allow him and Jessica freedom to move and to be who they are.
Amongst the different variations of 'promised lands', new worlds, utopias, and 'Other Sides' in Brink's work, a common thread can be observed: all point to the importance of being isolated from the idealistic world to be able to believe in it. In Kennis van die aand, when discussing the possibility of a new world, Josef tells Jessica and Richard: You both wish to exclude yourself from the new world, you both believe in the possibility of a heaven. You are welcome to it. Perhaps I envy you. But the only world in which I can believe, is one from which I will not be excluded-with my brownness, with all my faults, with all my contrariness, with everything that makes me human. And unfortunately, that precisely means a world where the struggle will never end […] It is nevertheless mere nonsense that we are discussing here. Does it make any change to the world and all the hell outside? And all the hell in us? And the true hell, I think […] is perhaps exactly the words that we must use to describe heaven.
Josef longs for a world where he would be included. He realises that a world where no one is excluded means a world where the struggle will never end.
Inclusion will be a never-ending strife. He additionally suggests that the language used to imagine this new world is inadequate: the words at their disposal are a type of hell or prison for it does not allow them to describe matters on the other side of their known, existing borders. Inteendeel's Estienne similarly emphasises the limits of language to describe the other side for, as he states, [s]olank mens dit 'n naam kan gee, is dit nooit genoeg nie. Wat ek soek, lê daar ánderkant. Anderkant al wat naam is. (103) for as long as you can give it a name, it is never enough. What I am looking for, lies there beyond. Beyond anything that is a name.
The necessity of exclusion is suggested in 'n Oomblik in die wind as well. Elisabeth observes: Eendag was daar 'n paradys by die see; ons was daar: onthou jy nog? Omdat ons daar uitgedryf is, kan ons daaraan bly glo. (Oomblik 164) There once was a paradise by the sea; we were there: do you still remember? And since we were driven out, we can still believe in it.
Just like paradise, happiness, too, resembles a place from which she is isolated: After realising that it was just an illusion, Elisabeth realises that she could, contrary to her prior belief, go further (159): "Omdat ek skielik weer in iets geglo het" (Because I suddenly believed in something again). They both needed the mirage, an unreachable 'other side', in order to believe and to carry on. The unreachable strengthens the need to continue the journey. The quest remains for there is a belief in the existence of an other side, even though it might remain inaccessible.
A corresponding recognition is made in Inteendeel. Jeanne encourages Estienne to be aware of his seclusion and therefore to know his borders and limitations. Only then will he be able to aim to move across them. She refers to the role of Jean de Luxembourg who sold her to the English: Jeanne suggests that it is essential to imagine the impossible. The impossible and the unreachable are needed to survive in the mundane, enclosed, and realistic present. Estienne realises that that is the secret: Dit, dink ek, is die geheim: om te weet wanneer om jou rug op die alledaagse te draai en uit te gaan in daardie ruimte wat ander as waansin bestempel. (Inteendeel 230) That, I think, is the secret: to know when to turn your back on the everyday and to go out into the space that others describe as madness.
It is this belief in the unlikely, the absurd, or the impossible other side 'beyond' that drives most of Brink's characters.

Propelled through exclusion
In comparison to Brink's work, Djebar's characters also frequently emphasise the presence of 'impossible' spaces from which they are excluded: whether it be taboo areas in the house (L'Amour, la fantasia 20-3; Nulle part dans la maison de mon père 55-6, 110-1), an exclusion from the outside world (Vaste est la prison 124; Nulle part 29; Ombre sultane 136-7), a sentiment of exclusion due to estrangement (La femme sans sépulture 79, 100-1, 237), or figurative interdicted spaces constituted for instance by romantic rendezvous (Nulle part 409). The gendering of space and its consequential exclusionary practices is especially central in Djebar's oeuvre (Mortimer 306). The spatial effect of sexual discrimination often comes to the forefront in references made about characters' education. The narrator in both L'Amour, la fantasia and Vaste est la prison emphasises the spatial distinction in school and insists that it is her sex that excludes and isolates her (Amour 257;. The narrator in Vaste est la prison's sex also plays a role in her spatial exclusion in her work environment. In the process of making her film, she describes the others' ISSN: 0041-476X E-SSN: 2309-9070 The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar confusion for not having a male boss: "Je sais qu'ils sont désorientés bien sûr, parce qu'une femme pour la première fois est le 'patron'" (I know that they are of course confused, because for the first time a woman is the 'boss') (Vaste 143). She additionally observes a female bystander's bafflement: "Elle a observé ma répétition […] elle m'a regardée, ne comprenant pas ce que, femme, je faisais là" (She observed my rehearsal […] she watched me, not understanding what, as a woman, I was doing there) (Vaste 200).
In alignment with the principal notion in Djebar's oeuvre, language is also at the heart of many of her characters' sense of spatial exclusion. While references are made to the French language that causes a type of exclusion for some characters (Nulle part 20-1), it is predominantly the idea of being excluded from her maternal languages, Arab, but especially the Berber language, that is continually emphasised (Nulle part 121-2, 315). Across her oeuvre, this exclusion from the mother tongue is spatially depicted. In L'Amour, la fantasia, the narrator notes: Silencieuse, coupée des mots de ma mère par une mutilation de la mémoire, j'ai parcouru les eaux sombres du corridor en miraculée, sans en deviner les murailles […] De quelle roche nocturne du plaisir suis-je parvenue à l'arracher? (L'Amour 13) Silent, cut from my mother's words through a mutilation of memory, I travelled across the dark waters of the miraculous passage, without perceiving its walls […] From which nocturnal rock of pleasure did I manage to get pulled from?
The narrator implies that, cut adrift, she is spatially removed, albeit figuratively, from her maternal language. The narrator in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père similarly admits that she realised too late that she has been in love all along with this "lost" language. It remains 'lost' for, even in an attempt to study it, the language turns into mere rhetoric: In a comparable manner to Josef in Kennis van die aand (207), the narrator in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père also wishes to break into a prison from which she feels excluded: where South Africa represents Josef's prison, it is the spatial heritage and lost maternal language that constitutes the space in which she wishes to be confined. The idea of being displaced as a result of language is repeated when the narrator in L'Amour, la fantasia's insists that she is expelled: Having been "removed" from her mother tongue moreover gives her a feeling of being deserted: she describes how, abandoned by her maternal language, she was 'raised' by her stepmother language (French):

Le français m'est langue marâtre. Quelle est ma langue mère disparue, qui m'a abandonnée sur le trottoir et s'est enfouie? […] Sous les poids des tabous que je porte en moi en héritage, je me retrouve désertée des chants de l'amour arabe. Est-ce d'avoir été expulsée de ce discours amoureux qui me fait trouver aride le français que j'emploie ? […] Les mots d'amour s'élèvent dans un désert. (L'Amour 298)
French is my stepmother tongue. What is my lost mother tongue, who abandoned me on the sidewalk and buried itself? […] Underneath the weight of taboos that I carry in me in heritage, I find myself abandoned from Arabian love songs. Is it due to being excluded from this amorous discourse that I find the French I use to be dry?
[…] Words of love rise in a desert.
The idea of being abandoned is additionally heightened by suggesting that she has been orphaned. The notion is raised when she describes her envy towards Tarik who studies pre-Islamic poetry (Nulle part 308): "ce garçon possédait un trésor que j'avais souvent envié, dont l'accès me restait fermé" (this boy possessed a treasure that I often envied, to which I continue to have no access). She insists that French translations of the texts will forever fall short in representing the texts' beauty, meaning, and its underlying lyricism. It is because she feels exiled from these original "trésors", or texts, that makes her to her mind an orphan (Nulle part 308, 322). Removed, abandoned, and exiled from her mother tongue, the narrator in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père illustrates how she wishes to have her maternal language as a skin ("ma langue-peau") and to be able to carry it around outside and expose it to the sun. She, however, points out that she can merely, and hardly, whisper it indoors and that, once outside, she is obliged to keep quiet or to talk another language (Nulle part 340-1). She describes the urgency she experiences: The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar Une urgence me presse: je veux sortir, sortir 'nue', comme ils disent, laisser mon corps avancer au-dehors impunément, jambes mobiles, yeux dévorants. Mais je ne peux jouir de cette licence qu'à la condition de dissimuler ma langue de lait, de la plaquer tout contre moi, au besoin entre mes seins! (Nulle part 341) An urgency pushes me: I want to go out, to go out 'naked', as they say, to let my body move forward outside with impunity, mobile legs, consuming eyes. But I can only enjoy this licence if I conceal my milk tongue, pressing it against me, if needed between my breasts! It is again the idea of exclusion that comes to the forefront: she is unable to move freely and 'unveiled' in the outside world and is therefore excluded from this liberating space. Her only alternative is to move around 'veiled', for her mother tongue, the language that is equated to her mother's milk, is 'veiled' or hidden in her.
Excluded from the listening circle of the maternal language (L'Amour 267), the narrator in L'Amour, la fantasia declares that she is unable to reach the language which, according to her, holds the power to resurrect the silenced voices of the past (L'Amour 303). Without this absolute transcription of her mother language, her autobiography inevitably takes the form of fiction:

Ma fiction est cette autobiographie qui s'esquisse, alourdie par l'héritage qui m'encombre. Vais-je succomber ? […] Mais la légende tribale zigzague dans les béances et c'est dans le silence des mots d'amour, jamais proférés, de la langue maternelle non écrite, transportée comme un bavardage d'une mime inconnue et hagarde, c'est dans cette nuit-là que l'imagination, mendiante des rues, s'accroupit […] (L'Amour 304)
My fiction is this autobiography that is being outlined, weighed down by the heritage that blocks me. Will I succumb? […] But the tribal legend zigzags in the yawning gaps and it is in the silence of loving words, never pronounced, of the unwritten mother tongue, transported as the chatter of an unknown, wild mime, it is in this night that the imagination, beggar of the streets, crouches […] Caught in the French language, the narrator declares that her 'lost' oral mother language is presented to her in a form of inaudible chattering, a description that reminds one of Flip's perception of sounds that are "barely inaudible" in Duiwelskloof (285-6). She nevertheless suggests that, through her imagination, the personified 'beggar in the street', she can possibly imagine these lost voices. It is her exclusion from her mother tongue that encourages her imagination to come to the fore.
A final space of exclusion that deserves attention in this article is the common exclusionary notion in Djebar's oeuvre of being "nulle part" (nowhere). Not only is the expression used as title for Djebar's last novel, but many intertextual references also allude to it. When looking at the house where her cousins used to live, the narrator in La Femme sans sépulture laments: "Nulle part dans la maison de mon père!" (Nowhere in my father's house!) (La Femme 87). This is a strange complaint to read at first, for many of Djebar's narrators accentuate how they identify with their fathers as they are considered their fathers' daughters. 2 This lamentation of being nowhere in their fathers' houses therefore calls for a closer inspection.
When treated as a French girl amongst her mother's friends, the narrator in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père feels estranged: "Je me tais, je me sens soudain étrange, étrangère à cause de ces menus commérages" (I keep quiet, I suddenly feel strange, a stranger due to this petty gossip) (Nulle part 17). She realises that she does not belong to their world, and expresses: Moi, silencieuse dans ce patio bruissant des voix de ces femmes de tous âges qui ne sortent qu'ensevelies de la tête jusqu'aux pieds, soudain alarmée par cette remarque, je me sens "la fille de mon père". Une forme d'exclusion-ou une grâce? (Nulle part 18) Me, silent in this patio rustling of women's voices of all ages who only go out enshrouded from head to toe, suddenly alarmed by this remark, I am "the daughter of my father". A form of exclusion-or a grace?
Being her father's daughter can on the one hand be considered a grace, for by following in his footsteps through adopting the French language, she is given a form of mobility, freedom, and power (Sokołowicz 347). On the other hand, her identification with her father is most certainly at the heart of her exclusion as well for she feels both isolated from her compatriots as well as her French classmates (Nulle part 195). She states: j'oublie que, pour mes camarades, je suis différente, avec le nom si long de mon père et ce prénom de Fatima qui m'ennoblissait chez les miens mais m'amoindrit là, en territoire des "Autres". (Nulle part 117) I forget that, for my classmates, I am different, with the name so long of my father and this first name of Fatima that ennobled me amongst my family but that diminishes me here, in the territory of the "Others".
Her sense of exclusion goes further indeed: she even feels excluded from the one 'place' which is hers-the space that can confine and even imprison her (Nulle part 231-2): the house of, or identification with, her father. She describes her ambivalent position of being both the loved as well as the "dispossessed" daughter of her father by associating her situation with that of the prophet's youngest daughter, Fatimah: l'amour paternel qui vous confère le statut envié de "fille de son père", de "fille aimée" à l'image, dans notre culture islamique, du Prophète, qui n'eut que des filles (quatre, et chacune d'exception; la dernière, seule à lui survivre, se retrouvant dépossédée de l'héritage paternel, en souffrira au point d'en mourir. Je pourrais presque l'entendre soupirer, à mivoix: "nulle part, hélas, nulle part dans la maison de mon père"). (Nulle part 231-2) the paternal love that bestows on you the envied status of "daughter of her father", of "beloved daughter", to the image, in our Islamic culture, of the Prophet, who had but daughters (four, the last, the only to outlive him, found herself robbed of the paternal heritage which left her suffering to the extent to die from it. I could almost hear her sigh, softly: "Nowhere, alas, nowhere in my father's house").
She moreover questions her own conflicted position: Mais vous-je me parle à moi-même, comme ferait une étrangère sarcastique-, où en êtes-vous, vous qui avez commencé votre vie par l'intervention du père, du père et de sa fille prétendument aimée ou réellement aimée-et qui déclarez soudain presque à la face du monde: "nulle part dans la maison de mon père"? Dépossédée ? Vraiment, et quel aiguillon vous incite à l'écrire? Pourquoi vouloir ainsi la clamer à tous vents? (Nulle part 404-5) But you-I speak to myself as would a sarcastic stranger-, where are you now, you who started your life by the intervention of the father, of the father and his daughter supposedly loved or truly loved-and who now suddenly almost declares to the world: "Nowhere in my father's house"? Robbed? Really, and what sting incites you to write it? Why the need to proclaim it so to the four winds?
In doubting her own sense of place, she signals the difficulty of accepting and coming to terms with her lack of a significant space with regards to her relationship with her father. This lack of space is initially signalled after the bike 'incident': the fury her father publicly demonstrates and his refusal that she ever show her legs in public again bruises their relationship and forever mars her identification with him (Nulle part 57). She accentuates that this denial of her father is perhaps "la seule blessure que m'infligea jamais mon père" (the only wound my father ever inflicted on me) (Nulle part 57). It is after this peculiar "injury", once at home after her father's outbreak, that she has the need to look for a space that is her own. She recalls: Je suis allée dans un coin opposé à eux deux (car, déjà, ma mère l'avait rejoint dans leur chambre). Je me voulais loin d'eux, dans la maison certes mais me cherchant une place bien à moi. (Nulle part 57) I went to a corner opposite the two of them (because my mother already joined him in their room). I wanted to be far away from them, in the house of course but in a space that was my own.
Can it be deduced that it is this search and consequential 'absence' of "une place bien à moi" in her father's house that lies at the heart of her feeling forever "nulle part" in his house? "Nulle part", or in other words, without her own, secure, and personal space in which she can work through her own emotions? The notion of being nowhere and without place is reiterated by the narrator during another 'quarrel'-the fight with her boyfriend: The fight with the lover deepens the narrator's awareness that she has no place, not even her father's house, nor a place or space in which she can breathe, or possibly, just be herself. Malgorzata Sokołowicz (350) argues that this lack of place is due to the narrator's inability to find herself between the Oriental and Western world. It is for this reason,  insists, that the narrator chooses to commit suicide. To her mind, the narrator demonstrates a will to continue to look for both a place (possibly the space offered by death?) and herself when she states:  Sokołowicz (350) reasons that postcolonial writers such as Djebar write from outside their country and language, in a type of non-space in which they seek at least a "petite, obscure maison de (s)on père". I agree with Sokołowicz that it is the narrator's sense of finding herself without a place, "nowhere", or in a type of non-space, that pushes her further in her quest for space. The narrator declares: Ainsi, depuis le début, s'agissait-il davantage du père-du père qui mourra sans savoir que sa fille aînée, de justesse, n'est pas morte, cet automne d'avant la guerre d'Algérie […] Revivant cet épisode au plus près, quoique si longtemps après, me laissant conduire, toutes rênes lâchées, par l'ébranlement de cette poussée irrésistible de la mémoire, celleci galopant soudain telle une pouliche de race une fois libérée, une conclusion s'impose: "nulle part dans la maison de mon père!" (Nulle part 419-20) Thus, since the start, it has always been a matter of the father-a father who will die without knowing that his eldest daughter, barely, did not die, that autumn before the Algerian war […] Closely reliving that episode, although so long afterwards, reins loose, by the shudder of this irresistible thrust of memory, galloping suddenly like a filly when released, leads me to a clear conclusion: "Nowhere in my father's house!" It is the narrator's sense of exclusion, her conclusion of being "nulle part", that drives her forward. It serves as the source of energy for her constant quest for a liberating space that includes: she moves forward (be it towards death or through life), propelled by her exclusion or non-space, in search of a space that can finally be hers. As suggested earlier in this article, a similar drive can be identified in Brink's characters: it is a desire for movement and action that is born from the existence of barriers, borders, and thresholds that serve to exclude. Borders, restrictions, impossible worlds, and spaces from which they are excluded are necessary to awaken the desire to cross and to continue, even if it is only imaginatively, forward into the other side 'beyond' .

Conclusion
In this article, I have emphasised the central and comparable notion of spatial exclusion in a selection of Brink and Djebar's works. I indicated how the authors' texts share a particular postcolonial stance regarding boundaries, thresholds, and barriers that serve to exclude and isolate. Their novels similarly accentuate the power of exclusion by foregrounding how it is spaces of exclusion that drive their characters' movement and imagination. Due to the limited number of texts analysed from both authors in this article, I believe it will be fruitful for further research to consider the comparable portrayal of spaces in their larger oeuvres.