Hanan Natour, Research Area 3: "Future Perfect"
Postdoctoral Research Project

Embracing an interdisciplinary, transnational and bilingual approach, this project explores Maghrebi fiction in Arabic and French, inspired by its tendency to reach out to pre-modern figures and texts that shaped conceptions of literature, historiography and "imagined geographies" (Edward Said). It departs from the hypothesis that by choosing certain intertextual references over others, Maghrebi writers contribute to decolonial literary histories from within. By addressing these competing temporalities, it aligns with the interest of Research Area 3 in imaginations of "Future Perfect".

In conversation with the Cluster's project Magical Realisms and Speculative Literature (2023–), the project specifically investigates the recurrence of pre-modern fantastic elements. How does North African fiction play with the classical Arabic trope of the 'wondrous and strange' (al-ʿajīb wa-l-gharīb) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? How do these interpretations counter colonial and postcolonial experiences of repression and destruction? And how do the writers' lived multilingual realities affect these dynamics?