Maya Boutaghou

Education

• B.A. Lettres Modernes and FLE, Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux III
• DEUG de Langue et Civilisation Arabes, mention « arabe littéral » [Diploma in Classical Arabic] Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux III
• M.A. Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux III
• Ph.D. (Doctorat) in Comparative Literature, University of Limoges

Biography

From my earliest research, I have argued that most of the philosophical, critical, poetic, and conceptual categories used in postcolonial cultural studies are borrowed from Western epistemologies and that they are not conducive to rigorous critical interpretation in former colonized contexts. That is because they ignore minoritized endogenous conceptual knowledges, mostly manifested in silenced languages and fragmented forms of transmission. In other words, the philosophical approaches, critical categories, and methodological tools available through the history of Western critique need to be adapted to the local complexities and the epistemologies of cultural productions emerging within the experience of colonialism and its aftermath. While colonial languages as systems of knowledge have been reproduced in post-independence situations, my work aims to provide a deeper understanding of how systems of knowledge can be simultaneously de-colonized and informed or sustained by endogenous modalities of knowledge production and interpretation. This decolonial dimension of thought must happen at the level of the sign, which is the minimal unit of meaning production (for example, what does the notion of “public space” mean in other historical/cultural/linguistic situations?). My broad exposure to different cultural contexts grounded in 19th- and 20th-century colonial presence has given me a long-term, comparative historical perspective and a better understanding of aesthetic production as performative systems and manifestations of epistemologies informed by what Michel de Certeau refers to as “the practices of everyday life” in lived environments. A salient and consistent aspect of my work is that any theory of language needs to address the cultural history of linguistic use and performance as well as its geographical spaces. In short, I look at cultural production as a complex web of interactions between histories and landscapes, instead of a simple linear progression.