Between Resistance(s): Necropolitics and Amazigh Identity in Djaffar Chetouane's Donkey Heart, Monkey Mind

ABSTRACT: This article examines Djaffar Chetouane's Donkey Heart, Monkey Mind as a critical intervention in Amazigh-Algerian literary production and historical memory. Through a necropolitical framework, Chetouane's narrative confronts the systematic marginalization of Amazigh identity in post-independence Algeria while challenging conventional literary categorizations through its strategic use of English. The novel's protagonist exemplifies how the Algerian state's necropolitical governance operates through both direct corporeal violence and cultural erasure, rendering Amazigh populations "disposable" within the national body politic. Chetouane employs fragmented temporality, strategic silences, and embodied testimony to construct a counter-history that preserves experiences systematically excluded from official narratives. The novel illuminates continuities in Amazigh oppression across seemingly distinct eras by examining key historical transitions—post-independence nation-building, the 1988–92 crisis period, and the civil war's aftermath. The strategic deployment of the protagonist's body as both a site of necropolitical control and resistance reveals the gendered dimensions of state violence while highlighting possibilities for survival and agency. This research contributes to emerging scholarship on Anglophone North African literature, necropolitical aesthetics, and the role of literary forms in contesting hegemonic national histories while preserving marginalized cultural memories.