The Representation of the Saidian Secular Intellectual in Norman Lewis’s Darkness Visible (1960)
| dc.contributor.author | Saadi Hocine | |
| dc.contributor.author | Saad Bouzid Samir | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-03-01T09:16:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-03-01T09:16:09Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description | 56p. ; (+CD-Rom) | |
| dc.description.abstract | This research explores the British literary representation of colonial violence, racial injustice, and the silence surrounding atrocities in Algeria during its War of Independence (1954–1962). It examines how these themes are depicted in Norman Lewis’s Darkness Visible (1961). The title itself, Darkness Visible, is symbolically charged, suggesting the presence of concealed truths and moral obscurity under the French colonial rule. The research further examines how colonial power structures work in French-occupied Algeria; it focuses on how narrative forms of resistance confront and expose the dehumanisation and control embedded in French colonial ideology and systemic violence. The analysis is framed within postcolonial theory, particularly Edward Said’s theory of the intellectual as a figure morally compelled to speak truth to power and challenge dominant narratives. In this context and thesis, the protagonist, Steve Lavers, is interpreted as a secular intellectual who fulfils this role. Through his observations, moral discomfort, and eventual refusal to remain silent, Lavers embodies the ethical duty of the intellectual: to resist injustice not through ideology, but through honest engagement with reality as being experienced in Algeria during wartime. The findings reveal that Darkness Visible stands a significant critique of French colonialism by exposing its brutality, moral collapse and failure. Moreover, the narrative depicts the French military’s efforts to preserve authority through fear, coercion, and systemic violence as represented through the organisation (The Red Hand), yet all of these are fiercely met with the resistance of the F.L.N-ers. Pronouncedly, Lewis’s novel positions Steve as a Saidian and secular intellectual whose personal awakening represents a form of moral and human resistance to imperial domination. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Literature and Interdisciplinary Approaches | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://dspace.ummto.dz/handle/ummto/29826 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi ouzou | |
| dc.subject | Secular Intellectual | |
| dc.subject | Saidian intellectual | |
| dc.subject | Edward Said | |
| dc.subject | Literary Resistance | |
| dc.subject | Norman Lewis | |
| dc.subject | Darkness Visible | |
| dc.subject | postcolonial literature | |
| dc.title | The Representation of the Saidian Secular Intellectual in Norman Lewis’s Darkness Visible (1960) | |
| dc.type | Thesis |