British-India(ns) in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) and French-Algeria(ns) in Robert Randau’s Les Algerianistes (1911)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discuss the representation of the British-Indians and the French-Algerians presented by the two European imperialist writers of the nineteenth century , the British Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901) and the French Robert Randau in Les ALgerianistes ( 1911). The focus of this dissertation is on the issue of colonial identity and the imagined communities formed. Indeed, the stress is on the depiction of the new white race based on superiority and difference. This depiction permitted the colonizer to justify and legitimize their presence in the colonies. To achieve this aim, there is a need for two post-colonial theories which are New Historicism and Orientalism. In fact, New Historicism explains that identities are fictions which are formulated and adapted through narratives to serve one’s needs and objectives. Edward Said’s Orientalism aims to clarify the purposes of colonial discourse and the binary opposition between the self and the other. It is based on the representation of two contradictory groups which are the colonizer and the colonized .The two theories are the key for analyzing Kipling’s Kim and Randau’s Les Algerianistes, as well as exploiting the historical and ideological stances underscoming the two respective novels.