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Being Ghetto: The Hara As Heterotopia In Judeo-Tunisian Literature, Deborah Barnard

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

The Hara, or ghetto, is a place that distinguishes its inhabitants from other religious and cultural groups, acting as a spatial indicator of their difference. When Foucault’s theory of heterotopia is applied, the Hara becomes a hybrid, a place simultaneously of crisis and of deviation. In Albert Memmi’s La statue de sel, the protagonist experiences the Hara as antagonistic, or as a dystopia. In Nine Moati’s Les belles de Tunis, the protagonist experiences the Hara as a utopia.