Algerian national consciousness has been chiefly, albeit not exclusively, encouraged by the national intelligentsia. This thesis analyses national consciousness and its representation in the trilogy of Mohammed Dib: La grande maison (1952), L’incendie (1954), and Le métier à tisser (1956), and in the television adaptation of his work Alhariq (1974). This study challenges the theoretical, cultural, and political assumptions about concepts of ressentiment, linguistic hybridity, national culture, and TV representation, which are the factors empowering people’s national consciousness. Under the scope of postcolonial and reception theories, national consciousness is looked at from the pre-independence and post-independence periods to recent times, illustrating the continuous importance of national awareness in the building of the nation. This thesis shows that Mohammed Dib has been an active agent in rising his people’s national consciousness with his literature of combat and its television adaptation defying time as two of the best productions in Algerian literature and film. Particularly, this research analyses the interrelated terms of violence, ressentiment, and their connection to the rise of national consciousness in colonial Algeria. It argues that the revolution should not be understood from the usual perspective of aggressiveness but as a shared common sense of national awareness, which dialectically necessitates the use of violence to gain independence. Moreover, it argues in favour of linguistic hybridity as a treasure chest and the power of language as a tool for national consciousness and the dissemination of the Algerian cause more broadly. The use of Arabic vernacular in the television adaptation is discussed for its importance in shaping people’s national consciousness in the post-independence period. This thesis also looks at the agent of national culture as a factor in the rise of national consciousness and how it is portrayed in the trilogy, arguing and concluding that Dib has been always an advocate of the national cause. In addition to the novels, this thesis illustrates the functional use of the television adaptation as a ‘re-memory’ agent in the process of nation building after independence, using reception theory to analyse that viewers have different readings of the series events. Finally, this thesis sheds light on the theme of national consciousness in more recent Algerian as well as world literature and film productions, investigating the different internal and external threats to its crystallisation.
