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Abstract
The present study concentrates on the representation of the exile in the recent works of two renowned Algerian born French writers, Assia Djebar and Hlne Cixous. The analysis focuses on the elaboration of postcolonial feminist writings, illustrating broad theoretical and analytical points about women writing between two worlds. The quest to find answers to the question: What is my place if I am a woman? reveals a textual search for ones own voice and origins. This dissertation explores how Cixous and Djebar attempt to rediscover via textual practice the place where the exile, the linguistic and cultural non-belonging initiated. It studies how the understanding of the exile becomes a significant part of their criture feminine and identity. This research analyzes the connection of the female body to her coming to writing, studying the link between the freedom of body and the freedom of voice in a patriarchal society, and examines the representation of the symbolic prison, an inevitable aspect of the female exile, which plays a multidimensional role in the quest for identity in the works of Djebar and Cixous.