The Re-creation of Western Colonial Wars in Alejo Carpentiers Like the Night

Abdelkrim AOUL

Abstract: In this article, we attempt to provide a critical historical analysis of Alejo Carpentier's Like the Night in which we reveal how the writer manages to recreate, rethink, and counter, Western war history through an allegorical narrative. In so doing, we show how, by travelling back and forth in European history, the writer, through his protagonist, delineates different stages in the violent encounters between Europeans and people from other continents, people of different cultures. Through a close reading of the protagonist's narrative and monologues, we reveal how Carpentier attempts to delegitimize the conventional European narrative on the colonial experience by unmasking its real motivations and also by deconstructing the inner contradictions that it entails. As a critical reader, I highlight how this is realized in the story in the form of allegorical allusions. This necessitates an employment of interpretative analysis as well an establishment of some connections between the story as a fictional work and some concepts related to post-colonial theory and post-colonial writing.

Keywords: European war history, colonial experience, counter-narrative, historical analysis, Western civilization, the non-European other, post-colonial criticism, Alejo Carpentier, Like the Night, fiction