Borderless Territories: The Worlding of Religious Totalitarianism in Boualem Sansal’s Dystopian Writing

Abstract

The article examines Boualem Sansal’s novel 2084: La fin du monde (2084: The End of the World) in relation to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the dystopian genre, and Sansal’s broader body of work. It argues that Sansal’s novel, as a synthetic allegory, expands Orwell’s concept of totalitarianism by exploring its potential fusion with monotheistic religions, creating a post-secular form of religious totalitarianism. Due to its involvement in religious thinking, Sansal’s novel will be read according to the traditional line of reinterpreting apocalyptic texts, producing an ever-shifting range of readings dictated by the events and anxieties of the readers’ time. The central topic analysed is the tendency of totalitarian regimes to equate their state with the entirety of the inhabitable world, erasing the possibility of alternative spaces. This is why the concept of border, excluded in the official propaganda, is crucial in the personal quest of the novel’s protagonist. In Sansal’s view, borders are a positive element: a warrant of pluralism and a promise of alternative ways of life.

Highlights 

1. The study presents Boualem Sansal's novel in the framework of an apocalyptic modality of reading.
2. The paper fills the gap in the existing scholarship by analysing the overlooked connection between the fictional text and Islamic eschatology.
3. The analysis suggests that Sansal's novel overcomes the dominant modalities of postmodern fiction, requesting a return to an early-modern interpretative formula.
4. The paper comments on the phenomenon of critical reception of Sansal's novel in post-totalitarian countries.
5. The study reveals the connection between the text and the anxieties related to the collapse of secular modernity.