The essay tackles the concept of ‘cultural hysteresis’ through examples drawn from "Âne" by Driss Chraïbi. This phenomenon emerges when authors belong to two different cultures (and languages): in certain situations, a word or an expression can be loaded with two different meanings that exist in the two languages and in the two corresponding cultures. The term ‘hysteresis’ is used, because if the author writes the word in the meaning number 1 (of language number 1), the meaning number 2 (of language number 2) remains latent and manifests itself later, “lagging behind” (from the Greek ‘hysteros’, “lagging behind”). The specific case taken here into consideration revolves around the situation in which a given culture, after having been permeated by another (the case of colonisation), does not regain its initial form after the withdrawal of the second one.
The article examines how the fantasy aspect in Âne could be described as an effect of the ‘cultural hysteresis’.
