Halqa performance and the fourth stage in Kateb Yacine’s Le cadavre encerclé

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the Algerian playwright Kateb Yacine’s play Le cadavre encerclé by framing its poetics in paradigms rooted in African cultures and identities. A discussion of the North African religious and socio-cultural practice of the halqa resituates Yacine’s play within the North African Arabic theatrical landscape. The exploration of his metaphysical use of the halqa practice through the protagonist of Lakhdar and his character’s role as a goual, or storyteller, is complemented by Wole Soyinka’s idea of the fourth stage, whose core idea of endless transformation is explored though elements of characterization, and circular spatiality and temporality. The way these ideas relate to the circular motif of sacrifice, death and rebirth anchored in nature foregrounds Yacine’s artistic and political project to excavate a precolonial collective oneness capable of enacting lasting changes in the present and the future.