Algeria and France, 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia

365 Pages·2006·6.24 MB·English

by  Patricia Lorcin

Algeria <& France
1 8 0 0 - 2 0 0 0
Modem Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Series Editor
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Identity Memory Nostalgia
Edited by
P A T R I C I A M . E . L O R C I N
Syracuse University Press
Copyright © 2006 by Syracuse University Press
Syracuse, New York 13244-5160
All Rights Reserved
First Edition 2006
06 07 08 09 10 11 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cartoon in chapter 11: from Le Monde, 31 Aug. 2001.
Reprinted with permission of Pancho.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.ooTM
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Algeria and France, 1800-2000 : identity, memory,
nostalgia / edited by Patricia M. E. Lorcin.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Modern intellectual and political history of the Middle East)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8156-3074-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Algeria—History—1830-1962—Historiography.
2. Algeria—History—Revolution, 1954-1962—Atrocities.
3. French—Colonization—Algeria. 4. French—Algeria—Attitudes.
5. France—Relations—Algeria. 6. Algeria—Relations—France.
I. Lorcin, Patricia M. E. II. Series.
DT294.A238 2006
965'.03—dc22 2006014518
Manufactured in the United States of America
To the victims of the Algerian War
( 1 9 5 4 - 1 9 6 2 )

Contents
SOME THOUGHTS BY WAY OF A PREFACE, HENRI ALLEG IX
CONTRIBUTORS XV
INTRODUCTION, PATRICIA M. E. LORCIN XÏX
Part One / Identity Reconsidered
1 Migrations, Legal Pluralism, and Identities: Algerian “Expatriates”
in Colonial Tunisia / julia clancy-smith 3
2 “I Went Pale with Pleasure”: The Body, Sexuality, and National Identity
among French Travelers to Algiers in the Nineteenth Century /
VICTORIA THOMPSON 18
3 Shaping the Colonial Body: Sport and Society in Algeria, 1870-1962 /
PHILIP dine 33
4 “Unknown and Unloved”: The Politics of French Ignorance in Algeria,
1860-1930 / SETH GRAEBNER 49
5 Assimilation, Cultural Identity, and Permissible Deviance in
Francophone Algerian Writing of the Interwar Years / peter
DUNWOODIE 63
6 The Politics of Solidarity: Radical French and Algerian
Journalists and the 1954 Orléansville Earthquake /
YAËL SIMPSON FLETCHER 84
viii ♦ Contents
Part Two / Memory or Forgetting
7 “They Swore upon the Tombs Never to Make Peace with Us”:
Algerian Jews and French Colonialism, 1845—1848 / joshua s.
schreier 101
8 Entering History: The Memory of Police Violence in Paris, October
1961 / JOSHUA cole 117
9 Memory in History, Nation Building, and Identity: Teaching about
the Algerian War in France / jo McCormack 135
10 Pieds-Noirs, Bêtes Noires: Anti-“European of Algeria” Racism and the
Close of the French Empire / todd shepard 150
11 The Harkis: History and Memory / william b. cohen 164
12 Language and Politics: A New Revisionism /
HABIBA DEMING 181
Part Three / Nostalgia
13 Tattoos or Earrings: Two Models of Historical Writing in Mehdi
Lallaoui’s La colline aux oliviers / Mireille rosello 199
14 Generating Migrant Memories / alec g. hargreaves 217
15 Derrida’s Nostalgeria / lynne huffer 228
16 Confronting the Past: The Memory Work of Second-Generation
Algerians in France / richard l. derderian 247
17 The Return of the Repressed: War, Trauma, Memory in Algeria and
Beyond / david prochaska 257
WORKS CITED 279
INDEX 311
Some Thoughts by Way of a Preface
HENRI ALLEG
A constellation of researchers of high quality—historians, sociolo­
gists, literary scholars—focusing their attention on a country that is thousands
of kilometers away symbolizes, in my view as an optimist, a future world
where communication and international relations will, first and foremost,
serve the progress of knowledge and bring together people and nations for the
common good. No one will complain of this positive, if rather rare, aspect of
“globalization.”
It is not the least of Patricia Lorcin’s merits to have encouraged such a fruitful
encounter on the theme of Algeria—an encounter that elucidates certain hitherto
unpublished aspects of a past, long deformed and obscured by colonial historiog­
raphy, and that sheds new light on questions of language, identity, culture, and
the complex, but not always confrontational, relationships between Algeria and
France.
Because of the colonial situation, until independence, few Algerians were in a
position to tackle these issues. For fear of judicial proceedings or serious sanc­
tions, those who risked doing so always had to ensure that their work conformed
to the law and did not cast aspersions on the sacrosanct principle of “French sov­
ereignty.” On the French side, with certain brilliant exceptions, few authors
dared to challenge the colonial dogma that the majority, for reasons of conviction
or personal interest, defended as manifest truths. Government officials in Paris at
the time, whether they were of the Right or the Left—and in spite of noble decla­
rations concerning the indefeasible rights of freedom of thought and speech—
doggedly persisted in keeping under wraps any ideas they considered to be
subversive. Permanent repression, direct or indirect, against all challengers;
amnesty laws that forbade the denunciation of those responsible for massacres or
torture; hypocritical or overt censorship; sealed archives: these were the custom­
ary measures used by the authorities, and they remained in use well after the dec­
laration of Algerian independence.
In March 1962, the Evian Accords put an end to the hostilities, but nearly
ix
x ♦ Preface
forty years passed before France recognized the fact that it was a war they had
fought and not, as they had obstinately persisted in pretending, a simple military
intervention “to maintain order” in part of “their” territory. The war was a
tragedy that ruined the lives of 2 million young men, who were catapulted into
the djebel in French uniform, 25,000 of whom never returned and 350,000 of
whom still suffer serious psychological problems. It caused the death of hundreds
of thousands of Algerians, the annihilation of thousands of villages, and the sys­
tematic use of torture and rape. It provoked political upheavals, which brought
France to the brink of civil war. And all this was reduced by official historiogra­
phy to the consequences of a commonplace “policing operation”!
That stage of thinking is over, as is also, no doubt, the period when military
officers and “specialists” of colonial Algeria, recounting “their” war, could
calmly and insolently reject everything that diminished or contradicted the com­
forting legend of humane and benevolent “pacification.” But carving out the path
of truth is still difficult, as was seen in June 2000, when an Algerian woman pub­
lished her testimony and denunciation of the torture and rape she had undergone
as a prisoner of General Jacques Massu’s parachutists half a century earlier; and
again in November 2001, when General Paul Aussaresses, deputy to Massu dur­
ing the “battle of Algiers,” appeared in a Parisian court and was prosecuted not
for torture and summary executions, of which he was by his own admission
guilty, but for the scandalous “apology” he made for his behavior in his books on
his service (2001a, 2001b). These two events, which the introduction to this ed­
ited volume rightly brings to mind, were a great shock to French public opinion,
especially among the young, who have been kept in quasi-total ignorance of the
war. Conscious of the approaching presidential elections at the time, Jacques
Chirdc, the French president, and Lionel Jospin, prime minister, were especially
sensitive to the emotions raised by these events and hence intervened publicly. It
was not, however, to congratulate themselves for the fact that the truth had at last
been articulated and recognized, but to calm the unrest and as quickly as possible
to close a case that had been so unfortunately opened and was so politically em­
barrassing. The mistake—for part of the civilian and military hierarchy at least—
was not that these crimes had been committed, but that they had been divulged.
Little by little, “official” France was compelled to admit that the flag it un­
furled was not always one of “freedom of the people” and the Rights of Man.
Nonetheless, those nostalgic for the false glories of the past still took up the stale
arguments of the devotees of a colonial domination that had bestowed “light,
progress, and civilization.” It was in this vein that shortly after the condemnation
of Aussaresses (by a mere fine!), some three hundred generals and superior offi­
cers, veterans of the Algerian War, gathered together their memories and their