Search

In a recent monograph, Todd Shepard has implored us to examine the ways in 'which the Algerian War modified the form and the content of debates surrounding contemporary sexuality in France', from the nationalist revolution spearheaded by the FLN in Algeria, to the sexual paradigm shift of May '68 (2017: 21). An important injunction, undoubtedly. But also an injunction that, as I will show, could also be inverted to examine how, in the world of cinema, the radicalization of identity politics catalysed by decolonization found itself similarly distorted by a tendency among male directors to imagine the war through the lens of their own androcentric preoccupations, fantasies and anxieties: anxieties that, in the case of Jacques Rivette's Paris nous appartient (1961), Louis Malle's Le Feu Follet (1963), and Jacques Dupont's Les Distractions (1960), ricochet erratically between masochistic and misogynistic tales of impotence and carnal retribution; anxieties that subtly twist the dynamics of the decolonial debate into strange shapes, places and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) was marked in metropolitan France by divisive debates over France’s presence in Algeria and over the issue of state-sponsored torture. Two testimonial texts written during the war, Henri Alleg’s La Question (1958) and Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi’s Djamila Boupacha (1962), stand out as examples of writing about torture, due to the texts’ connections to the Parisian intellectual community, and their social, political and literary repercussions. Both texts underscore the obscenity of the act of torture and how that obscenity is recreated in torture testimonials that exist in and describe a liminal space that disturbs notions of what can be seen and heard. This article argues that the paratextual legitimisation that Alleg’s and Boupacha’s texts undergo brings the act of torture into public discourse, enabling them to become audible or readable despite the strong preference for denial and inattention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Octobre à Paris (1961) was a clandestine documentary executed after one of the most notorious yet occulted state massacres in French history, conducted after approximately 20-30,000 Algerians had flooded the streets of Paris in order to protest against police persecution. In existing scholarship on the film, critics have generally tended to historicise Octobre à Paris in largely politically progressive terms, as a rare example of anti-colonial cinema produced during a particularly stringent period in the history of French film. As the first part of this article will argue, this interpretation is not without justification, especially in relation to Panijel's arguably pioneering use of the 'masked interview' (an interview technique predicated on a conception of the auteuras- absence). Yet, as we will see in the second part of this article, such a politically progressive reading of Octobre à Paris is also undermined by the non-diegetic authorial commentary that appears in the final act of the film. Controversially, it is Panijel rather than his Algerian subjects who has the last word on the massacre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1953, a group of Lyon’s political and social leaders hosted a series of Ramadan celebrations in honour of the region’s growing Muslim North African migrant population. While it seems strange that civil authorities in the secular French Republic would publically observe a Muslim holiday, the French Empire had, for decades, engaged in activities to promote Muslim attachment to France and demonstrate its support for Muslim cultural and religious practices. From declarations that France was a ‘Muslim power’ through the campaigns of the Algerian War, the French consistently waived the ideals of strict laïcité in order to strengthen the imperial system. This pragmatic willingness to relax secular positions when greater state interests were at stake contrasts with contemporary claims that the Republic can make no accommodations to Islam or its observance. More importantly, this history proves that there are strong French precedents for allowing the Republic to make space for its Muslim citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Didier Daeninckx has devoted many novels to the history and memory of the Occupation. This article explores the relationship between his fiction and historiographical frameworks with reference to Meurtres pour mémoire, contrasted with Missak published 25 years later. After discussion of 1980s historiography of the Occupation and the Algerian War, it looks particularly at narrative structure and the thematics of order (both obedience and orderly documentation), seeking to establish the differences in the ways these two novels historicise the past, and the historiographical differences in their approach to guilt, knowledge and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines perceptions of the Algerian war among French intellectuals and in mainstream French culture. Against the background of France’s social and political situation in the 1950s – declining international prominence, the loss of its colonies, rapid industrial modernization, and increasing moves toward individualism – the essay discusses the reactions of left-leaning writers and critics to the war and the way it was represented in popular culture after the escalating violence prompted more sharply defined political positions. Focusing on the issue of two types of engagements – political and literary – the author suggests that the redefined notion of commitment, as formulated by Albert Camus and Maurice Blanchot in response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s emphasis on unconditional action, offered a conception of political, social and cultural transformation designed to undo the violence inherent in Sartre’s promotion of self-assured values and insular ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers two very different 1960s adaptations of the Carmen narrative −1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs (1962) and Carmen 63 (1963) − to show how they articulate common social and political concerns. The first of these, common to many of the Carmen films, is the fear of women’s increasing independence, linked to the development of the post-war consumer culture. The second is a converging concern with the Algerian War, hidden deep in the films, but emerging symptomatically through, amongst other features, the choice of star in one of the films (Jacques Charrier), the fear of the ‘foreign’, and the dilution of Carmen as a nineteenth-century French heritage icon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reconstitutes cultural memory through image and text in Leïla Sebbar's "Le Chinois vert d'Afrique." It examines how Leïla Sebbar comes to terms with post-war trauma through a combination of text and image. The paper also reviews whether Sebbar's novel, "Le Chenois vert d'Afrique," should then read as a piece of ecphrastic writing. And more significantly, does Sebbar's use of photography function effectively as a vector of memorial transmission. It highlights the impact of the Algerian War on Franco-Algerian relations.