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This article examines multivocal, intersubjective explorations of ambivalent identity in two literary works centring female descendants of harkis (Algerian auxiliary soldiers enlisted in the French army during the Algerian War). Zahia Rahmani’s France: récit d’une enfance (2006) and Alice Zeniter’s L’Art de perdre (2017) document their protagonists’ struggles to reconstruct, and simultaneously reconfigure or subvert, complex memories and identities fragmented by colonial history and its afterlives. Plural, often transgressive, forms of speech, dialogue, and storytelling are shown to facilitate explorations of ambivalent intergenerational and intercultural affect, also emerging as forces of critique, resistance, and interpellation. In their navigation of conflictual, ambiguous histories that place diverse memories and identities in productive tension, both texts complicate notions of belonging and inheritance. Their layered, dialogic narrative quests treat subjectivity, memory, and temporality as plural, fluid, and contingent, resisting straightforward identification with a singular identity marker, whether harki, Algerian, Amazigh (Berber), French, or otherwise. Crucially, through the real and imagined landscapes they traverse, they also turn outwards in their questioning of broader oppressive, traumatogenic structures and reductive narratives. ‘Pre-written’ narratives, whether involving colonial or contemporary Algeria, the experiences of the harkis or those of rural French communities, are thus deconstructed and rewritten. Drawing on theorizations and interrogations of postcolonial hybridity and witnessing, this article argues that these narrative (re)constructions privilege neither unified subjectivity nor potentially essentialized forms of fragmentary identity. Citing yet interrogating institutionalized narratives of memorialization, reconciliation, and reparation, Rahmani and Zeniter present ambivalent, fractured intergenerational transmission as a shifting locus of encounter, exchange, and contestation.

This article offers a history of the French Republic's chronic inability to recognize and condemn colonial crimes committed by it and in its name, despite the fact that they are well known and eminently reprehensible, from the end of the Algerian War to the present day.

The engagement in the French army during the Algerian war condemned the harkis to a silent existence. Considered as traitors in their country of birth, and undesirable in their country of exile, they strive to remain invisible and silent. In the writings of their descendants, who decided one day to tell the traumatic Hi/story of their community, a character inevitably stands out: the father walled in silence, leading his life alone, for fear of disappointing or not being able to give the best explanations for a “shameful” past. To illustrate the different “configurations” and values of the “entrenched words” that the descendants of harkis inscribe in their literary works, we will base our analysis on the novels Mon père, ce harki (2003) by Dalila Kerchouche, Mohand, le harki (2003) by Hadjila Kemoum and L’Art de perdre (2017) by Alice Zeniter.

The article is devoted to the problem of the colonial past in Algerian-French relations. In the early 2020s, it gained particular urgency for three reasons. Firstly, in the context of the transformation of the global world order and the deep social cleavages that have engulfed both many Eastern and Western societies, issues of historical memory, external and internal decolonization began to come to the fore both in public discussions within individual states and in international relations. Secondly, the coming to power in France of E. Macron marked an attempt at a serious transformation of the country’s foreign policy, strengthening its position in the world as a whole, and in the region of the Middle East and North Africa, in particular. Related to this were the (mostly unsuccessful) initiatives of E. Macron on the Palestinian-Israeli and Libyan settlements, the Lebanese crisis, and the resolution of accumulated contradictions with Algeria. Thirdly, A. Tebboune’s coming to power in Algeria in 2019 also gave impetus to the country’s foreign policy and created the conditions for revising relations with France. In these circumstances, the idea arose of preparing reports by the two sides on the possibilities of overcoming the negative colonial legacy in bilateral relations. The Algerian side did not submit the report, and the French text was prepared by B. Stora by January 2021 and caused wide response. The purpose of this article is to determine, based on the analysis of this text and the materials of the discussions that followed it, the French vision of the problem of reconciliation with Algeria. The article was written using the method of “slow reading” of the source - its main part is a detailed analysis of the report by B. Stor, followed by a review of the discussion he caused. The result of this approach is the identification of not only the widely discussed contradictions in matters of historical memory (both between Algeria and France, and within French society), but also the identification of some non-obvious problems of the French perception of this problem.

The engagement in the French army during the Algerian war condemned the harkis to a silent existence. Considered as traitors in their country of birth, and undesirable in their country of exile, they strive to remain invisible and silent. In the writings of their descendants, who decided one day to tell the traumatic Hi/story of their community, a character inevitably stands out: the father walled in silence, leading his life alone, for fear of disappointing or not being able to give the best explanations for a "shameful" past. To illustrate the different "configurations" and values of the "entrenched words" that the descendants of harkis inscribe in their literary works, we will base our analysis on the novels Mon père, ce harki (2003) by Dalila Kerchouche, Mohand, le harki (2003) by Hadjila Kemoum and L'Art de perdre (2017) by Alice Zeniter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great admirer of the writings of Flaubert and Julien Gracq (Laplace-Treyture, 2014), the works of geographer Armand Frémont are characterised as much by their innovative nature as by the remarkable quality of their writing. First a university lecturer, then a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education, his life and writings were strongly influenced by his eight-month stay in Algeria during the Algerian war. From this field experience, he published numerous texts, some of which were published before the end of the conflict. They are all the more valuable in that there are very few accounts by academics who were directly involved in the conflict as conscripts. The aim of our study is therefore to contribute to the rediscovery of all the “Algerian” writings that Armand Frémont drew from this highly unusual period in his life, and which are not limited to Algérie - El Djazaïr. Les carnets de guerre et de terrain d'un géographe published in 1982.

The year 1962 marked the end of the colonial occupation of Algeria by France after more than 130 years. In the wake of a bloody war of independence, nearly 700 000 former European settlers left their old homeland under dramatic circumstances. Most of them ended up in the port of Marseille to find a new livelihood in their motherland France. After their exodus from French Algeria, a state which was doomed to failure, the “Pieds-noirs” developed a multilayered culture of remembrance. Their specific food culture — La Cuisine Pied Noir — emerged as an essential part of their heritage. An interdisciplinary academic approach to this cuisine allows for a deeper understanding of culinary cultural transfer in the context of colonialism and decolonisation. “La Cuisine Pied Noir” highlights the importance of food as a cultural companion and as a guardian of social identity. The drama of the Algerian–French history is still discussed in present-day France. Finally, the archives in both countries are opened to historical studies. This article invites researchers in the field of food culture to participate in a stimulating discussion.

When violence is unleashed on a territory, a large part of the inhabitants hide away and seek to make themselves invisible by going behind the scenes. This is the case of the narrator of Qui se souvient de la mer, a novel by Mohammed Dib published in 1962. The novel appears as an assessment of the preceding eight-year long nightmare. Beneath a city that strongly resembles Algiers, an underground city unfolds, adjacent to the city at war, taking in all its violence, but seemingly shaped by other narrative rules. This fabulous city not only functions as a refuge, it is also a high intensity black hole where individual traumas coalesce into collective trauma that gives shape to a mysterious urban geography. The words of the invisible inhabitants, explicitly used in Mohammed Dib's novel, turn the story into a fable to spatialize the part of trauma that was born in the colonial era and continues to haunt postcolonial experience. The underground city of Mohammed Dib is a point de vie (“point of life”) on the world, both impregnable and charged with energy.

The year 1962 marked the end of the colonial occupation of Algeria by France after more than 130 years. In the wake of a bloody war of independence, nearly 700 000 former European settlers left their old homeland under dramatic circumstances. Most of them ended up in the port of Marseille to find a new livelihood in their motherland France. After their exodus from French Algeria, a state which was doomed to failure, the "Pieds-noirs" developed a multilayered culture of remembrance. Their specific food culture — La Cuisine Pied Noir — emerged as an essential part of their heritage. An interdisciplinary academic approach to this cuisine allows for a deeper understanding of culinary cultural transfer in the context of colonialism and decolonisation. "La Cuisine Pied Noir" highlights the importance of food as a cultural companion and as a guardian of social identity. The drama of the Algerian–French history is still discussed in present-day France. Finally, the archives in both countries are opened to historical studies. This article invites researchers in the field of food culture to participate in a stimulating discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alice Zeniter’s 2017 novel The Art of Losing, translated recently by Frank Wynne from French to English, explores how buried histories resurface and haunt generations to come, despite national efforts to ignore, if not minimalize, the enduring impacts of colonialism, independence struggles and exile. Set in contemporary France in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks, and loosely inspired by Zeniter’s own family history, the book follows Naïma, a young woman of Algerian decent who grapples with a largely unknown and misconstrued harki heritage. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this article investigates intergenerational transmission of memory, trauma, and silence around themes such as war, exile and integration.

The Memory of War, the War of Memory: Social Memory of the War in Algeria in Relations Between France and the Algerian Immigrants The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the official end of the Algerian war. The memory of this conflict and other events in France which accompanied it is still alive in French society. After many years of oblivion and lack of interest from the highest authorities, this conflict once again becomes the subject of great controversy and heated debate. The disputes focus on the four groups: the French born in Algeria, the Algerians cooperating with the French troops during the war, the other Algerian immigrants and, finally, the former military personnel serving in Algeria. Each group has its own perspective of the events, whereas the politicians try to exploit the memory of the war in the ongoing disputes concerning the integration of the immigrants and the riots in the suburbs. All of this means that even after 50 years the issue of the Algerian war is still evoking new conflicts.

Copyright of Hispania: Revista Española de Historia is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Algerian War has long been considered a “war without images”, owing to a combination of state censorship and the self-censorship of artists themselves. However, recent research has revealed numerous art works preserved thus far in the privacy of personal archives. This article follows the trajectory of a conscientious objector, member of the Non-violent Civic Action group, whose detention drawings depict his everyday life as an inmate in several prisons and camps. Pursued and arrested for illegal protest, disobedience, and desertion, this artist-objector was detained and incarcerated eleven times at various detention sites in France. Didier Poiraud’s experiences shed light on the conditions under which wartime artwork can emerge and on the detention conditions faced by conscientious objectors. By carefully observing his drawings - shown here for the first time - and by analyzing them in the context of their production, we gain a better understanding of the relentless and arbitrary repression to which conscientious objectors were subjected during the Algerian War. Through his artwork, resistance in prison can be reinscribed within a larger fight that not only contested the decolonisation war but also led to the reformation of the military service.

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Broadcast online in 2011, the webdocumentaries "The Forgotten Night" (LNO) and "17.10.61" address, from various perspectives, the repression of 17 October 1961, one of the major events of the end of the Algerian war of independence in metropolitan France. This article focuses on the place of fiction within these two webdocumentaries in order to question the way in which web-native mediation formats produce a shift in the interference between fiction and reality, both in terms of the creative process and the perception that viewers have of it. In order to study how the web documentary transforms the fiction/documentary articulation, LNO and 17.10.61 are put into a historical perspective with regard to the dynamics specific to the diffusion of the event in the public space since 1961. In spite of distinct aesthetic and narrative choices, the two devices bear witness to the new documentary imaginary that is born from the crossroads between the tradition of historical documentary and digital culture.

France's colonial past and its aftermath remain an "open wound" to this day. After a long period of silence, painful issues such as the role of France in the transatlantic slave trade, colonial crimes in Africa, and the Algerian War have more and more become part of public consciousness in France. Interestingly, many French rap musicians who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants from former French colonies frequently use their songs to remind France of its colonial past. However, their messages sometimes compete with remembrance of the Holocaust. The singers' condemnation of French colonialism becomes wrapped up in the Middle East conflict and Israel is portrayed as a new "colonial power." By analyzing selected lyrics of recent French rap songs this article aims to explore the complex and sensitive intersection of post-colonial and Middle East politics and set the lyrics in the broader socio-political context of remembrance culture in France. The article argues that the musicians' approaches to France's troubled past are an important form of self-affirmation for their communities in the postcolonial context. By bringing up previously silenced topics, they contribute to a more diverse remembrance culture and contest narratives that have been predominant for a long time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is principally known as a great theoretician of race relations and decolonization, in particular through the two main books he published during his lifetime Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). What is less known is that he was in parallel a pioneering psychiatrist and an early and recognized theoretician of ethnopsychiatry. A volume of about a thousand pages of texts either difficult to access or presumed lost was recently published, following more than a decade of research in archives located in different parts of the world. It reveals first the importance and originality of his thought as a scientist, and secondly the importance of this dimension of his work for the understanding of his political texts. This is shown on two points: 1) the role of violence in the decolonization process, when compared with Fanon’s texts on psychiatric internment, the phenomenon of agitation and the alternative model of social therapy and 2) the use of «identity» as cultural foundation for newly decolonized states, which he strongly criticised, when compared with Fanon’s systematic questioning of any personal «constitution» in his psychiatric and ethnopsychiatric work.

From 1954, as the French government propaganda denies the Algerian War of Independence and describes it as “pacification”, Paris Match, adopting the official line and working with a team of 21 photo reporters, regularly covers the Algerian news. What vision of the conflict do they convey ? To what extent do the published images contribute to shaping the visual memory we still have today of the conflict ? This article is based on Paris Match’s archives from November 1954 to September 1962. It aims to highlight key milestones of the Algerian Revolution through the analysis of the photographs published by the magazine.

L’Art de perdre (Flammarion, 2017) is the fifth and latest novel of Alice Zeniter, French novelist and dramatist. She published her first novel at the age of sixteen. In this paper I will present L’Art de perdreas a novel related to the common history of France and Algeria. My main goal is to analyze the issues of memory according to the concepts of postmemory by Marianne Hirsch and archaeological novel by Dominique Viart. The article aims also at following a comparative study of L’Art de perdre and previous novels by Alice Zeniter: Jusque dans nos bras and Juste avant l’Oubli.

Alice Zeniter's 2017 novel The Art of Losing, translated recently by Frank Wynne from French to English, explores how buried histories resurface and haunt generations to come, despite national efforts to ignore, if not minimalize, the enduring impacts of colonialism, independence struggles and exile. Set in contemporary France in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks, and loosely inspired by Zeniter's own family history, the book follows Naïma, a young woman of Algerian decent who grapples with a largely unknown and misconstrued harki heritage. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory, this article investigates intergenerational transmission of memory, trauma, and silence around themes such as war, exile and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is principally known as a great theoretician of race relations and decolonization, in particular through the two main books he published during his lifetime Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). What is less known is that he was in parallel a pioneering psychiatrist and an early and recognized theoretician of ethnopsychiatry. A volume of about a thousand pages of texts either difficult to access or presumed lost was recently published, following more than a decade of research in archives located in different parts of the world. It reveals first the importance and originality of his thought as a scientist, and secondly the importance of this dimension of his work for the understanding of his political texts. This is shown on two points: 1) the role of violence in the decolonization process, when compared with Fanon's texts on psychiatric internment, the phenomenon of agitation and the alternative model of social therapy and 2) the use of «identity» as cultural foundation for newly decolonized states, which he strongly criticised, when compared with Fanon's systematic questioning of any personal «constitution» in his psychiatric and ethnopsychiatric work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algeria is a country containing numerous re-imaginings, whose immigrants, having left it, have irrigated it with their memories, and often great heartbreak. In the contemporary picture books evoking Algeria, twelve picture books have been selected (a corpus from 2001 to 2010) for their graphic and aesthetic characteristics that highlight issues related to the transmission of memory. The picture book genre makes it possible to create a rich, complex, and dense discourse on Algerian immigration to France. These picture books are centered on children’s migratory journey, as they become torn between their country of origin and their host country. These stories renew migrant children's literature thanks to the cultural images conveyed—be it archetypal, stereotyped or simply historical images—in the anthropological and humanistic sense. This culture of images reconfigures the imagination by mixing pictures together. The question of travel and traumatic exile will be studied through a major motif, that of the departing boat, symbolic of the tragedy of arriving too late; then the omnipresent writing of history centered on colonization and the war of independence in Algeria will be evoked; lastly, an analysis of iconography based on postcards and photography will show attempts to distance oneself from exoticism.

Copyright of Synergies Turquie is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

From the French conquest of Algeria in 1830 to the establishment of the independent Algerian state in 1962, the ones who conceived colonial, pro-Vichy, Zionist, or nationalistic definitions of French, Algerian and Israeli nationalities and citizenships thoroughly debated the rights that should be granted to the Jews in Algeria to such an extent that these same Jews had to face the legal, political, and cultural questions raised by these issues of nationality and citizenship. The thinking and attitudes of French legislators, European anti-Semites, and Algerian nationalists are quite well known. However, less in-depth research has been devoted to analyzing the various reactions of Jews to this issue. Their perception of French nationality has mainly been as assumed to be homogeneous. By focusing on turning points in the history of Algeria (Vichy, the Algerian war, and Independence), this essay aims at recovering how the persons who defined themselves as Jews contributed to shape competing definitions of nationalities. This essay also uses this specific case to reveal the tensions that arose around the issue of nationality in colonial and postcolonial Algeria.