The Pieds-Noirs’ War of Memories in the New York Times

Today’s New York Times article, “In France, a War of Memories Over Memories of War” sums up much of my research in just two pages. The author, Michael Kimmelman, writes from Perpignan, France. Although he doesn’t discuss it, Perpignan is home to my correspondent Jean-Pierre Bartolini, publisher of La Seybouse. (The most recent edition is from February 1, 2009, No. 81.) Bartolini was recently embroiled in a war of memories of his own with other Pieds-Noirs in the area. Bartolini officially won that battle, but the conflict underscores the sensitivity the former French citizens of Algeria feel about the past and the way it is remembered. Until recently the vision of the past in Algeria was almost unilaterally expressed by Pieds-Noirs, and that past was written as one of peace and love in Algeria and anguish and betrayal in France.

In recent years the past has begun to disintegrate in a sense. An increasingly diverse set of authors is now finding ways to express their experiences, and as the past slips further away (now almost 47 years since the end of French Algeria), memories that are not already fossilized in writing are phantomatically ebbing forth.

The most prolific historian on all things Algerian, Benjamin Stora, had this to say in the New York Times:

“There is a crisis of French national storytelling, in that France historically has seen itself as a place of assimilation and integration, but now minorities want to question that story. That’s partly what the riots were about. And in this climate, the pieds noirs, who look back with nostalgia on the colonial days before the war in Algeria” — an era, Mr. Stora was careful to emphasize, when Algerian Muslims did not have equal rights — “they want to be seen as guardians, keepers of a bygone French nationalism, of Jacobinism.”

The Pieds-Noirs strive to protect the past (sauvegarder la mémoire), but there is no longer just “Une Algérie” available in the history section of French bookstores. We now have multiple visions of the past, or as Leïla Sebbar titled it, Mes Algéries en France.

My absence and others' absences

My absence from this blog, if anyone has noticed, is directly related to a wonderful project I've been working on.

Sorenne was born on December 7, 2008, and now that she's settling into her rhythm, I'm able to get back to writing about the Pieds-Noirs, exile, homeland, and nostalgia.

I'm currently working on a project for presentation at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Boston at the end of this month. "Dual, Doubled, and Divided Selves: Women Writing between Algeria and France," focuses on Marie Cardinal, Leïla Sebbar, and Hélène Cixous and how these women wrote multiple versions of themselves, each with a different strategy for representing her identity.

Although I won't have time to address it in this paper, I've also been thinking about language choice and how this has further divided authors like Sebbar and Assia Djebar (the subject of Névine El Nossery's talk on the same panel). Below is an interview with Sebbar on her work, Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (Paris: Julliard, 2003).

I'm concurrently writing a book review of Assia Djebar edited by Najib Redouane and Yvette Bénayoun-Szmidt (Paris: Harmattan, 2008) for the French Review. It's taking an eternity (see above image of baby Sorenne), but the collection of essays is providing me with much to think about. Sebbar and Djebar have both stated that if they had chosen (or in the case of Sebbar, been able to) write in Arabic, they would not write at all. Djebar explains the risk of writing herself,

"Prendre conscience que l’écriture devient un dévoilement, cela m’a fait reculer. Je me suis remise en question: si je continue à écrire, je vais détruire ma vie car elle va être perturbée par l’écriture romanesque” (29).

and Sebbar focuses on her need for writing fiction,

“… me placer au cœur, au centre, dans la fiction fictionnelle, c’est me placer dans un lieu unitaire, rassembleur des divisions (…) pour moi, la fiction c’est la suture qui masque la blessure, l’écart entre les deux rives” (Lettres parisiennes, Paris: Barrault, 1986. 147).

For these women, the absence of their language and their separations became their source of expression.

C'est leur vie

Voici une autre vidéo, documentaire, sur l'exode des Pieds Noirs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tfhfT1W1eQ



Le film s'appelle "C'est leur vie" réalisé par Kahina Aid.