Qu'est-ce qu'un Pied-Noir

Subject of much debate and myth: What is a Pied-Noir? This was a big chunk of my presentation "How the Pieds-Noirs Remember Algeria" at Truman State University, Kirksville, MO in March. It was also a fascinating part of Alek Toumi's talk at NeMLA last week, “Albert Camus: ‘Nostalg(ér)ies’ d’hier et d’aujourd’hui.” After our discussion of all the different colored feet one may have, I sent Alek the following definition of Faux Pieds-Noirs found on the Jeune Pied-Noir website:

• Les faux pieds-noirs  Petite minorité très influente, notamment dans les médias et le monde des Arts, de natifs d'Afrique du Nord d'origine européenne ou juive qui rejettent leur communauté d'origine et l'oeuvre de la France en Algérie. Selon leurs tendances politiques, ils sont qualifiés de pieds-rouges, pieds-verts, pieds-roses, pieds-gris, etc... Il existe aussi maintenant une petite minorité d'enfants de Harkis-rouges, roses, verts, gris... principalement des filles, qui jouent aussi ce rôle en reprochant à la France d'avoir "colonisé" l'Algérie, tout en oubliant que les Arabes sont aussi des colonisateurs venus tout simplement en Afrique du Nord, alors chrétienne, 13 siècles plus tôt ! La plupart se qualifient eux mêmes de "gauche" ou "progressistes". Ils se reconnaissent facilement par leur position "anticolonialiste". 

On the other hand, a Jeune Pied Noir (or Pied-Noir according to Jeune Pied-Noir) has a political yet broad definition:

• Définition Jeune Pied-Noir  Toute personne solidaire de la juste cause des Français d'AFN et des victimes françaises de la décolonisation. On peut être pied-noir de naissance, par héritage, par le coeur, par l'esprit et aussi pied-noir d'honneur par les actions menées en faveur de la communauté des Français rapatriés. 

All of this gets back to the same question of who gets to define the group and why. Alek Toumi made the point quite well in his talk that there are many types of Pieds-Noirs, and I would add, many Algerias for those who lived and live there. Boiling it down to one version does not do reality (or even memory) justice.

pieds-noirs, mythes et origines

My Contemporary French Literature students just completed Un aller simple by Didier Van Cauwelaert, a novel which offers an intriguing approach to the questions of national identity, written homelands, nostalgia for the past, and the myths and fictions we create about ourselves. I have always appreciated the novel for the interesting counterpoint it offers to the writings of the Pieds-Noirs and the multiple myths of their pasts. The first of these myths pertains to the term "pied-noir" and its origins (consider Aziz and his name coming from the Ami 6). This site http://www.francparler.com/syntagme.php?id=337 gives an overview of the primary sources of the term. As Marie Cardinal says it, however, they were never Pieds-Noirs until they arrived in France. First an insult and eventually a badge of honor.

NeMLA: Between Present and Past

If you happen to be in the Montreal area April 9-11, consider attending my panels, Between Present and Past: Nostalgia in French Literature I and II, at the Northeast Modern Language Association annual conference. The schedules are as follows:

Saturday, April 10, 3:15-4:45 p.m.
Hotel Hilton Bonaventure, 13.15 Salon H
Between Present and Past: Nostalgia in Francophone Literature I
Chair: Magali Compan, College of William and Mary

• “Albert Camus: ‘Nostalg(ér)ies’ d’hier et d’aujourd’hui” Alek Toumi, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• “Rewriting Ruins: Deconstructing the ‘Nostalgeric’ Attachment to the Homeland” Amy Hubbell, Kansas State University
• “Sur ma mère de Tahar Ben Jelloun: une expérience de la nostalgie” Mena Marotta, Università di Salerno and University of Maryland

 
Sunday, April 11, 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.Hotel Hilton Bonaventure, 17.12 Salon E
Between Present and Past: Nostalgia in Francophone Literature II
Chair: Amy Hubbell, Kansas State University

• “Créolité: the Reaffirmation of Repressed Cultural Identity or Fabricated Nostalgia?” Sam Coombes, University of Edinburgh
• “Memories and Constructions of Brotherhood in Le dernier frère by Natacha Appanah” Magali Compan, College of William and Mary
• “Nostalgies de comptoir? India and Nostalgia in French Literature” Corinne François-Denève, University of Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
• “Moi, Jeanne Castille de Louisiane, and the Other Within” Monika Giacoppe, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Now back to writing my paper as I continue to struggle with ruins and how they destabilize nostalgia.

National Holocaust Museum

The expression of trauma for the Pieds-Noirs always seems to fall back to the trauma of the Holocaust, and perhaps Pied-Noir trauma pales in comparison. The foundational research on trauma, however, is the same. I am currently using Dylan Trigg's ideas on ruins as he analyzes the holocaust survivor's return to the camps and their impossible expression of being there, both before and again during the return. This photo is of an Eisenhower quote engraved on the outside wall of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. (photo taken as "snowmageddon" was getting underway in February 2010).