Remnants of the Franco-Algerian Rupture: Archiving Postcolonial Minorities (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

At the end of French colonization in Algeria, four categories of people held French citizenship or had strong ties with France: European settlers, Jews, mixed-race individuals, and Harkis. The end of the War of Independence exiled most of them from Algeria, traumatized them in various ways, and transferred many to metropolitan France. Remnants of the Franco-Algerian Rupture: Archiving Postcolonial Minorities examines the legacies of these transnational identities through narratives that dissent from official histories, both in France and Algeria. This literature takes particular stories of exile and loss and constructs a memory around a Mosaic father figure embodying the native land, Algeria. Mona El Khoury argues that these filiation narratives create a postcolonial archive: a discursive foundation that makes historical minorities visible,while disrupting French and Algerian hegemonies. El Khoury questions the power of literature to repair history while contending that these literary strategies seek to do justice to the dead Algerian father, even as they valorize enduring minority identifications. Cover Remnants of the Franco-Algerian Rupture Series page Remnants of the Franco-Algerian Rupture: Archiving Postcolonial Minorities Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Introduction Remnants of the Past The Question of lieux de mémoire for the Algerian War and Colonization The Perpetuation of Historical Minorities Paternal Filiation, Postcolonial Witness, and Reparation Writing? Postcolonial Archivations Structure of the Book Notes Chapter 2 From Primal Scenes to the Other(’s) Archive French Exclusions: The Geography of Alienation in “Algériefrançaise” (Cixous) Cixous’ “Mal d’Amour” for Algerian Algeria: The “Malgérienne” Geography of Arab Walls The Geography of Female Exclusions: From Ruptures to Writing the Father’s Tomb Notes Chapter 3 The Construction of the “Harkive” Redefining Moze: Deconstruction of the “Harki” and Elaboration of a Counter-Public History Judging Moze: The Performance of Justice and the Double Witness Burying Moze Notes Chapter 4 The “Métis” Predicament Reclaiming Her Algerian Skin Distancing Her French Legacy (Im)possible Métis? Notes Chapter 5 “Aller Postcolonial—Retour Neocolonial”? The Pieds-Noirs Symptom and the “Guerre Gigogne”:21 The Return of the Problems of the War of Independence during the Civil War The Ambiguous Reincorporation of the Pieds-Noirs into the Algerian Narrative: Franco-Algerian Intermixing and the Fantasy of a New Colony Notes Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author Introduction -- From Primal Scenes to the Other('s) Archive: Mapping the (In)visibility of the Jews in Algeria through Memory -- Hélène Cixous' Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage -- The Construction of the Harkive: Giving a Voice to the Harki Moze by Zahia Rahmani -- The 'Métis' Predicament: Nina Bouraoui's Embodied Memory of the Colonial Split -- Aller Postcolonial-Retour Neocolonial? The Ambiguous Memorial Reintegration of the Pieds-Noirs in Algeria: Boualem Sansal's L'Enfant fou de l'arbre creux -- Conclusion: Mosaic fathers and spectral truths "This book examines the colonial legacies and transnational identities of four minorities, orphans of Algeria: European settlers, Jews, mixed-race individuals, and Harkis. It argues that works of literature build an archive allowing the articulation of hidden histories and pays homage to the missing Algerian father, outcast of hegemonic narratives"-- Provided by publisher