Reporting on 1962: the evolution of pied-noir identity across 50 years of print media

This article offers a longitudinal review of print media representations of the European population in Algeria, from the final months of the Algerian war to commemorative coverage of the 50th anniversary in 2012. It traces the evolution of the métropole's relatively hostile view of the Français d'Algérie as a ‘foreign' people to the depiction of an integrated group whose voice has become incorporated within official memory. With reference to the anniversary coverage of 2012, it argues that while the pied-noir lobby was partially successful in persuading the media to adopt aspects of their historical narrative, the socio-political context of the ‘guerre de mémoires' produced challenges to that narrative, with the relativisation of the pied-noir experience as one aspect of a broader memorial mosaic of the war. Cet article propose un suivi longitudinal des représentations de la population européenne d'Algérie dans la presse écrite, à partir des derniers mois de la guerre d'Algérie au reportage commémoratif du 50e anniversaire en 2012. Il retrace l'évolution de l'attitude relativement hostile de la métropole envers les Français d'Algérie comme peuple ‘étranger', au portrait d'un groupe intégré dont la voix s'est maintenant incorporée dans la mémoire officielle. Il fait référence au reportage du 50e anniversaire en 2012 pour argumenter que bien que les activistes pieds-noirs aient réussi à faire pression sur les médias pour qu'ils adoptent certains aspects de leur récit historique, le contexte socio-politique de la ‘guerre de mémoires' a mis ce récit au défi, avec la relativisation de l'expérience pied-noire comme un des aspects d'une mosaïque mémorielle plus vaste de la guerre

Remembering Algeria: melancholy, depression and the colonizing of the pied-noirs

This article looks at the end of colonial Algeria and the subsequent repatriation of the settler population as it was experienced and remembered by the settler (or pied-noir) repatriates in the aftermath of the Algerian war. It argues that the reception which awaited repatriates arriving in mainland France played a fundamental role in the nascent pied-noir community’s reimagining of its identity. While perceptions of the pieds-noirs are dominated by tropes of nostalgia and return, there are also many literary instances, less widely commented, of grief, depression and melancholia amongst those who were exiled in 1962. Drawing on the work of Ann Cvetkovitch and Kelly Oliver, this article examines the figure of the melancholic as a sufferer not of a pathological malady, but as the object of socially constituted oppression. Using the work of Fanon, it makes the provocative argument that, although the pieds-noirs were themselves widely received as colonizers by the metropolitan population, they were subject to a form of discrimination which re-created within the Hexagon the conditions of colonial oppression through the colonization of psychic space. With reference to literary works by pieds-noirs, supported by psychological studies, the article draws out the conditions which contributed to depression and melancholia amongst the rapatriés. It aims to conceptualise the pieds-noirs, not as either guilty colonisers, or injured victims, but as individuals in a site of postcolonial conflict in which the discursive categories of colonizer and colonized are renegotiated. Given that the end of the Algerian war and the exodus of 1962 continue to function as a founding event for the pied-noir community, an examination of the consequences and afterlives of these events adds to research around loss and melancholia, and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of a postcolonial minority which continues to influence contemporary society in the present day

Postcolonial France: Immigration and the De-centring of the Hexagon

Research into the plurality of contemporary French identities has tended to focus on the perspectives and experiences of groups which, for reasons of ethnicity, gender or class, differ from the constructed norms of the metropolitan majority. Consequently, in the postcolonial field comparatively little attention has been paid to the potential of metropolitan writers for decentring traditional conceptions of the Hexagon. This chapter analyses the similarities between Françoise Sagan’s modern classic Bonjour Tristesse (1954) and the more recent novel by Dominique Bona, Malika (1992), and compares the way in which received notions of bourgeois reality are destabilised. While Sagan used the presence of feminine autonomy and emergent sexuality as the disruptive force, Bona draws on many of the features of Sagan’s text to construct her image of a white, bourgeois milieu, before disrupting it through the addition of Malika, a young and beautiful Moroccan immigrant. The nature of the challenge to French society forms the focus of the second half of the chapter, as the postcolonial Other produces diverse reactions, ranging from an empowering creativity to the return of repressed memories of the Algerian war. However, whilst an initial reading of the text suggests that Malika wields an exotic power over those around her, further analysis suggests that, like Sagan’s Anne, she does not fully control her situation. Rather, she represents a modern exoticism designed to appeal to the tastes of Western readers such that, in the process of consumption, hegemonic discourses of the North African woman are reasserted. The resumption of the status quo, albeit in a subtly altered form, raises questions about the power of the exotic to resist totalising constructions, and serves to indicate the persistence of neo-colonial conceptions of the immigrant Other in contemporary French society

French citizenship campaigners may find acceptance depends on far more than official papers

First paragraph: Fashioning themselves in the same vein as the gilets jaunes, France’s populist economic justice movement, the gilets noirs activists are highlighting the latest chapter in the country’s ongoing debate around immigration.https://theconversation.com/french-citizenship-campaigners-may-find-acceptance-depends-on-far-more-than-official-papers-12473

Kristeva's Stranger Within: The Question of the Foreigner in Daniel Prevost's Le Passe sous silence

This article draws on Kristeva’s theories of the foreigner within the national boundaries and, together with her earlier work on the abject, considers the challenge posed by the individual who is rejected as foreign, to the boundaries which constitute collective and individual identity. With reference to Prévost’s Le Passé sous silence (1998), it argues that the solutions posited by Kristeva are of limited value within contemporary French society, and concludes by considering the potential of literature as an alternative means of reconciliation with otherness

Postcolonial France?: the problematisation of Frenchness through North African immigration: a literary study of metropolitan novels 1980-2000

This thesis undertakes a literary study of contemporary novels published by metropolitan French writers between 1980 and 2000, and analyses their representation of the changing relationship between France and North Africa. It begins by analysing the specificity of the situation in France, arguing that this is largely due to the functioning of the French Republican tradition, which equates inassimilable difference with inferiority. Consequently, France’s former colonies represent a privileged site of the Republican relationship with difference. This is particularly acute in the case of Algeria, by virtue of its former status as an integral part of the French Republic, and as a result of the large population of Algerian origin resident within France. It therefore offers a useful perspective from which to assess the extent to which French identities and systems of representation have been problematised in the post-colonial era. Part One examines contemporary French attitudes towards the wider Maghreb, including examples from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Drawing on traditions which extend back to Montaigne and Montesquieu, it considers contemporary updating of Orientalist traditions within which French writers have explored other countries as seen from the Hexagon. Part Two concerns the singularity of Algeria’s relationship with France. By focusing on a case-study – representations of the Paris massacre of 17 October 1961 – the thesis draws wider conclusions about the way in which attitudes to the Algerian War are changing, and the key role potentially played by literary and other artistic representation. The final chapter looks at recollections of life in Algeria in the work of two women writers, Marie Cardinal and Hélène Cixous. It concludes that their early experience there of conflict and otherness was fundamental in shaping the development of their writing project, and that their literary memories destabilise notions of a unified ‘Frenchness’

[Introduction] Settler colonialism and French Algeria

The unusual trajectory of settler colonialism in French Algeria, which culminated in Algerian independence and the exodus of European settlers, has often limited the interest of scholars who seek to understand settler colonialism as an enduring structure of oppression. For their part, scholars of French Algeria have yet to fully engage with the intellectual propositions of settler colonial studies, which has focused primarily on Anglophone and Israeli–Palestinian contexts. The Introduction seeks to open a dialogue between these groups of scholars, mobilising the propositions of settler colonial theory to outline the dynamics of the operations of power in settler colonial Algeria, before describing the evolution of these dynamics over five historical phases. Correspondingly, by bringing to the fore questions of cultural and linguistic diversity within both settler and indigenous populations, and underscoring the emotional dynamics of Empire, it is hoped that research on French Algeria might help shed light on understudied aspects of other settler colonial contexts. Through such dialogue, we seek to facilitate comparative and globally connected histories of settler colonialism, bringing multiple imperial spaces into the same frame of analysis

Going beyond the 'guerre des mémoires' in theatrical representations of the Algerian War

This article examines the ‘guerre des mémoires’ that has defined the memorial landscape surrounding the Algerian War and seen it mired it in a competitive memory dynamic that Benjamin Stora (2007) terms ‘une surenchère victimaire’. It argues that since the fiftieth anniversary of independence in 2012 there are signs of attempts to move beyond the impasse. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe and Anna Cento Bull, the article examines two recent plays that adopt contrasting approaches to the aim of representing conflicting experiences of the war. Et le coeur fume encore (2019) features elements of Rancerian thought, emphasising the multiplicity of conflicting experiences, and interrupting viewer empathy through distancing techniques that disengage actor from character to defer empathetic engagement until the full complexity of post-war experience is made available. In contrast, Les Pieds tanqués (2012) works to create an entente between audience and characters that emphasises not only division but also the culture and humour that unites protagonists from different backgrounds

Mechanistic studies on threonine synthase

Threonine synthase catalyses the conversion of (2S)-0-phosphohomoserine to (2S,3R)-threonine with the elimination of phosphate. A novel and efficient synthesis of (2S)-0-phosphohomoserine has been developed starting from (2S)- aspartic acid. Using this methodology the singly labelled isotopomers (2S,3S)- [3-²H1]-, (2S,3R)-[3-²H1]-, and (2S)-[2-²H1]-0-phosphohomoserine have also been synthesised from labelled (2S)-aspartic acid and used to probe the mechanism of the enzyme. Measurement of the kinetic deuterium isotope effects for the labelled substrates showed that both the Cα-H and Cβ-H proton removal steps in E. coli threonine synthase display primary deuterium isotope effects, and that cleavage of the C-3-(pro-S)-H bond is at least partially rate limiting. This confirms data already available for the yeast enzyme, which indicated that the 3-pro-S proton is removed in the course of the reaction. The kinetic isotope effect for the removal of the 3-pro-S proton indicates a high forward commitment for the elimination of phosphate. Threonine synthase from E. coli was also shown to be activated in the presence of S-adenosyl methionine. This activation has been documented for the plant enzyme, but this is the first time such an activation has been seen for the bacterial enzyme. Threonine synthase for the study was partially purified from E. coli K12 Tir8, using novel methodology

Introduction. Forced migration and the limits of citizenship

This article is the introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Migration History entitled 'Forced Migration and the Limits of Citizenship'. It argues that the qualities associated with citizenship were put under increased pressure by the dissolution of states that followed wars and collapse of empires in the mid-twentieth century. The reconfigured states faced the challenge of redefining their national identity and, consequently, their relationship with the constituent populations. Displacements, both internal and across redrawn borders, were a frequent occurrence. The introduction argues that the experiences of what Arendt terms 'national minorities' demonstrate the inconsistencies in the protection offered to citizens whose ethnicity or race differed from the state's imagined ideal citizen. Structured in two parts, the special issue examines firstly the response of states and finds that they wield citizenship law as a means of shaping and regulating their national identity. Secondly, it examines the implications of displacement for citizens, their new cultural distinctiveness, and sense of belonging that contribute to constructions of citizenship