French and Algerian Identifications in the Context of the Colonial Period

Abstract

This is the first of five themed chapters that present the results of the qualitative research on selected literary texts located along the continuum from fictional story to autobiography. This chapter concerns situations observed in the material that refer to the colonial and post-colonial context; its three sections discuss the relationship between Algerianness and Frenchness as variously defined. The first definition presented is a political one, accepted by the Republic of France up to 1962, under which all inhabitants of the Algerian departments were called French. Situations are then analysed in which reference is made to an ethnocultural and a binding legal distinction that also existed in the colonial period. Under this definition, the indigenous majority population of Muslim Arabs and Berbers were deprived of full civil rights, while being deemed part of the French nation. The third section discusses situations arising in the context of the Algerian War, in which Algerianness and Frenchness were treated as two separate national characteristics, often in conflict with each other. As in the chapters that follow, the summary contains a graphic presentation of the results of the qualitative analysis.