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Pied-Noir Trauma and Identity in Postcolonial France, 1962–2010

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The Cultural Trauma of Decolonization

Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology ((CULTSOC))

Abstract

This chapter follows the evolving memory narratives of the European settlers or pieds noirs who left Algeria en masse in the final throes of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962. It shows that the narratives of exile and loss became collective “trauma” narratives over time, after a period of political organizing by key associations. These narratives soon became a powerful mobilizing force for pied-noir associations, helping to forge a shared identity of displacement among community members, even if not every pied-noir had experienced the war and mass migration in the same way. The chapter highlights key narrative threads in the public discourse of associations and in the works of several pied-noir authors who, in the decades that followed Algeria’s independence, provided a shared ethos and emotional register for a pied-noir identity grounded in trauma and loss.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.conseil-etat.fr/Actualites/Communiques/Responsabilite-de-l-Etat-concernant-les-conditions-de-vie-reservees-aux-familles-de-harkis.

  2. 2.

    https://www.lemonde.fr/emmanuel-macron/article/2018/09/13/guerre-d-algerie-emmanuel-macron-reconnait-le-role-de-l-etat-dans-la-mort-de-maurice-audin_5354271_5008430.html; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/france-state-responsible-for-1957-death-of-dissident-maurice-audin-in-algeria-says-macron; and https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/emmanuel-macron-acknowledges-torture-algeria/570283/.

  3. 3.

    In September 2008, France 3 television aired a documentary on the confrontation in Algiers known as the massacre of rue d’Isly. Between June 26 and July 8, 1962, violence erupted in Oran where the ALN (armed wing of Algeria’s National Front) incited anti-European violence in the city (see Jean Monneret, La phase finale de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010); Jean-Jacques Jordi, Les disparus civils européens de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Éditions Soteca, 2011)).

  4. 4.

    “Loi no. 2005-158 du 23 février 2005 portant reconnaissance de la Nation et contribution nationale en faveur des Français rapatriés,” in JORF no. 0046 du 24 février 2005, 3128.

  5. 5.

    See Claude Liauzu and Gilles Maceron, dir., La colonization, la loi et l’histoire (Paris: Éditions Syllepse, 2006).

  6. 6.

    Liauzu led the protest of academics against Article 4 in 2005 (Claire Eldridge, From Empire to Exile: History and Memory Within the Pied-Noir and Harki Communities, 1962–2012 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 1–2).

  7. 7.

    The precise historical origin of the term “pied noir” is still in dispute. The term was first believed to have circulated among whites in North Africa as a pejorative label for the Arabs. Others believe that it referred to the black boots of the French conquerors. The term resurfaced in the twentieth century during the Algerian War as a derogatory name for the Europeans in Algeria (Daniel Leconte, Les Pieds-Noirs, l’histoire et portrait d’une communauté (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 237–238).

  8. 8.

    Claude Liauzu, “Les enjeux de mémoire,” Libération, février 23, 2005.

  9. 9.

    Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, eds., Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2005), 16.

  10. 10.

    “Memory wars” was adopted in French academic and political discourse since 2005 to talk about a range of disputes surrounding the interpretation of the colonial past. The phrase has since been applied to the debates concerning France’s role in the Holocaust.

  11. 11.

    “Loi 99-882 du 18 octobre 1999 relative à la substitution à l’expression ‘opérations effectués en Afrique du Nord,’ du l’expression ‘à la guerre d’Algérie ou aux combats en Tunisie et au Maroc’.”

  12. 12.

    Elkins and Pedersen, Settler Colonialism, 16.

  13. 13.

    Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman Bernhard, Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1–30.

  14. 14.

    This chapter takes inspiration from the approach taken by historian Claire Eldridge, From Empire to Exile.

  15. 15.

    Colette Dubois, “La Nation et les Français d’outre-mer: rapatriés ou sinistrés de la decolonization,” in L’Europe retrouvée, les migrations de la decolonization, ed. Jean-Louis Miège and Colette Dubois (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994), 90.

  16. 16.

    Dubois, “La Nation et les Français d’outre-mer,” 91.

  17. 17.

    Jean-Jacques Malo, “Introduction,” in Vietnam War Films, ed. Tony Williams and Jean-Jacques Malo (Jefferson: McFarland, 1994), xvii.

  18. 18.

    Malo, “Introduction,” xxi.

  19. 19.

    M. Kathryn Edwards, Contesting Indochina (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 2–3; see also Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2001).

  20. 20.

    Metropolitan conscripts made up about half of the combatants in Indochina.

  21. 21.

    Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  22. 22.

    Service central des rapatriés, Bilan de l’exécution de la loi du 26 décembre 1961 relative à l’acceuil et à la reinstallation des Français d’outre-mer, mai 1996, 4. Cited in Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, Devenir métropolitain. Politique d’intégration et parcours de rapatriés d’Algérie en métropole (1954–2005) (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2010), 15.

  23. 23.

    For fascism in Algeria, see Sam Kalman, French Colonial Fascism: The Extreme Right in Algeria, 1919–1939 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

  24. 24.

    See Sarah Sussman, Changing Lands, Changing Identities: The Migration of Algerian Jewry to France, 1954–1962 (Stanford: Stanford University, 2002).

  25. 25.

    It is still difficult to know just why some Muslim Algerians became a harki. Most harkis have remained silent about their background and path to recruitment.

  26. 26.

    For a comparative analysis of the pieds noirs and harkis, see Eldridge, From Empire to Exile.

  27. 27.

    For details on the trial of General Salan, see Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 131–132.

  28. 28.

    Éric Savarèse, L’Invention des pieds-noirs (Paris: Séguier, 2002).

  29. 29.

    The same language was used to talk about Indochina (Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 164, 257).

  30. 30.

    Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, 82–101.

  31. 31.

    Todd Shepard, “Algerian Nationalism, Zionism, and French Laïcité: A History of Ethno-Religious Nationalisms and Decolonization,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45 (August 2013): 445–467.

  32. 32.

    Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, 46, 151.

  33. 33.

    Alain Peyrefitte, Faut-il partager Algérie? (Paris: Plon, 1961), 20.

  34. 34.

    Vers la paix en Algérie, les négociations d’Évian dans les archives diplomatiques françaises, 15 janvier 1961–29 juin 1962 (Bruylant, 2003).

  35. 35.

    Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, 146.

  36. 36.

    Jean-Jacques Jordi, “Archéologie et structure des réseau de sociabilité rapatrié et pied-noir,” Provence historique 187 (1997): 180.

  37. 37.

    Valérie Esclangon-Morin, Les rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), 155.

  38. 38.

    Emmanuelle Comtat, Les pieds noirs et la politique, quarante ans après le retour (Les presses Sciences Po, 2001).

  39. 39.

    Sung-eun Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 305, 309.

  40. 40.

    For statistical references to the pied-noir population by department, see Pierre Baillet, “L’intégration des rapatriés d’Algérie en France,” Population, 30e année, no. 2 (1975).

  41. 41.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria.

  42. 42.

    Esclangon-Morin, Les rapatriés, 156.

  43. 43.

    Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 182; Leconte, Les Pieds-Noirs, 269.

  44. 44.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 1.

  45. 45.

    Jean-Jacques Jordi, De l’exode à l’exil (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), 91.

  46. 46.

    http://www.cerclealgerianiste.fr/index.php/le-cercle-algerianiste.

  47. 47.

    Leconte, Les Pieds-Noirs, 238.

  48. 48.

    “Un portrait de Daniel Leconte, Les pieds-noirs aujourd’hui,” Le monde, March 4, 1980.

  49. 49.

    For a literary analysis of works by the pieds noirs, see Amy L. Hubbell, Remembering French Algeria: Pieds-Noirs, Identity, and Exile (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).

  50. 50.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 137.

  51. 51.

    Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 101.

  52. 52.

    Jean-Jacques Jordi, L’arrivée des Pieds-Noirs (Paris: L’Autrement, 1995), 91–92.

  53. 53.

    Jordi, L’arrivée des Pieds-Noirs, 92.

  54. 54.

    See “Les pieds-noirs,” New Yorker, November 25, 1972, issue, 52.

  55. 55.

    According to Eldridge, the turn toward cultural concerns in the 1970s represented “less a change in direction than a transfer of existing questions of identity and belonging to a new arena” (Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 66).

  56. 56.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 113.

  57. 57.

    Mitterrand later abolished the death penalty as president. For Mitterrand’s role during the Algeria War, see François Malye and Benjamin Stora, Mitterrand et la guerre d’Algérie (Calmann Lévy, 2010).

  58. 58.

    Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 183.

  59. 59.

    “Loi 82-1021 du 3 décembre 1982 relative au règlement de certaines situations resultant des évènements d’Afrique du Nord, de la guerre d’Indochine ou de la seconde guerre mondiale.” See also Stéphane Gacon, “Les Amnisties de la guerre d’Algérie 1962–1982,” Revue Histoire de la justice 1, no. 16 (2005): 277.

  60. 60.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 105.

  61. 61.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 104.

  62. 62.

    Choi, Decolonization and the French of Algeria, 106.

  63. 63.

    Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 140.

  64. 64.

    Claire Eldridge has argued that the very term “French Muslim” employed by the spokespersons for the community was a sign of the gap between a leadership interested in the French identity of the harkis one the one side and the harkis on the other interested in retaining the identity of ex-auxiliaries (Eldridge, From Empire to Exile).

  65. 65.

    As Eldridge has noted, part of this success was owed to the fact that many harkis kept quiet about their past as they realized much of the gains they achieved in terms of aid and support was based on the notion of a unified harki collective (Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 160).

  66. 66.

    SOFRES. Muriel Humbertjean “Les Français et les immigrés,” in Oliveri, Duporieir Duhamel, Elisabeth Jaffré, Jérˆøme, Bourlanges, Angéline. SOFRES (Société française d’études par sondage), SOFRES, Oopinion publique, Enquêtes et commentaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 79.

  67. 67.

    Eldridge, From Empire to Exile, 178.

  68. 68.

    The Papon trial bridged the two dark periods in recent French history. Papon, a former Vichy official had already participated in the brutal policing of nationalists in Constantine in eastern Algeria before serving as Prefect of Police in Paris in 1961. He oversaw the brutal repression of the North African demonstrators who marched against the curfew imposed on North African workers. Allegedly implemented to control the movement of FLN sympathizers, it restricted all public gatherings and movements of Arabs in Paris. The clash with police on the night of October 17, 1961 led to the tragic drowning of at least 40 victims in the Seine river. Jean-Luc Einaudi, Octobre 1961 (Fayard, 2001).

  69. 69.

    Benjamin Stora, Le transfert d’une mémoire (Paris: Éditions Casbah, 2000).

  70. 70.

    Amanda Taub, “A Small French Town Infused with Us-vs.-Them Politics,” New York Times, April 20, 2017, 2.

  71. 71.

    Most recently in 2013, one year after the fifty-year anniversary, a new pied-noir archive or Centre de Documentation has been inaugurated in Perpignan, home to a large number of pieds noirs. The center, situated in an old convent has been promoted as a reserve for over 8000 volumes, magazines, and newspapers about French Algeria.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. History Department, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA

    Sung-Eun Choi

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  1. Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ron Eyerman

  2. Dept Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Universita degli Studi di Trento, Trento, Italy

    Giuseppe Sciortino

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Choi, SE. (2020). Pied-Noir Trauma and Identity in Postcolonial France, 1962–2010. In: Eyerman, R., Sciortino, G. (eds) The Cultural Trauma of Decolonization. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27025-4_6

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