Abstract
Amid the tumultuous years of decolonization in North Africa, Albert Memmi wrote the Pillar of Salt. The book is a semi- autobiographical novel texturing the life of a Tunisian Jew dur- ing French colonial rule, the Axis occupation during the Second World War, and the incipient Postcolonial struggle in the Maghreb. Soon after its publication, the book became a landmark in North African Jewish writing. Besides the perdurable insights it offers about local Jewry, the book is a powerful testament to the deep-seated decolonial struggles of Global South Jews. In this novel Memmi represents his semi-biographical character as a border thinker. He does recognize the complexity of his identity as, in his own words, “a Jew in an anti-Semitic world,” “a native in a colonial country,” and an “African in a world dominated by Europe.” Acknowledging the common root of the narrative that thrice objectified him, he proudly declares himself an “incurable barbarian.”1
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Notes
Albert Memmi, La statue de Sel (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 109 and 145. Edouard Roditti, trans., The Pillar of Salt (New York: Beacon Press, 1992), 96 and 165. While the works that analyze life and work of Memmi in the English-speaking academia are scarce, they open interesting doors of analysis. See, for example, Judith Roumani, Albert Memmi (Philadelphia: Celfan/Temple, 1987), Kelly McBride, “Albert Memmi in the Era of Decolonization,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 19.2 (2011): 50–66, and Lawrence R. Schehr, “Albert Memmi’s Tricultural Tikkun,” French Forum 28.3 (2003): 59–83.
The connection between the original events and the influential imagery can be found in Nicholas Robins, Native Insurgencies and the Genocidial Impulse in the Americas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Sybille Fischer, Modernity Disvowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Duke: Duke University Press, 2004).
Marc Ferro, Colonialism: A Global History, K. D. Prithipaul, trans. (London: Routledge, 1997), 211–230. The best theoretical contribution to differentiate between native and settler revolution (subaltern vs bourgeois nationalist elitism) can be found in the analysis of the South-Asian sub-continent. See Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 37–44.
An excellent introduction to these terms can be found in Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Malden: Blackwell, 2001), 113–334.
A good introduction to the power of epistemological decolonization can be found in Bill Ashcroft et al, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice of Post-colonial Literatures (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
The relation between the Harlem Renascence and the Negritude Movement is superbly explained in Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and the Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 201–255.
Richard Watts, “Negritude, Presence Africaine, Race,” in Post-colonial Thought in the French Speaking World, Charles Fordsdick and David Murphy, eds. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 227–237.
Michael Lambert, “From Citizenship to Negritude: ‘Making a Difference’ in Elite Ideologies of Colonized Francophone West Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35.2 (1993): 249.
Aime Cesaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1983). Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, trans., Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001).
Aime Cesaire, Discurs sur le Colonialisme (Paris and Dakar: Presence Africaine, 1955), 11–15, 53. Joan Pinkham, trans., Discourse of Colonialism (New York: Monthly Review, 2000), 35–39, 72.
G. R. Coulthard, “Rejection of European Culture as a Theme in Caribbean Literature,” Caribbean Quaterly 5.4. (1959): 238.
Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blanes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 98. Charles Markmann trans., Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 122.
Albert Memmi, “‘Questions au colonel Kadhafi,’” in Juifs et arabes (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 64. Eleonor Levieux, trans.,“Questions for Colonel Kadhafy,” in Jews and Arabs (Chicago: O’Hara, 1975), 34.
Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonise. Prcecede du Portrait du colonisateur (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1957), 51. Howard Greenfeld, trans., The Colonizer and the Colonized (New York: Beacon Press, 1991), 13.
Michael M. Laskier, North AfrieanJewry in The Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (New York and London: New York University Press, 1994), 24 and 85.
Victor Malka and Albert Memmi, La terre intérieure (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 80. Patricia Nirimberk, trans., Conversaciones eon Albert Memmi (Buenos Aires: Timerman Editores, 1976), 66.
Albert Memmi, “Negritude et Judeite,” in L’ Homme Dominé (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 35–49. n.d. trans., “Negritude and Jewishness,” in Dominated Man (New York: Orion Press, 1968), 27–39. While he acknowl-edges the existence of “Black Jews” he does not follow this line of inquiry.
See note 16. Critics, especially Jonathan Judaken, have identified Sartre’s project with the replication of supresessionism found not only in Christian but also in modern enlightened projects. See, Jonathan Judaken, Jean Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question Anti-Semitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 139–146.
Albert Memmi, “La vie impossible de Frantz Fanon,” Esprit 39 (1971): 267–269. Thomas Cassirer and Michael Twomey, trans., “The Impossible Life of Frantz Fanon,” The Massachusetts Review 14.1 (1973): 32–34.
Albert Memmi, Portrait d’un Juif (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 29. Elisabeth Abbott, trans., Portrait of a Jew (New York: The Orion Press, 1962), 21.
Albert Memmi, La libération du juif (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 48–59. Judy Hyun, trans., The Liberation of the Jew (New York: Orion Press, 1966), 55–68.
Albert Memmi, Agar (Paris: Correa, 1955), 184–185. Brian Rhys, trans., Strangers (New York: Orion Press, 1960), 128–129.
Gary Wilder and Albert Memmi, “Irreconcilable Differences: A Conversation with Albert Memmi,” Transitions 71 (1996): 174.
Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, Race in Translation: Culture Wars Around the Postcolonial Atlantic (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 162–163.
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© 2014 Santiago Slabodsky
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Slabodsky, S. (2014). Positive Barbarism: Memmi’s Counter-Narrative in a Southern Network. In: Decolonial Judaism. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345837_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345837_6
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