Ces Pieds Noirs. Pieds nus (French Edition)

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This is precisely the sort of criticism of Cardinal that has been 8 Cf. In spite of the scarcity of criticism outside the realm of feminism, Cardinal personally emphasized that it was not just the body that was essential; it was also the country. As she said to Salah, it was both a woman and a devastated land that served as the platform for her work. In fact, because it is difficult for many Pied-Noir writers to return physically to Algeria, they use writing as a tool to return to the Algeria they remember in order to sort out their lost or troubled identities.

Returning simultaneously to her mother and motherland, Cardinal practices a literary and psychological return at the same time that she makes a physical voyage to her birth country in her work Au pays de mes racines.

One of the most visible means o f dealing with the painful process of loss and reintegration is in the written testimonials that comprise a large part of Pied-Noir literature. It is here, at the location of mental anguish, that Marie Cardinal serves as one of the foremost examples of Pied-Noir identity.

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She further proposes in Les Pieds-Noirs that Pied-Noir history is a family history and she presents her family as a model of that past. This dissertation contends that she is a colonial writer and that the great trauma that she experienced with her relationship to her mother cannot be separated from the trauma that she expresses in breaking with Algeria.

She is perhaps one of the richest authors on Algeria as she makes her experience there intimate, sexual, and sensual; yet as her writing is seductive, it is dangerous as she constantly repossesses the land through her words. The author sets herself continually as an authority and staunchly refuses to criticize her own colonial values. Pied-Noir Paradoxes It is through the constant motion of returning to a fictive Algeria, one that has been greatly elaborated through the process of repetitive remembering, that the Pieds- Noirs attempt to find freedom from their present malaise.

They seek a paradise in the midst of a perceived hell and yet most never grasp the impossibility of this task. Paradise is by definition a location beyond reach or an unattainable goal. For those who do realize that their perpetual state of return will only continue that they will never arrive at Algeria and that it is the process of return that is significant, there is an opportunity for freedom.

Sisyphus was the figure of the absurd in that he was condemned to the perpetual task of pushing a rock up a hill without any promise of ending his toil. Each time he arrived at the goal, his 12 Cf. Only the essence of the past can be lived simultaneously with the present One cannot sustain this memory indefinitely. He was a staunch supporter o f indigenous Algerian rights and suffered financially as a result The Myth of Sisyphus was o riginally the work of Homer, according to Camus.

Some versions o f the story claim that it was because he traded the secrets o f the gods to have water in the fountain of Corinth. Another version proposes that after his wife chose to obey rather than love him and Sisyphus was allowed to return to earth from death to chastise her, he refused to leave earth a second time. Eventually Mercury came to carry Sisyphus to the punishment o f the rock Sisyphe Camus proposed that the tragedy of Sisyphus was in the moments of nostalgia: This nostalgia for what is behind him is the burden he must bear. Yet, as he suffers, Sisyphus also knows his strength and joy in the moment of descent, for it is in those moments that he is the master of his own fate: Son destin lui appartient.

As Sisyphus continually returns with his burden the essence of what he has left behind towards the summits, he discovers a world in each step: In his resignation to his fate of never being able to finally arrive but of constantly needing to return, Sisyphus finds freedom and even joy.

HOMMAGE AUX DISPARUS EN AFRIQUE DU NORD FRANCAISE

He recognizes what he has lost and that his only connection with it is in dredging his burden, a small piece of his lost land, back up towards his unreachable destination. This dissertation proposes the Myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for the Pied-Noir who continually struggles to bring the past Algeria back to the present in France, all the while confronting the futility of this task.

It can equally be read as nostalgia, which is the intense longing for the past which often drives the Pied- Noir on this mission of pursuing memories. As the burden of the Algerian memory furtively slips away, the Pied-Noir returns to the depths empty-handed only to recommence the heavy and impossible task for there is no future for the Pieds-Noirs.

The repetition of this act parallels that which has already been laid out in Pied-Noir works. In examining the burden, it becomes a world in itself. The Pied-Noir can effectively represent Algeria in such a way that it is fixed in its past state and appears permanent and stable to them in their present consumed with the slipping away.

Yet, she never arrived at completing her mission in spite of her frequent claims that she did indeed return to Algeria. Indeed, in Au pays de mes racines Cardinal insists that she has arrived at her past. Many o f the European Algerians served in France during the war and began experiencing nostalgia for their homeland for the first time. The parallel separation from France came as Algeria was the unoccupied zone o f France during the war.

A combination of these two separations is the catalyst that began notions o f independence for both the colonizing and indigenous citizens of Algeria. Cixous and Derrida live the same compulsion to return 19 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

In fact, it was not Algeria that was her mission but rather the journey that was her goal. As we will see in the works of Helene Cixous and Jacques Derrida, these two authors are equally caught in a perpetual motion of return driven by longing for the past. Rather than focusing on the goal, however, these authors pursue the process and examine the displacement from past to present in the return rather than striving under the burden of their memories to complete the task before them.

Instead the two authors seek to explore the motion of the process rather than focusing on the burden that their memory represents. There are, in fact, numerous conflicting legends about the origins of this term, two o f which will be explored here. If indeed the indigenous Algerians invented the name, there is no explanation for the beginning of the term in French, especially as there was a great linguistic gap between colonized and colonizer in the early nineteenth century. Although it has not entered into Pied-Noir mythology, the official version of the term conveyed in French dictionaries is that the term was created in to refer to the driver of Algerian boats Robert , Maxidico Of note is the apparent slippage between Arab and European in these definitions.

This slippage parallels the retroactive naming being attributed first to the indigenous Algerians and then to the French. As almost a million Fran? On dit que ce sont les Arabes qui nous ont appeles comme qa du temps de la Conquete, parce que les premiers colons debarquaient avec des souliers noirs [ En verite, ce sont les Franqais de France qui nous ont donne ce nom. Et puis nous nous y sommes faits. Les Pieds- Noirs 80 19 Cf. Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures. It further became a source of collective identity once transplanted in France and some Pieds-Noirs emphasized certain stereotypical aspects of their identity in order to more readily identify their community.

During a time when most of France remained publicly silent about the end of colonial rule in Algeria, in the s associations for Pieds-Noirs sprang up around the country and are still largely active today. Many of the Pieds-Noirs were naturalized French citizens, predominantly from Spain. In Oran in , for example, there were 95, people of French ancestry, 92, naturalized French citizens of Spanish origins, and 93, Spanish citizens who were living in Algeria as foreigners Stora, Histoire coloniale Stora writes that the first Fran?

Added to this mix were Maltese, Italians, Corsicans, not to mention the many other groups o f peoples who were less numerous. The decret Cremieux naturalized the Algerian Jews in Arab population of AJgeria at the time. The melding of the group, although begun in the colony, would predominantly take place through communal reinforcements once in France. Jean-Pierre Hollender gives a detailed physical description of this type in his Plaidoyer pour un peuple innocent: This erasure, however, is perhaps necessary for sustaining the Pied-Noir population in France in a time when they feel they are dying out.

The literary figure of Cagayous, who appeared in Algeria near the end of the nineteenth 24 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Recuperating the stereotypes placed on them in the postcolonial world, the Pieds- Noirs find both strength and communal ties. As an example of this reinforcement, a recent Internet invitation to a Pied-Noir gathering in Uzes for June 1, stated: Vous trouverez sur place: Boissons, merguez et patisseries orientales.

Bonois, Constantinois, anciens de Tunisie, Pieds Noirs de tous horizons, amis et sympathisants, venez nombreux participer a cette joumee, afin de retrouver des visages connus, d'echanger des souvenirs imperissables et d'assurer dans la joie et la bonne humeur le succes complet de cette manifestation. Chacun apporte son "Couffin" ou sa "Cabassette", sa petite table et chaises pliantes. The role became emblematic o f the Fran? The Pieds-Noirs themselves now embrace this collective label as their survival is dependent upon their unity and, thus, sometimes to conformity to these stereotypes.

Collectivity and Unity While some Pieds-Noirs recognize that there were as many Algerias as there were people living in Algeria, the differences that existed in the country became nearly nonexistent once the individuals were established in France. From the time of their arrival in France, from to , multiple identities that once existed in the colony were condensed into one collective image of Pied-Noir.

The retroactive naming of the Pieds-Noirs, practiced first by outside groups, largely contributed to this erasure as it classified them as one type. It is more than likely that the group never knew such unity while they lived in Algeria together.

Les pieds-noirs ont-ils été abandonnés par la France ? - Le Point

Differences such as social class and ethnic origin, which may have caused important distinctions in Algeria, were reduced in Pied-Noir imagination within the context of France. These ethnic, religious, and social divisions were no longer important as the group tried to bond together and reestablish themselves in a new country.

The perceived abandonment of French-Algeria and the great absence it represented to them in France have become the focus for the collective identity of the Pieds-Noirs. Rather than continuing the former divisions among ethnic origins Spanish, Italians, etc. In her work Algerie ma memoire, Anne Lanta does not distinguish between the ethnicities of the Fran? This shift is important as it demonstrates a changing hierarchy of origins.

In addition to the new sense of geographical origins, the group also became divided on generational lines once in France. Les gens avaient fait leur place, ils avaient ensemence la terre, bati des maisons [ Pieds-Noirs 46 Her statement emphasizes the underlying ambiguity upon which Pied-Noir identity is established. Stora similarly points out that those who were children at the time of their repatriation were not as significantly affected by their exodus from Algeria and were offered more opportunities to develop their identity as French as a result of their age.

This is yet another means of shifting the point of origins for the Pieds-Noirs. While Marie Cardinal sometimes attempts to show this diversity in the com m unity of Pieds-Noirs, her work highlights that what the Pieds-Noirs hold in common is an imagined elsewhere and the fact that they were French nationals: II existe autant de sortes de Pieds-Noirs que de families pieds-noirs. Nous etions differents les uns des autres, mais nous vivions ensemble dans une realite que se partageaient plusieurs religions, plusieurs langues, plusieurs lois Tous, nous avons ete eleves et instruits dans sa veneration.

Les Pieds-Noirs 9 The fact of sharing the same colonial past, albeit diverse, is the point that brought the Pieds-Noirs together. Cardinal, although quick to point out her differences from the Pied-Noir community, shares with them the pain of separation and the nostalgic recreation of her homeland throughout her works. In undertaking the writing of a documentary on her people, she has clearly identified herself with at least a main idea of what is Pied-Noir. Among the diverse groups who have been collected into the Pied-Noir identity, the Jewish Pieds-Noirs still stand apart in many histories and memoirs.

Prochaska argues in his work that the Jews were not included in the Fran? Many of the narrative strategies practiced by Jewish Pieds-Noirs are similar if not the same as those of the larger group of writers. Jewish Pieds-Noirs Helene Cixous and Jacques Derrida, for example, provide interesting models for dealing with repetition and return in their works. Unlike most who now subscribe to a shared image of what Algeria was like, Pied- Noir psychoanalyst Helene Cixous, bom to a German Jewish mother and Algerian Jewish father, writes of the many Algerias that she has witnessed: Through showing the fractured images of Algeria, Cixous manages to displace a repossession of it while demonstrating Pied-Noir returns as a kind of recolonization.

Retroactive Nature of the Pied-Noir The term Pied-Noir has been and is now consistently used to refer to the French colonists who were bom in Algeria second generation and beyond. This retroactive use is invasive to the point that even historians make the mistake of retroactive labeling. As one of the foremost scholars on Algerian history, Benjamin Stora writes: At times this strategy of retroactive naming works advantageously for both the Pieds-Noirs themselves as well as for those who are against what the Pieds-Noirs represent as a group.

This temporal confusion has advantageous outcomes for the Pieds-Noirs and French alike. The retroactive naming of the Pieds-Noir is present in works by historians and Pieds-Noirs as well as by Pied-Noir historians. Because of this further dual use of the term as it is used by the Pieds-Noirs themselves, one may question whether splitting and simultaneity are part of Pied-Noir identity at its foundation.

The retroactive use becomes inseparable from the fiction o f Pied-Noir identity which is, in fact, maintained by recasting history through the present Pied-Noir perspective. Advantageous Identities The collective identity of this group is further complicated because it is strategically lodged between Algeria and France and neither the French nor the Algerians can accept this identity as it is perceived by the Pied-Noir.

Jordi establishes the goal of Pieds-Noirs to integrate their history into the whole of French and Algerian history as a valuable ambition: Frangais de souche ont bien du mal a faire entrer dans leur propre histoire celle de la colonisation et de la decolonisation. This acceptance of a common identity and past together combined with the will to mix Pied-Noir history more appropriately - French colonial history into the history of France, unified the Pied-Noir struggle to be remembered and seen not as the culprits of colonization but as an innocent party who lived in the French colony.

To the difference of some nostalgic writers, however, Lenoir tries to objectively criticize his compatriots in their racist attitudes and to understand the social structures in place in the colony En ce temps-la, il est vrai, on ne faisait pas de detail.

Anne Lanta also writes to displace blame as she constantly describes herself as fair and loving to her native Algerian friends and servants. Ironically, this struggle to be correctly understood alongside the continual need to return to the past has once again recast history. In their attempts to deal with their displacement, the Pieds-Noirs have shifted the blame placed on them for colonization onto the metropolitan French.

During this time many Pieds-Noirs began addressing their losses and established themselves as the only voice and thus the historical authority on Algeria. Although not practiced by all Pieds-Noirs, the activity of blaming the French for their abandonment 36 Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. That is to say, in shifting the blame from themselves to the French, many Pieds- Noirs have freed themselves from a sense of responsibility in colonization.

They have created a new identity for themselves - that of a people who lived side-by-side the Algerian natives in a fraternal relationship. Although the retroactive labeling of the Pieds-Noirs along with the displacement o f blame represent a skewing o f Pied-Noir history, it is this constant looking backwards or returning that defines the identity of the Pied-Noir today.

The group has struggled to remember its personal losses and to gain recognition for its role in French history especially as a result of its lost homeland. The supposed confrontation with the past is particularly useful in their integration in France. The Pieds-Noirs, seeking to be respected and attempting to implant themselves into both French and Algerian histories, have taken up writing to propagate their stories.

Many Pieds-Noirs write today, whether professionally or personally, in order to both remind themselves o f the way things were and to preserve their pasts for their future ancestors.

This assumed fight against forgetting in such narratives furthers the self-justification process as it places the blame for forgetting the war onto the French. Another impetus for this writing is the trauma experienced while leaving Algeria and the second trauma experienced when rejected in France. Again this ritualistic aspect of this memory relies on repetition. It is only recently that divergent memories are finding a place in the context of Algerias; and in an effort to layer histories of Algeria that this dissertation will incorporate divergent Pied-Noir memoirs that deconstruct the idea of a uniformed past.

As these rewritings of the past enter on the literary or historical scene, they join a context of Pied-Noir writing that adds their voice to a larger community. Each individual experience, however, reiterates elements of the common or collective experience, often in a similar style o f conformism in memory. While there are thousands of Algerias, through repetition of the same familiar touchstones of Algeria, a 38 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. One of the major strategies of Pied-Noir narratives today is to convince the readers of a certain form of history that the Pieds-Noirs experienced and that this history should necessarily be included in French history.

Critics such as Derderian, point out in no uncertain terms that these identity myths are a purposeful effort to propagate a certain image of the community that is politically advantageous: In the case of both the community of French settlers and that of the military, long established myths employed to interpret the Algerian past still function as powerful exculpatory or self-redeeming devices in the present.

Mythical self-constructions of the pied-noir community as the dispossessed and damned people of Europe continue to help mitigate what Fanon denounced as the harsh reality of an inegalitarian colonial system based above all on fear and coercion. Self-victimization can function as a powerful galvanizing form of identity that many groups will discard only reluctantly. The discourse of victimization prevalent in their autobiographies is just one of the tools the community uses in swaying its readers. Necessary to the survival of Pied-Noir identity, the conflation of memory and history in autobiographical works allows the group to remain authoritative about its pasts.

As we have seen in the exploration of generational divisions for the Pieds-Noirs, whereas historical differences 39 Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. No one to date has taken into account the deformation of memory that takes place over time. The problematic of this strategy is that through the use o f repetition and the continual need to return to the past, many Pieds-Noirs have developed and practiced their stories in time to create versions of the past that suit their needs in the present.

The Pieds-Noirs propagate their story not only as individual accounts that represent the whole of the Pied-Noir community each one an authority on colonial Algeria and sometimes even present Algeria , but also out of the fear of being forgotten. As a result of this fear, there is a certain urgency in Pied-Noir writing today that is evident not only in their literature but also in their organizational meetings. Although a decade ago, Michel-Chich went so far as to question whether children of Pieds-noirs bom in France were also Pieds-Noirs, today it seems mostly clear that they are not.

Defined as they are those having lived in Algeria and who left as a result of the war , the Pieds- Noirs cannot include children who have experienced a sort of vicarious exile from mainstream France. This is doubtlessly a result of the disappearing stigma in France of being Pied-Noir that was heavy in the 60s and early 70s when much of the second generation was bom.

The lack of understanding or interest from their own children, however, often makes the Pieds-Noirs even more desperate to share their experience. Because of the fear of not being heard, Pied-Noir autobiographies are ever increasing on the market of historical literature. For the specific history of the Pieds- Noirs, it is largely accepted that they should speak for themselves. Seuls les Pieds-Noirs peuvent legitimement parler de leur vie quotidienne en Algerie, et raconter ce que furent les faits, grands et petits, qui en ont constitue la trame.

They are, in fact, encouraged that someone outside of their community is taking an interest in what they have to say. The need to convey their history is perhaps overcoming their sense o f protection of their past. As long as the Pieds-Noirs dominate the historical market maintaining authority over Algeria and their work is not questioned even as it is produced now forty years after the war and often written as autobiography, the history of Algeria will remain obscured. What this means is that Pied-Noir histories or even Algerian histories that are written in an autobiographical style meant to represent the entire Pied-Noir 42 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

This critical look at the history of the war in specific has larger reaching applications for the history of Algeria on the whole because much of what the Pieds-Noirs have written has passed into history as a result of the immediate silence surrounding the war and because of the current popularity of this subject. In their work, Manceron and Remaoun point out the dangers of memory serving as history: II est certes indispensable de cultiver la memoire de certains faits essentiels du passe, mais ne faut-il pas aussi prendre des precautions?

The danger o f history lies in that it can silence memory and even emphasize a certain form of forgetting, as we have seen in the discussion of the Algerian War. As Stora 34 Cf. This method of needlework is founded on a progressive motion of return which continually leads the author to a preceding referent each time it takes a step towards the future. The first part of the dissertation focuses on returns that the Pieds-Noirs undertake individually and collectively through memory, writing and physical return.

Beginning then from what is most recent towards what lies behind, the first chapter will focus on physical returns, which have traditionally been viewed as the end solution for attenuating nostalgia, and then the dissertation will progress backwards towards imagined returns and the foundation of Pied-Noir identity.

Les pieds-noirs ont-ils été abandonnés par la France ?

Whereas the work on returns is centered on the more abstract relationship to Algeria that the Pieds-Noirs maintain in the present, the second part of the dissertation demonstrates the compulsion to repeat more directly as the manifestation of a rupture with the past. This part of the dissertation investigates repetition as it plays out through literary and psychological techniques. Part one begins with an exploration of Pied-Noir identity as it lies in motion between France and Algeria. Many Pieds-Noirs return to Algeria with the hope of renewing contact with their homeland and during the process visit the past like tourists, without seeing the present of Algeria without them.

Instead, the trip serves as a sort of comparison with their memories and of those of their compatriots. As it is impossible to return to the past, the Pieds- Noirs are more accurately participating in an archeological dig without recognizing that their community no longer inhabits Algeria as the dominant class.

The Pieds-Noirs often portray themselves as half French and half Algerian as a means o f gaining authority in postcolonial France. This complicated position of dual inclusion has been chosen as a position of authority for most Pieds-Noirs, yet some have chosen instead to demonstrate their identity through a process of exclusions. In the second part of the dissertation, repetition is demonstrated as both a literary and psychological technique that seeks to create stability while recasting history. Because of the immediate official silence that met the Pieds-Noirs after the Algerian war, the group sought to put forth their version of the story.

On the contrary, through the compulsion to repetition, which is in Freudian psychoanalysis an indication of a repressed trauma, the present is almost completely eclipsed with memories of the past. For Cardinal repetition functions as a practice of a committing to memory, until one acceptable version of her past is performed in her entire oeuvre. As the author attempts to master her past, this practice, then, effectively replaces recollection.

The blind woman is accompanied by her nephew who describes the present situation: Throughout their visit, Paulo exaggerates the present vision of the neighborhood to his aunt: Qz donne un melange avec le ciel bleu. Ds ont oublie quelque chose? He has exposed their nostalgia as blindness and their returns as pitiful 49 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Through the open eyes of the Algerians, the author is able to clearly evoke their varying political views towards the Pieds-Noirs from welcome to disgust.

Return in Pied-Noir narratives is perpetual. As often as the Pieds-Noirs return to their past the need to repeat this return orally, figuratively, or physically indicates an inability of arriving at the destination of the past or to the origins of their newly founded identity. Y et the majority of Pieds-Noirs as well as their critics believe that return, especially physical return, is a necessary aspect for the healing of the Pied-Noir psyche.

Most who undertake these physical returns do so with the belief that they can arrive at Algeria. This chapter will uncover return as beneficial to the Pieds-Noirs for its destabilizing nature. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.

Return has a primary strategy o f creating stability 50 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Bhabha posits that potential lies in the motion or process of return, rather than in the tiring effort to arrive at a point for which there is no precise location. Through a look at the slippage between present and past in the physical returns of the Pieds-Noirs, especially focusing on the process of return rather than at arrivals, this chapter will hope to demonstrate the absence o f origins and destinations in the Pied-Noir returns.

While many Pieds-Noirs prefer to remain with undisturbed memories, some decide to make a return voyage to Algeria, often as a result of a psychological need or a terrible compulsion to reconcile the past with their present. In her work Deracines: She identifies physical return as a cure for the invasive nostalgia that often limits Pieds-Noirs from progressing in their personal development and integration in France: Le voyage en Algerie constitue un moment marquant pour le pied-noir qui le fait, une etape dans la reconstruction permanente de son equilibre, un repit dans la bousculade des souvenirs et, souvent, un apaisement de la nostalgie maladive dont il souffre depuis The Pied-Noir who returns to Algeria tries to gather evidence of a society that is now extinct In fact, they often express their fear that they are becoming extinct, but they have yet to realize that their existence in Algeria is completed.

Reckoning with the evidence and the lack thereof of a civilization once led by the Pieds-Noirs is a moment of confronting identity. Michel-Chich believes that this return will bring a sense of relief and fulfillment that does not come from writing alone. From an optimistic viewpoint, Dr. Maurice Porot finds that return can offer a different sort of revelation to the Pied-Noir who remains in a nostalgic state.

Rather than experiencing a reconnection with the homeland, the Pied-Noir may discover the reality of an Algerian present without colonial influence: II est absolument indispensable pour les Pieds-Noirs de retoumer voir leur pays. Leur nostalgie ne disparait pas apres ce voyage, mais elle devient supportable: Les Pieds-Noirs qui vont en Algerie se rendent compte a quel point ils ont tout embelli et magnifie dans leurs souvenirs. Un pays pour moi lointain mais que mes parents pleurent Compatir et comprendre.

He defines the Piednoirologie as follows: Although in her work La Memoire des Pieds-Noirs, Joelle Hureau recognizes that it is the curiosity o f what has changed in Algeria that often provokes the trip,3 she also expresses that too many Pieds-Noirs just return to the past as a sort of tourist activity: Ses participants vivent une existence de touristes et ne prennent pas pied dans la realite quotidienne du pays nouveau.

Je ne les ai jamais quittes. What Lanta adds to the concept of satisfaction in returns is the ephemeral aspect of the pleasure. Hureau notes that multiple returns are often necessary. It is not to Algeria that the Pied-Noir truly wants to arrive, rather only to a point where imagination o f Algeria can be renewed and appear continuous. In addition to the need to continually renew with Algeria, Hureau equally points out the collectivity of the return for the Pieds-Noirs which further impedes them from seeing the present Many Pieds-Noirs who are able to return often do so with obligations to the Pied-Noir community on the whole and these obligations weigh on what is revisited and how it is seen.

Dans ce domaine, les associations jouent le role important de relais. With the obligation of return on the part of others, it is nearly impossible for the Pieds- Noirs who make the physical return to truly investigate the new country of Algeria. With these motivations for return at hand, Hureau poses an even greater question. What will the Pied-Noir identity be in relation to its former Other now that the French are no longer in the superior position? As the author has shown, the Pieds-Noirs, in fact, may be blind to their reception in Algeria.

If the Pieds-Noirs were to recognize it, the shift in power may cause those who return to entirely reevaluate their identity, which is most likely why they do not see the present Algeria when they make the return to their homeland. It is evidenced, however, by a continual slippage in view of Algeria throughout their reflections on the return voyage.

In effect, Cardinal performs a mission of testing her memory and nostalgia against a so-called reality of Algeria without ever completely understanding Algeria has changed. She effectively visits a past-present Algeria that is in-between reality and fiction. As a result of this awkward voyage, 56 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Un poids, une masse, une rondeur, un equilibre en moi, un rire quand je pense a ce coin-la du monde: More interesting than her decision that she still loves Algeria, however, is the process by which she came to this conclusion.

Even before this travelogue, in Autrement dit Cardinal began expressing this anxiety: Je pense souvent a cet abordage de ma terre. Rather, her fear is of 57 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

As she says from the outset of her work, she is returning to renew the Algerian part of her, to confront the past, rather than the present Because she is afraid to return by herself, she asks her youngest daughter, Benedicte Ronfard, to accompany her on this trip her third child is the only one who has not been to Algeria and she adds her own travelogue at the end of Au pays entitled Au pays de Moussia. The anxiety that Cardinal faces in making her preparations, however, is not enough to dissuade her.

She is afraid to discover that her Nostalgerie although she denies she is nostalgic is not reality and that perhaps she does not need Algeria as much as she has believed. Although she must return to remember who she is and was, Cardinal realizes that this experience will leave her even further alienated from her identity as a Pied-Noir constructed in reference to a past life. Once she returns she will lose the capacity to control Algeria in her memory as a comfort zone. She must recognize its independence from her as well as her own independence from the country.

It is this potential shift in power that produces the anxiety in the author. Cardinal, however, never overtly recognizes the inability to return to the past.

Instead, she struggles with certain changes in the country and various emotions of guilt and pride. The author tries to navigate her present position in the country as a foreigner in relationship to her residual image of past dominance. According to psychologist Dr. Cohen in her work on self-image: Every time some portion of the old image is remembered, feelings, thoughts, and behavior are influenced to some degree.

Our past has been transported to the present. Our outward expressions are guided by this old image. The return she undertakes is more than physical; it is also temporal. While it is clear that the return voyage changes her during the process, Cardinal never arrives at a point o f accepting her own independence from Algeria. In this sense, she, too, is colonized. Her outward expression her writing is guided by this old image. In the first nostalgic moment of rewriting her past in Au pays de mes racines 59 Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner.

H y avait peu de pieds-noirs riches. As she draws nearer to her return trip, she expresses guilt: The author sees the country at first glance, as even better than she had remembered: Pour copier l'article faite un clic droit, puis "enregistrer l'image sous". L'angoisse de ces familles, leur douleur et leur tristesse sont indescriptibles. Service Communication - Sophie Chevallon - Tel: Disponible dans toutes les librairies depuis le 16 janvier - 20 Euros. Premier hommage aux victimes civiles.

Que demandent les familles des militaires disparus? La recherche et le rapatriement des corps. Je donnerai seulement deux exemples: Alors, je pose une nouvelle fois la question: De bons et de mauvais disparus? Il y va de l'avenir de notre pays et de nos deux peuples. Vous ne courez aucun danger! Plus de nouvelles jusqu'en Elle se souvient des photos des massacres prises par les gendarmes, sur l'une desquelles elle avait reconnu une marchande de loterie. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition. A History of Decolonization and Transformation.

University Press of Florida.

Colonial Memory And Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria And France. The Invention of Decolonization: Microsoft Encarta Online in French. Archived from the original on 10 February Archived from the original on 12 October A History of Islamic Societies. Library of Congress, Federal Research Division. The Library of Congress. Contemporary Politics in the Middle East. The Agony of Algeria.

A History of the World from the 20th to the 21st Century. Population Resettlement in International Conflicts: Coming apart, coming together. Retrieved 11 January Encyclopedia of the Orient. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies. Critical Issues of the Holocaust. The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. Oran, 5 juillet A Savage War of Peace: What Alien Registration documents can tell us". Archived from the original on 27 July Institut national de l'audiovisuel.

Manchester University Press, pp The Case of North Africans in France". Images of the Algerian War: French Fiction and Film, The New York Review of Books. Australia New Caledonia New Zealand. Basques can be considered as separate ethnically or French migration by nationality. Poor Whites Redlegs Rednecks Mountain whites.

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