4
Following the publication of Strangers, Memmi explored the colonial relationship writ large in Portrait du colonisé, précédé d’un Portrait du colonisateur (The Colonizer and the Colonized). Parts of the text were prepublished in the two towering intellectual journals of the Left Bank, Les Temps modernes and Esprit. The April edition of Les Temps modernes included “Portrait du colonisateur de bonne volonté” (“Portrait of the Colonizer of Good Will”), addressing what Memmi would term in The Colonizer and the Colonized as the portrait of “the colonizer who refuses.” We include here a previously untranslated article that appeared in La Nef in December 1957. It intended to defend Camus from a harsh attack by Bernard Frank in the November issue. But since Memmi applies his analysis of “the colonizer who refuses” to Camus, it effectively ended their relationship (selection number three). The May edition of Esprit included “Portrait du colonisé” (“Portrait of the Colonized”).
Memmi drew these portraits together into a book on the dynamics of colonization, published in 1957 at the height of the French-Algerian War (1954–1962), which cemented his status as one of the premier anticolonialist intellectuals in the era of decolonization. Psychologically astute and sociologically insightful, the text became an inspiration for the oppressed, was widely translated, and endures, with a worldwide readership, as a classic in colonial and postcolonial studies. Along with The Pillar of Salt, it forms the foundation of Memmi’s work and establishes a number of points essential to understanding his views on privilege, dependence, racism, the inherent tensions in decolonization, and the structures and strictures of oppression. Memmi’s theoretical analysis is a masterwork that helped shape personal, political, and intellectual responses to colonialism in the francophone world and beyond.
In his preface to the 1965 edition, Memmi explains the evolution of his early work, the stirring success of the book, and how his unique viewpoint contributed to its perceptiveness (selection number one). From the “Portrait of the Colonizer” in The Colonizer and the Colonized, Memmi presents a pointed analysis of how privilege works, forming the basis of racism and colonial subjugation (the second selection). From “Portrait of the Colonized” in The Colonizer and the Colonized, he assesses the stereotypes that underpin the racial justifications of colonization (selection number four). He concludes that revolt is inevitable and necessary for liberation from colonization (the fifth selection).
Preface to the 1965 Edition
I had written a first novel, The Pillar of Salt, a life story, which was in a sense a trial balloon to help me find the direction of my own life. [ . . . ] I then tried to find another solution, this time through the problems of a mixed marriage, but this second novel, Strangers, also led me nowhere. [ . . . ] I discovered that the couple is not an isolated entity [ . . . ] The whole world is within the couple. [ . . . ] I felt that to understand the failure of their undertaking, that of a mixed marriage in a colony, I first had to understand the colonizer and the colonized, perhaps the entire colonial relationship and situation. [ . . . ]
I was Tunisian, therefore colonized. I discovered that few aspects of my life and my personality were untouched by this fact. [ . . . ]
I undertook this inventory of conditions of colonized people mainly in order to understand myself and to identify my place in the society of other men. It was my readers [ . . . ] who later convinced me that this portrait was equally theirs. [ . . . ] What I was describing was the fate of a vast multitude across the world. [ . . . ] All colonized people have much in common [ . . . ] all the oppressed are alike in some ways. [ . . . ] So many different persons saw themselves in this portrait that it became impossible to pretend that it was mine alone, or only that of colonized Tunisians, or even North Africans. [ . . . ] They recognized their own emotions, their revolt, their aspirations [ . . . ] The colonial relationship which I had tried to define chained the colonizer and the colonized to an implacable dependence, molded their respective characters and dictated their conduct. [ . . . ]
It was clear that the book would be utilized by well-defined colonized people—Algerians, Moroccans, African Negroes. But other peoples, subjugated in other ways—certain South Americans, Japanese and American Negroes—interpreted and used the book. The most recent to find a similarity to their own form of alienation have been the French Canadians. [ . . . ] Certain parts of the book of great importance to me were obscured—such as my analysis of what I call the Nero complex; [ . . . ] the failure of the European left in general and the Communist Party in particular, for having underestimated the national aspect of colonial liberation [ . . . ] Actual experience, co-ordinated and stylized, lies behind every sentence. [ . . . ]
I have been criticized for not having constructed my portraits entirely around an economic structure, but I feel I have repeated often enough that the idea of privilege is at the heart of the colonial relationship—and that privilege is undoubtedly economic. [ . . . ] The book itself opens with a denunciation of the so-called moral or cultural mission of colonization and shows that the profit motive in it is basic. [ . . . ] However, colonial privilege is not solely economic. [ . . . ] Even the poorest colonizer thought himself to be—and actually was—superior to the colonized. [ . . . ] I wanted to show all the real complexities in the lives of the colonizer and the colonized. [ . . . ]
I know the colonizer from the inside almost as well as I know the colonized. [ . . . ] Like all other Tunisians I was treated as a second-class citizen, deprived of political rights, refused admission to most civil service departments, etc. But I was not a Moslem. [ . . . ] The Jewish population identified as much with the colonizers as with the colonized. They were undeniably “natives,” as they were then called, as near as possible to the Moslems in poverty, language, sensibilities, customs, taste in music, odors and cooking. However, unlike the Moslems, they passionately endeavored to identify themselves with the French. To them the West was the paragon of all civilization, all culture. The Jew turned his back happily on the East. [ . . . ] The Jew found himself one small notch above the Moslem on the pyramid which is the basis of all colonial societies. [ . . . ] The Jews bore arms side by side with the French in the streets of Algiers. My own relations with my fellow Jews were not made any easier when I decided to join the colonized [ . . . ] Because of this ambivalence I knew only too well the contradictory emotions which swayed their lives. [ . . . ]
All this explains why the portrait of the colonizer was in part my own—projected in a geometric sense. My model for the portrait of the colonizer of good will was taken in particular from a group of philosophy professors in Tunis. [ . . . ] While I was virtuously busy debunking the myths of colonization, could I complacently approve of the counter-myths fabricated by the colonized? [ . . . ]
I understood even the hard-core colonizers (pieds noirs)1 [ . . . ] The most blindly stubborn pied noir was, in effect, my born brother. [ . . . ] He was the legitimate son of France, heir to privileges which he would defend at any price whatsoever; I was a sort of half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one. [ . . . ]
I am unconditionally opposed to all forms of oppression. [ . . . ] It diverts and pollutes the best energies of man—of oppressed and oppressor alike. For if colonization destroys the colonized, it also rots the colonizer. [ . . . ]
Does the Colonial Exist?
A colony: a place where one earns more and spends less. You go to a colony because jobs are guaranteed, wages high, careers more rapid and business more profitable. The young graduate is offered a position, the public servant a higher rank, the businessman substantially lower taxes, the industrialist raw materials and labor at attractive prices. [ . . . ]
Their children were born in the colony and it is there that their dead are buried. But [ . . . ] [i]n organizing their daily habits in the colonial community, they imported and imposed the way of life of their own country, where they regularly spend their vacations, from which they draw their administrative, political and cultural inspiration, and on which their eyes are constantly fixed. [ . . . ]
He realizes that this easy profit is so great only because it is wrested from others. In short, he finds two things in one: he discovers the existence of the colonizer as he discovers his own privilege. [ . . . ]
It is this relationship which is lucrative, which creates privilege. [ . . . ] If his living standards are high, it is because those of the colonized are low; if he can benefit from plentiful and undemanding labor and servants, it is because the colonized can be exploited at will and are not protected by the laws of the colony; if he can easily obtain administrative positions, it is because they are reserved for him and the colonized are excluded from them; the more freely he breathes, the more the colonized are choked. [ . . . ]
It is impossible for him not to be aware of the constant illegitimacy of his status. [ . . . ] He has succeeded not merely in creating a place for himself but also in taking away that of the inhabitant [ . . . ] by upsetting the established rules and substituting his own. He thus appears doubly unjust. He is a privileged being and an illegitimately privileged one; that is, a usurper. [ . . . ] The privileges of privileged natives are less scandalous than his. [ . . . ] Certain rights will forever be refused them, and that certain advantages are reserved strictly for him. In short, he knows, in his own eyes as well as those of his victim, that he is a usurper. [ . . . ]
Three discoveries—profit, privilege, and usurpation—[ . . . ] will transform the colonial candidate into a colonizer or colonialist [ . . . ]
Let us distinguish among a colonial, a colonizer and the colonialist. A colonial is a European living in a colony but having no privileges, whose living conditions are not higher than those of a colonized person of equivalent economic and social status. By temperament or ethical conviction, a colonial is a benevolent European who does not have the colonizer’s attitude toward the colonized. [ . . . ] A colonial so defined does not exist, for all Europeans in the colonies are privileged. [ . . . ]
Not all Europeans in the colonies are potentates or possess thousands of acres or run the government. [ . . . ] Social relationships are almost never balanced. [ . . . ] The small colonizer is actually, in most cases, a supporter of colonialists and an obstinate defender of colonial privileges. Why? [ . . . ]
A defensive reaction, an expression of anxiety by a minority living in the midst of a hostile majority? [ . . . ] If the small colonizer defends the colonial system so vigorously, it is because he benefits from it to some extent. [ . . . ] To protect his very limited interests, he protects other infinitely more important ones, of which he is, incidentally, the victim. [ . . . ]
Privilege is something relative. To different degrees every colonizer is privileged, at least comparatively so, ultimately to the detriment of the colonized. If the privileges of the masters of colonization are striking, the lesser privileges of the small colonizer, even the smallest, are very numerous. Every act of his daily life places him in a relationship with the colonized, and with each act his fundamental advantage is demonstrated. [ . . . ] If he needs assistance from the government, it will not be difficult [ . . . ] Does he need a job? [ . . . ] Jobs and positions will be reserved for him in advance; the tests will be given in his language, causing disqualifying difficulties for the colonized. [ . . . ] Given equal material circumstances, economic class or capabilities, he always receives preferred treatment [ . . . ]
He enjoys the preference and respect of the colonized themselves [ . . . ] The colony follows the cadence of his traditional holidays, even religious holidays, and not those of the inhabitants. The weekly day of rest is that of his native country; [ . . . ] his nation’s flag which flies over the monuments, his mother tongue which permits social communication. Even his dress, his accent and his manners are eventually imitated by the colonized. [ . . . ]
The Jewish population—eternally hesitant candidates refusing assimilation—can be viewed in a similar light. Their constant and very justifiable ambition is to escape from their colonized condition, an additional burden in an already oppressive status. [ . . . ] They endeavor to resemble the colonizer [ . . . ] Hence their efforts to forget the past [and] to change collective habits, and their enthusiastic adoption of Western language, culture and customs. But if the colonizer does not always openly discourage these candidates to develop that resemblance, he never permits them to attain it either. Thus, they live in painful and constant ambiguity. Rejected by the colonizer, they share in part the physical conditions of the colonized and have a communion of interests with him; on the other hand, they reject the values of the colonized as belonging to a decayed world from which they eventually hope to escape. [ . . . ]
The representatives of the authorities, cadres, policemen, etc., recruited from among the colonized, form a category of the colonized which attempts to escape from its political and social condition. [ . . . ] They end up by adopting his ideology, even with regard to their own values and their own lives. [ . . . ]
Accepting the inequities of his position, even at times profiting from this unjust system, the colonized still finds his situation more of a burden than anything else. Their contempt may be only a compensation for their misery, just as European anti-Semitism is so often a convenient outlet for misery. Such is the history of the pyramid of petty tyrants: each one, being socially oppressed by one more powerful than he, always finds a less powerful one on whom to lean, and becomes a tyrant in his turn. [ . . . ]
The European [ . . . ] is received as a privileged person by the institutions, customs and people [ . . . ] a position which turns him into a colonizer. But it is not really at this level that the fundamental ethical problem of the colonizer exists; the problem of involvement of his freedom and thus of his responsibility. [ . . . ] Will he accept being a colonizer under the growing habit of privilege and illegitimacy, under the constant gaze of the usurped?
Camus, or the Colonizer of Good Will (La Nef) (1957)
There is a Camus problem, that’s undeniable. But is it really the one that your congenially feisty colleague is talking about? Is it Camus’s literary merit or demerit that is at issue here?
Bernard Frank is not the only one, let it be said, who challenges his right to the top prize. He’s been faulted for just about everything under the sun! Why him and not someone else? (Malraux, while we’re at it.) Everyone thought of Sartre, though no one dared say so. People called Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus a minor work, and his The Stranger a novella. His style is too dry, his thought too spare, etc.
All of that is subject to discussion, of course. A discussion that might prompt us to respond: why not him, after all? The Stranger is only a novella? So what? An admirable novella, Frank did hasten to add. As if that admirable, so offhandedly conceded, weren’t more than sufficient. As if Mauriac, or Gide (whom I admire) had never written anything but novellas. You might not care particularly for Camus’s style. But you also have the right to love it. Let me add that I can personally testify to the extraordinary authenticity of his many lyric pages on North Africa.
Well, let’s leave that for now: aesthetic ranking does not care what you or I think. Time and the march of history will do the work. And let’s get to the point, to something Frank passed over too quickly: Algeria. Camus’s problem is essentially a problem of meaning: Camus says nothing about the Algerian crisis, does nothing to hasten its solution. Why is this?
It would be simple to respond like any right-minded reader: what about Malraux, what has he said? What has he done about it? Let’s keep passing the buck: What about you? And you yourself, Frank? What particularly hard-hitting declarations have you made lately? Did you cover your head in ashes and bear witness on the Place de la Concorde? Why come down hard on Camus and nobody else?
Of course, I’m the first to admit that such blame-shifting is too easy and ultimately inaccurate. After all, nob(e)lesse oblige: not everyone has won a Nobel Prize. But the situation also obliges: Camus is Algerian, and this crisis pertains to him most particularly. Camus owes it to himself and to us to speak out, louder and more clearly than anyone else.
I admit to having only the vaguest interest in the whole Nobel matter. I do not set great store—apart from the obvious amenities—in the allotment of gold stars on the literary honor roll. And actually, resentment against Camus began well before his Nobel, which served only to reignite old grudges. Camus has long been criticized for not really being the spiritual advisor that many claim he is. He has long been accused of failing to bear witness, in his writing, to North Africans, to the problems experienced in our native lands. I myself have made mention of this, though without denouncing it. So, here we are, back to the same fundamental problem.
Switching Perspective
Well then, I would like to say that what we need is precisely a change of perspective from which we regard Camus. We might assume that, because he is an Algerian native, he should be able to talk about his country, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is precisely because he is Algerian that he has fallen silent on the matter, since everything that touches North Africa paralyzes him.
Camus is what we call in common parlance a Français d’Algérie, a Frenchman of Algeria. This means he belongs to a minority that has found itself on the wrong side of history. And that, as I have tried to explain elsewhere [i.e., in The Colonizer and the Colonized], could only keep digging in deeper, all of them, almost to a man. There are few points regarding North Africa that Camus and I can agree on. But you have to understand that his situation is an uneasy one: it’s a little inconvenient, affectively and intellectually, when all your people are on the side that is being morally condemned.
We might well regret that Camus was unable to truly move beyond the clan and rise to a more universal plane. But let me add that this bold act would not have marked the end of his woes, since he would have been hated even more by his own people. This is Camus’s plight, in the end: he was always sure to reap the suspicion of the colonized, the indignation of the French left, and the ire of his own.
Which explains his silence, or his partial silence, at any rate. For there is an optical illusion at work here: Camus has indeed spoken out, more often than many. But such is the situation that he could only ever dissatisfy everyone.
Camus embodies, quite exactly, what I have called the colonizer of good will [or “the colonizer who refuses” in The Colonizer and the Colonized]. It is an ambiguous role, but make no mistake: there is nothing comical or contemptible about it.
Mythical Portrait of the Colonized
Just as the bourgeoisie proposes an image of the proletariat, the existence of the colonizer requires that an image of the colonized be suggested. [ . . . ]
Let us imagine, for the sake of this portrait and accusation, the often-cited trait of laziness. [ . . . ]
Nothing could better justify the colonizer’s privileged position than his industry, and nothing could better justify the colonized’s destitution than his indolence. [ . . . ] The colonizer suggests that employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his unreasonable wages. [ . . . ]
Besides having to define a point of reference, a norm, varying from one people to another, can one accuse an entire people of laziness? It can be suspected of individuals, even many of them in a single group. One can wonder if their output is mediocre, whether malnutrition, low wages, a closed future, a ridiculous conception of a role in society, does not make the colonized uninterested in his work. [ . . . ] Essentially, the independence of the accusation from any sociological or historical conditions makes it suspect. [ . . . ]
This always brings us back to racism, which is the substantive expression, to the accuser’s benefit, of a real or imaginary trait of the accused. [ . . . ]
Whenever the colonizer states, in his language, that the colonized is a weakling, he suggests thereby that this deficiency requires protection. From this comes the concept of a protectorate. [ . . . ] Whenever the colonizer adds, in order not to fall prey to anxiety, that the colonized is a wicked, backward person with evil, thievish, somewhat sadistic instincts, he thus justifies his police and his legitimate severity. [ . . . ] It is the same for the colonized’s lack of desires, his ineptitude for comfort, science, progress, his astonishing familiarity with poverty. [ . . . ]
The traits ascribed to the colonized are incompatible with one another, though this does not bother his prosecutor. He is depicted as frugal, sober, without many desires and, at the same time, he consumes disgusting quantities of meat, fat, alcohol, anything; [he is viewed] as a coward who is afraid of suffering and as a brute who is not checked by any inhibitions of civilization [ . . . ] At the basis of the entire construction, one finally finds a common motive; the colonizer’s economic and basic needs, which he substitutes for logic [ . . . ]
The mechanism of this remolding of the colonized is [ . . . ] a series of negations. The colonized is not this, is not that. He is never considered in a positive light; [. . . he is] the result of a psychological or ethical failing. [ . . . ]
Another sign of the colonized’s depersonalization is what one might call the mark of the plural. The colonized is never characterized in an individual manner; he is entitled only to drown in an anonymous collectivity [ . . . ]
The colonizer denies the colonized the most precious right granted to most men: liberty. [ . . . ] The colonized is not free to choose between being colonized or not being colonized.
What is left of the colonized at the end of this stubborn effort to dehumanize him? He is surely no longer an alter ego of the colonizer. He is hardly a human being. He tends rapidly toward becoming an object. [ . . . ]
One does not have a serious obligation toward an animal or an object. [ . . . ]
How could the colonized help reacting to his portrait? [ . . . ] He ends up recognizing it as one would a detested nickname which has become a familiar description. The accusation disturbs him and worries him even more because he admires and fears his powerful accuser. [ . . . ]
The ideology of a governing class is adopted in large measure by the governed classes. [ . . . ] This explains, inter alia, the relative stability of societies; oppression is tolerated willy-nilly by the oppressed themselves. [ . . . ] The colonized gives his troubled and partial, but undeniable, assent.
There is only a particle of truth in the fashionable notions of “dependency complex,” “colonizability,” etc. [ . . . ] It arises after and not before colonial occupation. [ . . . ] It is not enough for the colonized to be a slave, he must also accept this role. The bond between colonizer and colonized is thus destructive and creative. It destroys and re-creates the two partners of colonization into colonizer and colonized. One is disfigured into an oppressor, a partial, unpatriotic and treacherous being, worrying only about his privileges and their defense; the other, into an oppressed creature, whose development is broken and who compromises by his defeat.
Conclusion
I did not conceive of this book as a work of protest or even as a search for solutions. It was born out of reflection on an accepted failure. For many of us who rejected the face of Europe in the colony, there was no question of rejecting Europe in its entirety. [ . . . ] My plan was only to reproduce, completely and authentically, the portraits of the two protagonists of the colonial drama and the relationship which binds them. [ . . . ]
No one had ever shown the pattern and genesis of each role, the genesis of one through the other and the pattern of the colonial relationship, the genesis of the colonial relationship out of the colonial situation. [ . . . ]
Contemporary colonization carried an inherent contradiction which, sooner or later, would cause it to die. [ . . . ]
When one thinks of the desperate efforts of Europe to save colonization, so costly for her as well as for the colonized, this truth becomes obvious. [ . . . ]
The colonizer is a disease of the European, from which he must be completely cured and protected. [ . . . ]
Colonization can only disfigure the colonizer. [ . . . ]
The leftist colonizer’s role cannot long be sustained; it is unlivable. He cannot help suffering from guilt and anguish and also, eventually, bad faith. [ . . . ]
For the colonized just as for the colonizer, there is no way out other than a complete end to colonization. The refusal of the colonized can not be anything but absolute, that is, not only revolt, but a revolution.
Revolt. The mere existence of the colonizer creates oppression, and only the complete liquidation of colonization permits the colonized to be freed. [ . . . ]
Revolution. We have seen that colonization materially kills the colonized. It must be added that it kills him spiritually. Colonization distorts relationships, destroys or petrifies institutions, and corrupts men, both colonizers and colonized. To live, the colonized needs to do away with colonization. To become a man, he must do away with the colonized being that he has become. If the European must annihilate the colonizer within himself, the colonized must rise above his colonized being.
The liquidation of colonization is nothing but a prelude to complete liberation, to self-recovery. [ . . . ] [The colonized person] must cease defining himself through the categories of colonizers. [ . . . ]
Having reconquered all his dimensions, the former colonized will have become a man like any other. There will be the ups and downs of all men to be sure, but at least he will be a whole and free man.