Notes

Introduction

1. I use the term “French-Algerian War” throughout this work to refer to the Algerian war of liberation from France. I have intentionally abstained from the more conventional “Algerian war” because I believe the term is Francocentric. Algeria has fought many wars without France. Hence, leaving aside the question of whether an undeclared colonial war can be called anything other than a civil war, I have settled on the more specific and neutral name French-Algerian War. I wish to thank John Ruedy for this insight.

2. I am not attempting to write a history of the war or of intellectuals during the era of decolonization; much has already been written on these subjects, and I do not aspire to replicate these efforts here. For general histories of the French-Algerian War see Yves Courrière’s masterful multivolume La Guerre d’Algérie, John Talbott’s The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954–1962, Paul Henissart, Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria, Alistair Horne’s, A Savage War of Peace, Algeria 1954–1962, and John Ruedy’s excellent Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation. For a comprehensive history see Bernard Droz and Evelyne Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algerie (1954–1962); for the FLN see Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, Revolutionary Terrorism: The F.L.N. in Algeria, 1954–1962; for FLN activities in France see Ali Haroun’s important La 7^e Wilaya: La Guerre du FLN en France, 1954–1962; for French intellectuals’ collaboration with Algerian nationalists see Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Les Porteurs de valises: La résistance française à la guerre d’Algerie; for the most thorough history of French intellectuals during the war see Paul Clay Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization in France, Jean-Pierre Rioux and Jean-François Sirinelli, La Guerre d’Algérie et les intellectuels français, David L. Schalk’s seminal War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam, Geoffrey Adams, The Call of Conscience: French Protestant Responses to the Algerian War, 1954–1962, and Philip Dine, Images of the Algerian War: French Fiction and Film, 1954–1992. For the period preceding the era of decolonization see David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920, Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria, Raymond Betts’s groundbreaking Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 and France and Decolonization, 1900–1960, and Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895– 1930. For more recent reassessments of the war see Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Face à la raison d’état: Un historien dons la guerre d’Algérie, Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli: La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie, and Osman Benchérif, The Image of Algeria in Anglo-American Writings, 1785–1962. For the history of Islam in Algeria see Ricardo René Laremont, Islam and the Politics of Resistance in Algeria, 1783–1992 and Julia A. Clancy Smith’s superb Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904).

On the bibliographical level, my focus is at odds with Sorum’s Intellectuals and Decolonization in France, the most comprehensive study of French intellectuals and the French-Algerian War. I do not assume, as Sorum does, “that in the debate over decolonization the writings of intellectuals can be studied without a great deal of attention to their biographies” (xi). To ignore the importance of biography would be to miss the relationship between intellectuals, their personal trajectories throughout the conflict, and the mutations the war forces within the careers of many. We should not deny that for some the major determinants of positions were intellectual, but I agree with Judt that the Algerian crisis helped ease the change from “universalist projections of a certain idea of France” (287). For many, ideological, political, or religious questions outweighed considerations of intellectual legitimacy. Albert Camus and Jacques Soustelle are good examples.

3. Ory and Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France de l’affaire Dreyfus à nos jours, 9. For purposes of simplicity I am accepting Ory’s and Sirinelli’s definition of intellectual as “a person of culture, creator or mediator, placed in the situation of a politician, producer or consumer of an ideology.”

4. Judt, Past Imperfect, and François Furet, Passing of an Illusion. In my many conversations with Furet before his untimely death, he continually stressed the importance of the French-Algerian War for French intellectuals. He even noted that during this era he had been committed to the French left and the decolonization of Algeria. Decolonization was in his opinion a critical factor in post–World War II intellectual life.

5. See Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli; see also Wood, Vectors of Memory.

6. Ory and Sirinelli also argue that this analogy is important (199). Many French intellectuals, especially the young historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, consciously evoked Dreyfus as the battle cry of protest against the army’s use of torture and brutality from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s (see chapter 6). Raymond Aron also used the analogy: “When the question of France comes up, there is no such thing as an impartial spectator. At the end of the last century Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards were to be found all over the world (there were fewer anti-Dreyfusards abroad than at home).” Aron, France Steadfast and Changing, 2

7. Soustelle lived through an assassination attempt during the war. A longtime Gaullist, he eventually was forced to break with de Gaulle only after it became clear that de Gaulle was willing to let Algeria go. Soustelle remained pro–Algérie française and became one of the central leaders of the reborn Conseil National de la Résistance (cnr), the political group that came into existence after the defeat of the OAS. He always maintained that the OAS and CNR were two entirely different organizations. For an extended discussion of Soustelle’s career after the French-Algerian War see James D. Le Sueur, “Before the Jackal: The International Uproar over Assassination!”

8. Interview with Paul Ricoeur, October 20, 1993

9. This was acknowledged at the time by Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Georges Gurvitch.

10. Ory and Sirinelli point out that since the official French government comprised the socialist left, it was also necessary for the intellectual left to distance itself from the political left in France.

11. Interview with Madeleine Rebérioux, October 5, 1993. The tensions within this position will become apparent as the study progresses.

12. Morin, Autocritique, 11. There was a similar identity crisis within the Algerian community. One important example was Ferhat Abbas, who had argued before the revolution that Algeria had lost its identity. Because of this he was thought to be too “francisé” by the hard-line Algerian nationalists who decided that only violence could lead to independence.

13. See Ricoeur, État et violence

14. Aron, France Steadfast and Changing, 1

15. Journalists actively attacked the French state over censorship. Taking the position that intellectuals must be free to seek and speak the truth, journalists were among the first to protest state activities in both France and in Algeria. Many were spied on with wiretapping and other methods by the secret police. Interview with Gilles Martinet, March 2, 1994

16. For Sartre’s use of the Other in his phenomenology before decolonization, see Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology and Anti-Semite and Jew

17. See Theunissen, The Other, and Fabien, Time and the Other. See also Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind; Husserl, Ideas; and Heidegger, Being and Time

18. Roth, Knowing and History, 2

19. The irony of this is brought out in later chapters when I argue that the encounter with the colonial Other helped lead to the demise of communism in France and caused many intellectuals to rethink the utility of Marxist theory. The theoretical (mostly anthropological) encounter with the Other emphasized the local or culturally specific dimensions of identity that could not be completely assimilated into the universalist aspirations of communism. This posed an immense theoretical problem for French theorists sympathetic to communism or pursuing Marxist theory.

20. Interview with Paul Ricoeur, October 4, 1993

21. Interview with Gilles Martinet, March 2, 1994. Messali Hadj (1898–1974) is often called the “father” of Algerian nationalism. His movement, Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) was liquidated by the rival FLN during the war. For the history of Algerian nationalism see Ruedy, Modern Algeria; Salah El Din El Zein El Tayeb, National Ideology of Radical Algerians; Emanuel Sivan, “L’Étoile Nord Africaine and the Genesis of Algerian Nationalism”; and Stora, Messali Hadj

22. These tactics are currently being employed by the militant Islamic fundamentalist Front Islamique du Salut (fis) in Algeria. It is perhaps one of the greatest and cruelest ironies that the same violent methods that brought the FLN to power (claiming the lives of thousands of Algerians) are being used against moderate Algerians today by the FIS and their militant wing, the Group Islamique Armée (GIA). According to current estimates, the deaths resulting from the conflicts between Algerian governmental forces, the FIS, and moderate Algerians now total over eighty thousand. This violence is in large part the consequence of the suspension of the results of the first democratic election in 1992

23. Interview with Mohammed Harbi, October 4, 1993

24. The French did not create the notion Third World, but were simply appropriating it for their own political agenda.

25. See chapters 5 and 6, and especially Bourdieu’s and Daniel’s criticisms of Sartre and Fanon in chapter 7

26. For an extended discussion of hybridity in Algeria, see Le Sueur’s introduction to Feraoun’s Journal.

1. History and Franco-Muslim Reconciliation

1. Answers to the question: “Que feriez-vous si vous étiez invisible?” dated June 22, 1957, are from the private papers of Germaine Tillion. In the following, I have tried to keep as close to the original texts as possible.

2. Interview with Germaine Tillion, May 23, 1994

3. She may finally have abandoned the idea of reconciliation on March 15, 1962, the day the OAS murdered six of her friends and colleagues who were working for the Centres Sociaux in Algeria. See chapter 3

4. The term ultra refers to radical right-wing, French colonials in Algeria whose pro-French position led them to reject all measures of compromise and to support all military and political measures aimed at keeping Algeria French. Their extremist politics often put them at odds with the metropolitan French population and politicians who no longer wanted to maintain the colonial status quo.

5. By identity debates I mean both the representation of Algerian and French identity (in the news media, government publications, private correspondence, and published works) and efforts of self-definition by French and Algerian intellectuals. By intellectuals, I mean primarily people who wrote about Algeria—journalists, philosophers, social scientists, novelists, and educators—those who described the effects of the war on the French nation, Algerians, the “Occident,” the “Orient,” and French and Algerian identity. I translate “Occident” as “West” throughout; when appropriate I leave “Orient” as is.

6. Todorov, On Human Diversity, 1. Todorov is not the only historian to point out the importance of monogenesis and polygenesis in European intellectual history. Léon Poliakov, in Aryan Myth, also argues for the importance of these ways of viewing human identity for the development of European racism. In particular, see his chapter “The Anthropology of the Enlightenment.” Also see George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution; George Stocking, “The Persistence of Polygenist Thought in Post-Darwinian Anthropology”; and Nancy Stepan, Idea of Race in Science

7. Patricia Lorcin, in Imperial Identities, makes a similar distinction, as do Agnes Murry in Ideology of French Imperialism, Raoul Girardet in L’Idée coloniale, and Raymond Betts in Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory

8. See also Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, Inequality of Human Races

9. Yet Todorov is careful not to overstep the limits of comparison: “We are both right and wrong to project recent history against an earlier history in this way: right, because we cannot overlook the practical consequences of an ideology… wrong because [these French theoreticians] never envisioned the extermination of the inferior races in gas chambers. Without seeking to impute to nineteenth-century authors what was going to happen in the twentieth century, we have to observe that the pernicious implications of these doctrines are not entirely absent, either, from the minds of the French racialists” (161).

10. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 12

11. Napoleon III did have the best interest of Algerians in mind. Unlike his republican counterparts, he generally respected Algerians, in particular the emir Abdelkader, the former leader of the Algerian resistance against the French. For a superb discussion of the “Arab Kingdom,” see Lorcin’s “The ‘Royaume Arabe’ (1860–1870)” in Imperial Identities, 76–95

12. In 1919 the French created a segregated two-college electoral system in Algeria: the French and Muslim Colleges. Both would elect members to Algeria’s Consultative Assembly. Only Muslims who were ex-soldiers, significant property owners, or others chosen by the French could vote in the Muslim College. In 1945 de Gaulle’s provisional government increased the number of Muslims allowed to vote to about sixty thousand.

13. Betts, Assimilation and Association, 26

14. Émile Sedeyn, preface to Philosophie de la colonisation, by Edgard Denancy, 2

15. Conklin, Mission to Civilize, 1

16. Betts, Assimilation and Association, 30–31

17. Conklin, Mission to Civilize, 21.

18. Leroy-Beaulieu, De la Colonisation chez les peuples modernes, xxiv.

19. Girardet, L’Idée coloniale en France, 127–28

20. Soustelle, Algérie: Le chemin de la paix, 17.

21. “Déclaration de Monsieur Jacques Soustelle Gouverneur Générale de l’Algérie à Radio-Algérie le 12 janvier 1956,” SHAT, 1 H 2464/D 1

22. Feraoun, Journal, 65–66

23. Jean [E1 Mouhoub] Amrouche, “Notes pour une esquisse de l’ état d’âme du colonisé,” in Un Algérien s’adresse aux Francais, ou l’histoire d’Algérie par les textes, 1943–1961, 50

24. Amrouche, “Quelques raisions de la révolte algérienne,” 23

25. Amrouche and Feraoun wrote about similar problems, but they did not, in the end, share the same conclusion. In fact, in his journal of the war, Feraoun criticized Amrouche for overdramatizing the interior aspect of the Algerian conflict. “There is nothing more Jesuit than the heartbreak that he simulates, nothing more false than this inferiority complex that he dares to spread out lengthwise in columns. Here is a gentleman who has denied everything to the Kabyle. He is Gallicized to the tips of his fingernails.” Feraoun, Journal, 236

26. Beauvoir and Halimi, Djamila Boupacha, 74

27. The fact that this happened in 1960 was extremely important because after de Gaulle took power in 1958 he pledged to stop the practice of torture in Algeria. Furthermore, André Malraux, minister of culture under de Gaulle, had publicly affirmed that torture was no longer in use. See also chapter 6. For an extended discussion of torture, see James D. Le Sueur, “Torture and the Decolonization of French Algeria: Nationalism, ‘Race,’ and Violence During Colonial Incarceration,” and Jacqueline Guerroudj, Des Douars et des prisons. See also chapter 6

28. “Déclaration d’Abdelkader Guerroudj au début du procès,” 1572

2. Imbroglios and Intellectual Legitimacy

1. Sartre delivered a lecture in 1948 to a group of North African leaders telling them that they were being oppressed by the same capitalist forces as French workers. In a rhetorical strategy that became the hallmark of his attempt to combine the proletariat’s struggle against capitalist oppression with the North Africans’ struggle against French colonialism, Sartre offered these words: “Someone suggested to me that I speak about liberty. I first thought about refusing. Those who struggle for their liberation know better than the oppressors what liberty is.” However, he continued, “It is because our liberty is in danger that we can speak of your liberty There is an abstract France and then there is the working mass who fights for liberty against the oppressor.” For a full account of Sartre’s speech, see “Ceux qui vous oppriment, nous oppriment pour les mêmes raisons.”

2. Interview with Jean Daniel, October 20, 1993. Daniel is referring here to around 1900 and to the anti-Semitic movement in Algeria.

3. New York Times, November 8, 1954, 3

4. Mendès France had been planning to bring Soustelle into his government even before the outbreak of the revolution. The prime minister’s first choice had been Paul Rivet, former director of the Musée de l’Homme. Rivet refused, saying he was too occupied with his work, and suggested Soustelle, a man of “honor” and “intelligence,” as the person best suited for the position. See Rivet to Mendès France, Paris, June 15, 1954, DPMF, IPMF, Algérie IV, Soustelle.

5. Equally important is his active recruitment of two of France’s best known and most respected liberal intellectuals, sociologist-ethnographer Germaine Tillion and Vincent Monteil, a specialist in Arabic, to aid him with his efforts at reform in Algeria. Tillion and her attempt to create an administrative and educational network called the Centres Sociaux to foster continued Franco-Muslim cooperation in Algeria are the subjects of chapters 2 and 3. Although much could be written about Monteil’s role in the creation of the Sections Administratives Specialisés (SAS), I have chosen not to concentrate on the SAS in the present work.

6. In the 1930s he had been at the heart of the leftist Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels Antifascistes and was later named secretary general of the Ligue des Intellectuas Français, organized just after Munich to fight against Hitler’s propaganda. At the outbreak of World War II, Soustelle was conducting field research in Mexico, but returned immediately to France and enlisted. He was then sent hack to America on a mission shortly before the Armistice on July 1940, after which he joined de Gaulle and the Free French in London. De Gaulle charged him with creating the Comité des Français Libres and establishing diplomatic ties with other governments, mainly Mexico, South and Central America, and the West Indies. Soustelle reentered London in 1942 and remained a leading political figure and a staunch Gaullist until de Gaulle began to make plans for France to leave Algeria.

7. Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 162

8. For Soustelle’s account of the Philippeville massacre, see his Aimée et souffrante Algérie, 121–22

9. Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 163.

10. Soustelle, “Lettre d’un intellectuel à quelques autres,” 2

11. confidential, Algiers, June 1, 1955, 3–5, IPMF, DPMF, Algérie IV, chap. 6, Soustelle.

12. Soustelle’s educational reforms were in part an attempt to develop further contact with the Algerian elites to keep them from becoming future revolutionaries (see chapters 3 and 4).

13. Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie, Pour l’Algérie, pour la France: Directives aux autorités locales, (Avril 1956), 139

14. Le Monde, September 28, 1955, 4

15. Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 63

16. Comité d’Action, 2. André Breton and other surrealists signed the manifesto, thus signaling the reintroduction of the surrealists into politics.

17. Morin, Autocritique, 191–97

18. Among the several hundred names on the original manifesto were Jean Amrouche, Simone de Beauvoir, Regis Blachère, André Breton, Aimé Césaire, Jean Cocteau, Jean Daniel, Jean-Marie Domenach, Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Georges Gurvitch, Charles-André Julien, Henri Lefebvre, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Martin du Gard, Louis Massignon, François Mauriac, Jean-Jacques Mayoux, Paul Ricoeur, Françoise Sagan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Wahl, Gaston Wiet, and George Bataille. It is worth pointing out that Jean Genet’s signature was highly criticized in the French press because of his well-known past.

19. Soustelle quipped that the list of names on the manifesto contained both well-known intellectuals and “unknown ones, who, without doubt, desired to leave their obscurity” and “a few demoiselles quite unqualified to treat the problems of which they knew nothing. As little as I worried about the specialists, the unknowns and the demoiselles, I attached greater importance to the opinions of writers and professors [universitaires] whom I respected and among whom I counted friends. That is why I decided to respond.” Aimée et souffrante Algérie, 170. Among the so-called “demoiselles” to whom he was referring were de Beauvoir, Duras, and Sagan. Camus took an equally sexist approach toward anticolonial French intellectuals who in his opinion talked about but knew nothing of Algeria. He referred to them, regardless of gender, as the “female left wing.” See Todd, Albert Camus, 333

20. At the outbreak of the French-Algerian War Soustelle was director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, but was formally detached on February 1, 1955, for the duration of his functions as governor general of Algeria. He was reinstated on March 20, 1956

21. Soustelle, “Lettre d’un intellectuel,” 1

22. Parisian dailies like Le Monde and Le Figaro constantly referred to the Algerians as rebels, bandits, and outlaws. Indeed, one of the first assaults of the anticolonialist French intellectuals was against the French press for using these terms to describe the Algerian nationalists. See Colette and Francis Jeanson, L’Algérie hors la loi. See also Robert Barrat, “Chez les hors-la-loi.”

23. Soustelle, “Lettre d’un intellectuel,” 3.

24. Soustelle to Rivet, March 30, 1956, Correspondance Soustelle, Bibliothéque du Musée de l’Homme, Paris. It is important to add that Soustelle and Rivet, along with other French conservative elites, signed their names to a pro– Algérie française manifesto, “Un Appel pour le salut et le renouveau de l’Algérie Française,” in April 1956. Both Soustelle and Rivet defended Algérie française before the United Nations in New York in 1957. Rivet went even further in a Combat interview, in July 1956, stating that he was in favor of French Algeria, thus provoking even more debate.

25. Comité d’Action, “Réponse au Gouverneur Général de l’Algérie,” 2

26. For an expanded version of this argument see Bourdet, “Votre Gestapo d’Algerie,” 6–7

27. This theme returns throughout the war and resurfaces in 1987 in Jacques Vergès’s comments during the Klaus Barbie trial.

28. Letter from Jacques Soustelle to Comité, December 23, 1955, reprinted in “Réponse au Gouverneur Général de l’Algérie,” 6

29. “Réponse du Comité, January 10, 1956,” in “Réponse au Gouverneur Général de l’Algérie,” 6

30. Amrouche, “Quelques raisons du maquisard,” 22. For more on Amrouche, see Jean Giono, Entretiens avec Jean Amrouche et Taos Amrouche and François Mauriac, Souvenirs retrouvés

31. In 1945 (“La France d’Europe, la France d’Afrique,” Le Figaro; reprinted in Un Algérien), Amrouche had begun to treat the two-France theme, arguing that in Algerian France racism is “more than a doctrine.” It is “an instinct, a rooted conviction” (8).

32. Césaire, “Le Temps du régime colonial est passé,” 50

33. For an interesting analysis of the importance of the Bandung Conference for the “Afro-Asiatic” peoples, see Malek Bennabi, L’Afro-Asiatisme

34. Mayoux, “En un moment historique,” 5

35. Mascolo, “Pour l’abolition du colonialisme,” 10

36. Diop, “Pour l’amitié des peuples,” 41

37. Sartre, “Colonialisme est un système,” 25

38. A French Catholic, he had moved to Algeria following Liberation and had since 1950 attempted to prepare the French in Algeria for what he saw as inescapable changes. In 1950, he founded the journal Consciences algériennes, which lasted only a brief time and was revived in 1954 as Consciences maghribines. For his own reflections on his involvement with Algerian nationalism, see his Mémoires d’outre-siècle, vol. 1, D’une Résistance à l’autre

39. Mandouze, “Reconnaitre ce qui est,” 44

40. After the December 2, 1955, dissolution of the French National Assembly and the January 2, 1956, electoral victory of the Republican Front, there was hope for a peaceful end to the war. But on January 26 Guy Mollet was selected to form a new government, putting an end to hopes of the progressivists. Mendès France was named minister of state sans poriefeuille. Christian Pineau became minister of foreign affairs, François Mitterrand minister of justice, and Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury minister of war. Regardless, Mandouze met with Mendès France to bring messages from the FLN leaders.

41. Both Morin and Guérin attested to Sartre’s objectivity concerning the treatment of the two rival Algerian factions.

42. Guérin, “Aux Membres du Comité d’Action des Intellectuals contre la Poursuite de la Guerre en Afrique du Nord,” 1, BDIC, Archives Guérin, 721/91/2

43. Morin, Autocritique, 192

44. According to Chérmany, this was never carried out and was the result of a small faction who were eager to see the pro-Messalist French intellectuals leave. Chérmany conceded that he was a longtime friend of Messali Hadj and had worked with him in the past. Interview with Robert Chérmany, February 24, 1994

45. In 1998 Morin once again expressed his commitment to an accurate historical account of the MNA through his decision to publish Chems Ed Din’s L’Affaire Bellounis with his preface.

46. Morin, preface to L’Affaire Bellounis, by Chems Ed Din, 7

47. Guérin, “Aux Membres du Comité d’Action,” 2; Dresch, “Les Francais d’Algérie.”

48. It is also the only speech not reprinted in the bulletin recording the speeches of this meeting.

49. Guérin’s January 27 speech was titled “L’Algérie n’a jamais été la France” in Guerre d’Algérie et colonialisme

50. Régis Blachère to Guérin, Paris, February 6, 1956, BDIC, Archives Guérin, 721/91/3

51. Guérin to François Mauriac, December 13, 1954, BDIC, Archives Guérin, 721/91/2

52. Guérin to Habib Bourguiba, February 10, 1956, BDIC, Archives Guérin, 721/91/2

53. Comité d’Action, Bulletin 3 (February 18, 1956): 4

54. Unsigned letter to the Comité, Mascolo papers.

55. Dionys Mascolo to Guérin, Paris, February 3, 1956, Mascolo papers.

56. Guérin, “L’Algérie hors la loi,” 12

57. Daniel, “Entre le chagrin et le haussement d’épaules,” 11

58. Interview with Francis Jeanson, December 11, 1993.

59. Jeanson to Daniel, January 16, 1956, 1, BDIC, Archives Guérin, 721/91/4

60. This particular stance set the precedent for what would happen in Algeria for the remaining six years. The French government in Paris would never fully recover its ability to govern with authority in Algeria.

61. When Lacoste took over in Algeria, the post he occupied was officially changed from governor general to resident minister as a result of administrative conflicts Soustelle had had with the French government in Paris. Soustelle claimed that his ability to govern effectively in Algeria had been prevented by his obligation to report to the minister of the interior. As a result, Lacoste was able to bypass many of the obstacles Soustelle criticized. Ironically, as seen in the next two chapters, this allowed Lacoste to virtually hand over much of his newly acquired power to the French military.

62. Comité d’Action, Bulletin 4 (May 1956): 1

63. The Comité repeatedly published political tracts from both the FLN and the MNA along with its own publications.

64. “Lettre des ethnologues,” IMEC, Fonds Esprit, 1, ESP e1–02-02

65. “L’Opinion des universitaires arabisants,” 7. This group was composed of Arnaldez, Cahen Dresch, Gaulmier, Julien, Lombard, Massignon, Rodinson, Wiet, and even Blachère.

66. A similar dilemma faced pro-Communist intellectuals in 1939 with the Nazi-Soviet pact, and as in 1939, communist failure to criticize the Soviet Union led to political Paralysis in France.

67. Aimé Césaire to Maurice Thorez, in Oeuvre historique et politique, 3:470

68. “Contre l’intervention,” France observateur, November 8, 1956; reprinted in Jean-François Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises, 177–78. According to Martinet, after the France observateur criticized Soviet intervention, subscribers increased substantially (interview with Giles Martinet, March 2, 1994). On November 29, 1956, an open letter by Soviet writers was published in France observateur along with a rebuttal by Colette Audry, Simone de Beauvoir, Janine Bouissounouse, Jean Cau, Claude Lanzman, Michel Leiris, Claude Morgan, Marcel Péju, Henri Pichette, Gérard Philippe, Promidès, J.- F. Rolland, Claude Roy, Jean Paul Sartre, Tristan Tzara, and Louis de Ville-fosse. The Soviets defended the Hungarian suppression on the grounds that the “uprising” was motivated by fascists and anti-revolutionaries. The same French intellectuals who had condemned Soviet actions in Budapest had not shown equal force in condemning recent French aggression against Suez.

69. Tony Judt’s criticism of Sartre. See Judt, Past Imperfect, 156, 184–86

70. Sartre, “Après Budapest,” 15

71. Comité d’Action des Intellectuels to its members, Paris, November 21, 1956, IMEC, Fonds L’Esprit, ESP2.e1–02-02

72. Jean-Marie Domenach to Comité d’Action, IMEC, Fonds L’Esprit, ESP2.e01– 02-02

73. Guérin, Ci-gît le colonialisme, 95.

74. When he met Francis Jeanson on his way to Éditions du Seuil, Sartre offered the petition condemning the invasion to Jeanson for his signature. Reading the names, which Sartre had just begun to collect, Jeanson saw that they were all ex-Communists, i.e., anti-Communists, and to Sartre’s surprise Jeanson said: “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” It was never discussed further. In other words, although Jeanson was not a member of the PCF, he did not want to align himself with others on Sartre’s list known to be extreme anti-Communists. Interview with Francis Jeanson, December 11, 1993

75. Morin, Autocritique, 197

76. Interview with Edgar Morin, December 4, 1993

77. Notes of Dionys Mascolo, Mascolo papers. Mascola was referring to Jean Dresch.

78. Interview with Dionys Mascolo, February 16, 1994

79. Dionys Mascolo to the Comité, November 19, 1956, Mascolo papers.

3. Educational Reform and the Problem of Reconciliation

1. Aimard (French) was inspector and chief of the Bureau of Studies; Basset (French), inspector and chief of personnel training; Max Marchand (French), inspector of the academy, and a respected writer, director of the Centres Sociaux; Ali Hammoutene (Algerian) and Salah Ould Aoudia (Algerian), inspectors for Algiers; Mouloud Feraoun (Algerian), celebrated writer and adjunct to the director.

2. Very little has been written about the Centres Sociaux. See Nelly Forget, “Le Service des Centres Sociaux en Algérie,” Jean-Philippe Ould Aoudia, L’Assassinat de Château-Royal, and Serge Jouin and Jean-Philippe Ould Aoudia, “Les Centres Sociaux Éducatifs en Algérie.” For an excellent history of education in Algeria before decolonization, see Fanny Colonna, Instituteurs algériens

3. Harrison, Challenging De Gaulle, 116. The “barbouzes” were French agents who went undercover to fight the OAS.

4. In the interwar period about 10 percent of the Algerian administration’s budget went to education; of that, only about 10 percent went to the education of Muslims. In 1944, about 111,000 Muslim children were enrolled in primary schools, not even 9 percent of the population. Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 126.

5. I am using the term Franco-Muslim as it was frequently employed during the war. I am aware that the term was biased because it usually implied the integration of Muslims into French society and not the reverse. Europeans (including a small Jewish population) totaled about 10 percent, Muslims (Arabs and Berbers) 90 percent. The term is extremely important because it came to represent an influential and usually liberal line of thought throughout the war. In order to facilitate discussion, I have separated the two principal communities into “French” (meaning the population of European origin) and “Algerians” (the population of non-European origin). Further distinction, as in the case of Berbers such as the Kabyles, is noted as required.

6. Comité Algérien pour l’Éducation de Base, “Appel,” Algiers, January 1951, Tillion papers.

7. Soustelle, “Discours à l’Assemblée Algérienne, February 23, 1955,” in Pour une politique de paix et de progrès en Algérie, 3

8. A month after he created the Centres Sociaux, on November 22, 1955, Soustelle wrote a governmental note to police and other Algerian administrators outlining his views for winning the Algerians over. See “Attitude à observer à l’égard des populations musulmanes dans la lutte contre le terrorisme,” BDIC, Q pièce 508 rés.

9. “Discours,” 4

10. Soustelle, “Interview de l’information,” March 21, 1955, in Pour une politique, 8

11. “Discours,” 6

12. An anthropologist, she had spent many years in the Algerian countryside during the 1930s and had made lasting friendships with many important tribal and communal leaders (for an account, see Tillion, Il était une fois l’ethnographie). Moreover, a survivor of the Ravensbrook concentration camp and an important figure in the French Resistance, she had become an important figure in the French postwar intellectual community.

13. At the request of Louis Massignon, the Islamic scholar at the Collège de France, she was asked to verify reports that the French military was bombing the civilian (Muslim) population in Algeria. According to Tillion, Massignon had been infuriated by these reports, and because she was one of the French intellectuals most familiar with Algerian society, he asked her to return to the regions she had studied as an ethnographer from 1930 to 1940. Tillion accepted the request and arrived in Algeria in January 1955. For Tillion’s autobiographical account of her experiences in Algeria see Tillion, France and Algeria

14. Germaine Tillion to Louis Massignon, March 11, 1958, Massignon papers.

15. Interview with Germaine Tillion, May 23, 1994. She was referring to sterilization.

16. In one of the first educational documents published by the Centres Sociaux, the claim that Islam represented an incurable threat to Algerian demography was countered with the following footnote (Centres Sociaux, “Projet de Scolarisation totale de l’Algérie,” December 1955, 6, Tillion papers):

Contrary to what one generally believes, Islam does not constitute an obstacle for the control of births (it is in this domain infinitely more liberal than Catholicism) but on the family level, all the mental attitudes of the Algerian peasant are pre-Islamic, which is to say, sometimes in absolute contradiction with the spirit of the letter of the Qur’an. When one measures the small chance of survival in the society… the peasant society in Algeria is an archaic type of society where that sacred character is very strongly marked—and normally confused with a religious character (therefore Qur’anic)— when it is always pre-Qur’anic and often anti-Qur’anic.

Above all, natality is much more influenced by the economic situation than it is by religion.

17. Tillion to Massignon, March 11, 1955, Massignon papers. This is important because Soustelle was heavily criticized for his inability to withstand the ultras’ pressures (see chapter 4).

18. In a letter written just after her arrival in Algeria, Tillion noted that, while Algerian nationalists had resorted to “frightening morals” (terrorism), some French policemen had resorted to torture. Tillion to Massignon, January 23, 1955, Massignon papers. It was widely known that one of the primary forms of torture during the French-Algerian War and other wars was the use of bathtubs in order to “interrogate” prisoners. Tillion makes reference to bathtubs in the letter.

19. The Youth Movements included the Algerian Muslim Boy Scouts, Algerian Muslim Scouts, and the Association of Camps and Vacations of Muslim Girl Scouts.

20. Isabelle Raymonde Deblé, speech in homage to Charles Aguesse, Saint Brieuc, November 4, 1992, 5, Deblé papers.

21. Centres Sociaux 1 (April 1956): 3

22. Interview with Tillion, May 23, 1994

23. Centres Sociaux, Direction générale de l’éducation nationale en Algérie, 19

24. “Projet de scolarisation totale de l’Algérie: Les Centres Sociaux,” December 1955, Tillion papers.

25. Centres Sociaux 1 (April 1956): 6

26. Centres Sociaux, Direction générale, 25

27. “Projet de scolarisation totale de l’Algérie,” 3

28. “Libres propos sur l’analphabétisme,” 7

29. “La Communité aux bombes du Milk-Bar et de Diar es-Saâda,” 8: “the people implicated do not appear, it seems, to belong to any existing organization. They acted as individuals or in small groups with common affinities and through common relations. These affinities were later skillfully exploited by the FLN through the intermediaries of ‘special’ agents.”

30. Bromberger, “par amitié.”

31. At the Frenchwoman’s request, I am withholding her name.

32. Bromberger, “par amitié,” 12

33. Private papers of the Frenchwoman.

34. Letter of support, May 30, 1957, private papers of the Frenchwoman.

35. Letter of support, June 1, 1957, private papers of the Frenchwoman.

36. Charles Aguesse, July 17, 1957, private papers of the Frenchwoman.

37. “Réflexions d’un prêtre sur le terrorisme.”

38. Poirot-Delpech, “Des Piens modérées sont requisés contre la plupart des inculpés.”

39. Poirot-Delpech, “Le Tribunal se refuse à confondre l’esprit de charité et l’action nationaliste.”

40. Following the trial results, Coudre’s lawyer acknowledged that his defendant’s actions resulted from a desire to keep an open dialogue between the two communities.

41. Bromberger, “Plusieurs des inculpés ont été les dupes du F.L.N.”

42. “Voici le verdict des juges militaires.”

43. Duval, “Une Déclaration de Mr. Duval,” 6. For more of Duval’s comments on the French-Algerian War, see his Messages de paix

44. Duval, “Une Déclaration de S. Exc. Mgr. Duval archevêque d’Alger.”

45. “Des Esprits faux” (editorial).

46. Michelet, “Le Procès des Chrétiens d’Algérie.”

47. Gonnet, “L’Affaire des libéraux d’Alger.”

48. Feraoun, Journal, 220–21

49. In the correspondence and notes of Aguesse kept by Isabelle Deblé, I found no references to the progressivist trial or how he intended to neutralize its effects on the Centres.

50. Aguesse, “Editorial,” Centres Sociaux 8

51. “L’Enquête sociologique.”

52. Aguesse, “Editorial,” Centres Sociaux 9

53. Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, 388

54. Since leaving his position as governor general, Soustelle had moved further and further to the right.

55. Lacoste, like Soustelle before him, had proved to be unable to resist the pressures and the influences of the French ultras who wanted the French government to do everything in its powers to keep Algeria French.

56. Comité de Salut Public de l’Éducation Nationale to Colleagues, Algiers, May 30, 1958, Tillion papers. This note was signed by Lombard and Fourestier, the latter a representative of the Centres Sociaux. At the bottom of the form, Centres employees were asked to either condone or condemn the events of May 13: “I approve of the position of the C.S.P. of National Education on the subject of the role of the Centres Sociaux” or “I have the following reservations.”

57. Comité de Salut Public de l’Éducation Nationale to Comité de Salut Public du Quartier de ——, June 1, 1959, Tillion papers.

58. Letter to Monsieur le Recteur, June 10, 1958, Tillion papers.

59. In concluding their comments to the rector, the Service members wrote:

It is up to you to tell us if the papers to be signed have been transmitted by regular means and accompanied by cover letters which would call into doubt the patriotism of a part of Centre Sociaux’ personnel.

They [the members] want to make their anxiety and bitterness known by having a general suspicion thrown on them, since December 1955, in attempting an “integration of the hearts.”

60. “Projet et note de Service, addressé le 18/8/58 au recteur,” Deblé papers.

61. According to French educational statistics, the number of Muslims compared to Europeans in traditional, European-style education in Algeria was negligible, but there was some progress. For example, in 1957 the ratio of Muslims to non-Muslims being educated in maternal care classes at the primary school level was 346,008 to 123,248. By 1959, that had climbed to 616,474 Muslims to 129,207 non-Muslims. In enseignement du second degré the numbers were much worse: 6,806 to 30,663 in 1957, rising in 1959 to 10,238 to 34,413. In 1959 there were 163 Muslim to 1,206 non-Muslim students at the Écoles Normales and 11,753 to 9,336 in the technical and professional schools. And, at the level of enseignement supérieur in the university faculties, there were 421 Muslim to 4,394 non-Muslim students in 1957 and 814 to 5,739 in 1959. See Capdecomme, “Éducation nationale en Algérie,” 27.

62. “Ordonnance du 20 août 1958 sur la Scolarisation accelerée de l’Algérie pendant 8 ans,” Ministre de l’Éducation Nationale, Académic d’Alger, 1, Deblé papers.

63. Capdecomme, “La Scolarisation accelerée de l’Algérie,” 1, Deblé papers.

64. In Tillion’s writings (discussed later), this tension between her vision of Europe (which represented hope and modernity) and Islam (which represented “archaic society”) makes clear how deeply ingrained this division between European and Islamic civilizations was in the French imagination. It was precisely this dichotomy that made intellectuals such as Tillion certain that Algeria’s only chance for survival in the modern world was in French educational and social reform.

65. Quiriconi, “Un Reseau FLN.”

66. Note on the arrests kept by the Centres Sociaux, Deblé papers.

67. The reasons for the arrests were often feeble. For example, the twenty-yearold Muslim monitor was arrested, as she put it, “because I love a fellagha to whom I write and who is right now in Tunis.” After stating that she had been the only woman among twenty-five military men, one of whom tried to make advances on her, she wrote to Deblé: “save me…. I am a wreck…. I am not afraid of the basement or the rats who visit me. They are not nasty …. I beg you, take pity on me.” With the aid of Deblé and others, she was released on June 9, 1959. Letter to Isabelle Deblé, Deblé papers. On Deblé’s request, I am not reproducing the sender’s identity.

68. “Les Centres Sociaux d’Alger était noyauté par le FLN.”

69. See Tricot, Mémoires, and his very important Les Sentiers de la paix

70. “Audience de M. Lepetre avec M. Tricot, Attaché à la Présidence de la République, Paris—27 July 1959 à 3 p.m.,” Deblé papers.

71. “Noyautage communiste des Centres Sociaux d’Algerie.”

72. “Tentatives de subversion dans les Centres Sociaux?”

73. “Note sur les Centres Sociaux Éducatifs en Algérie, Algiers, October 20, 1959,” 1–2, Lesne papers.

74. “Note… October 20, 1959,” 5–6, Lesne papers. Before concluding, Lesne wrote that Aguesse’s intellectual qualities and the “purity of [his] intentions” were never in question.

75. Hammoutene, Réflexion, 70

76. Feraoun, Journal, 121–22. He noted this because he had just attended an official reception with French authorities.

77. Feraoun to Emmanuel Roblès, Lettres à ses amis, 181–82. Also cited in Le Sueur, introduction to Feraoun, Journal, xxxviii.

78. Feraoun to Paul Flamand, August 6, 1961, Lettres à ses amis, 187. Also cited in Le Sueur, introduction to Feraoun Journal, xxxviii.

79. Hammoutene, Réflexions, 35

80. Feraoun, Journal, 153

81. Hammoutene, Réflexions, 53

82. Horne, Savage War of Peace, 364

83. “Address by President Charles de Gaulle on Algerian Policy Broadcast over French Radio and Television on January 29, 1960,” in de Gaulle, Major Addresses, Statements, and Press Conferences, 71

84. Saive, “Graves révélations du colonel Gardes: Les ‘centres Sociaux’ étaient noyautés par le FLN.”

85. Le Recteur to Monsieur le Ministre de l’Éducation National, December 14, 1960, Lesne papers.

86. “Un Communiqué du Rectorat d’Alger.”

87. “M. Capdecomme défend les Centres Sociaux.”

88. Theolleye, “Le Colonel Godard.” This claim seems to be indicative of the problem. Many of the staff were Muslim, and the army saw this as proof that the Service was sympathetic to the FLN.

89. Marcel Lesne to Monsieur le Délegué Général en Algérie, February 20, 1961, Lesne papers.

90. Feraoun, Journal, 304

91. Hammoutene, Réflexions, 136

92. In his October 19, 1961, journal entry he noted that an SAS commander had asked one of his colleagues in another Centre to act as an “information agent” for the military. See Hammoutene, Réflexions, 139

93. Feraoun wrote on November 2, 1956, that Roblès was “more than just a friend or a Frenchman. I cannot connect him to any motherland because he is from everywhere, and that is exactly where I come from.” See Feraoun, Journal, 147

94. Feraoun to Roblès, February 17, 1962, in Lettres, 198

95. Feraoun, Journal, 314

96. Forestier, “Crime contre la culture.”

97. Feraoun did not die immediately but four hours later in the hospital.

98. Tillion, “La Bêtise qui froidement assassine.”

99. Tillion received several personal letters commending her for her very public attack against the dangerous OAS. For example, Vincent Monteil, her former colleague and co-member of Soustelle’s cabinet, the Islamic scholar responsible for creating the SAS, noted that he understood and agreed with Tillion’s rage at this odious crime of the OAS. Vincent Monteil to Germaine Tillion, Dakar, March 28, 1962, Tillion papers. Likewise, a director of a French lycée wrote of the possible utility of the martyrs for Algeria’s future. “The death of our martyrs is, distressing, cruel, and painful, but it will not be useless.” The acts of “murdering imbeciles” will come to good if they mark the end of the “seven years of imbecilic murdering.” Letter from S. Bouberet to Germaine Tillion, March 19, 1962, Tillion papers.

100. “Obsèques des six dirigeants des Centres Sociaux assassinés à El Biar,” 7

101. Interviews with Marcel Gast, Isabelle Deblé, and Germaine Tillion.

4. The Unbearable Solitude of Being

1. I am using the word question much as Ernst Cassirer did in Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In other words, not only are Camus’s actions to be investigated here but also what Camus meant to public debates during the decolonization of Algeria and how his reputation influenced others in their ongoing struggles either to merge or separate anticolonialism and intellectual legitimacy.

2. Camus’s term for political correctness was conformity

3. Bourdet, “Camus ou les mains propres,” 18

4. Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, 383–84

5. Camus, unlike many other intellectuals, used Arab, not Muslim, to depict Algeria’s non-European population.

6. See Jean Sénac’s criticisms of Camus regarding his comments at Stockholm.

7. Neither Daniel nor Roy shared Camus’s belief that at all costs Algeria should remain French. While Camus was alive, Roy did not openly criticize him, but he did issue a postmortem corrective to Camus’s political shortcomings after his death. Daniel, although against violence, did not agree with Camus that Algeria should remain French no matter what the price. See chapter 2; see also Todd, Albert Camus

8. It is useful to keep in mind that Camus’s understanding of Algeria was mitigated by his affiliation with the pca. Interview with Benjamin Stora, June 15, 1998

9. Camus, “L’Enseignement,” in “Misere de la Kabylie,” Essais, 919. It is unclear why Camus focused only on the Kabyles. Some historians and Algerians have suggested that it may reflect the well-known tendency to perpetrate the policy of divide and rule.

10. Camus was also aware that both metropolitan France and the French in Algeria would deny responsibility for the fiscal costs of reforms. According to him, it was exactly this game—which on one hand affirmed that Algeria was indeed France, and on the other denied France’s obligations to all people in Algeria—that was the source of most contradictions in Algerian politics. See Essais, 935

11. Camus always claimed later that his writings on Algeria caused his expulsion from North Africa. This has been contested by biographers who indicate that there is no evidence of Camus’s expulsion. When he left Algeria, the Frontist newspaper for which he worked had already been ordered to cease publication because of violations of wartime censorship.

12. Camus, “Letters to a German Friend: First Letter,” in Resistance, 9

13. Abbas (1899–1985) was one of Algeria’s most controversial nationalist leaders. After unsuccessfully trying to mediate between the FLN and the French, he formally joined the FLN in 1956. Two years later he was made president of the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA). (The GPRA was created in Cairo in September 1958 as a reaction to de Gaulle’s leadership. Using the prestige of leaders such as Abbas, the FLN saw the GPRA as a means to draw international attention to the movement. (It was the GPRA that terminated the Evian Accords in 1962.) Later, in August 1961, Abbas was supplanted by Ben Youssef Ben Khedda, setting a more radical tone for Algerian politics. In autumn 1962, Abbas returned to politics as the president of Algeria’s newly formed National Constituent Assembly. But his faithfulness to liberalism quickly marginalized him among Algeria’s revolutionary elite, and he resigned in August 1963.

14. Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 145–46. One of the most important Algerian nationalists, PPA founder Messali Hadj, was currently serving sixteen years of forced labor. His party had been banned in 1939

15. Camus, “Crise en Algérie,” in Essais, 941

16. Camus, “Le Malaise politique,” in Essais, 951

17. Camus, “Le Parti du manifeste,” in Essais, 957

18. Members included Robert Barrat, Régis Blachére, Claude Bourdet, Yves Dechezelles, Jean Marie Domenach, Daniel Guérin, Charles André Julien, Louis Massignon, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Rivet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Wahl, and others.

19. By this time Camus had already amassed a significant body of work: Noces (1941) L’Étranger (1942), Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942),Caligula (1944), Le Malentendu (1944), Prométhée aux enters (1947), La Peste (1947), L’État de siége (1948), L’Éxile d’Héléne (1948),Actuelles I (1950). For an excellent discussion of Camus’s fiction vis-à-vis the Algerian question see Saïd, “Camus and the French Imperial Experience,” in Culture and Imperialism, 169–85

20. Camus, “Les Justes,” in Théàtre, récites, nouvelles, 339–40

21. In an interview with me, Jeanson confessed that he has often regretted starting this polemic. Interview with Francis Jeanson, December 11, 1993

22. Mouloud Feraoun to Albert Camus, May 27, 1951, in Lettres à ses amis, 203

23. Camus’s joining the staff added prestige to the journal, which already housed Nobel laureate François Mauriac’s Bloc-notes. See Todd’s discussion of Camus’s relationship with L’Express in Albert Camus

24. Almost immediately after joining the staff at L’Express, Camus fell into a polemic with Gilles Martinet and Claude Bourdet at France observateur over their publication of a confidential letter from Camus in an attempt to demonstrate that he was not a good journalist. In this polemic, the journalistic style of Françoise Giroud, also at L’Express, was pitted against Camus’s. See Camus’s response: “Le Vrai déba,” L’Express, June 4, 1955; reprinted in Essais

25. Camus, “Terrorisme et repression.”

26. It is impossible to overemphasize this point. For Camus it was essential to prevent the French from seeing the FLN as the only representative body of Algeria’s Arabs. By 1958 it had successfully wiped out the Messalists and cowed all other currents. But in 1955–56 it could not be considered the sole interlocutor of the French government in Algeria.

27. Camus, “L’Avenir algérien,” 6

28. Borrowing from Edward Said’s classic Orientalism, one might detect a hint of Orientalism in Camus’s writings; I have shied away from the term because it does not fully explain Camus’s views, which are far more nuanced than the common understanding of Orientalist discourse.

29. Camus, “La Vraie démission,” in Essais, 976

30. Camus, “Letter to an Algerian Militant,” in Resistance, 127–28

31. Camus, “Les Raisons de l’adversaire,” in Essais, 978. One can only imagine Camus’s reaction if someone had suggested he accept Étain’s similar pleas for the French Resistance to stop using terrorism against the Nazi occupants.

32. Camus, “Trêve pour les civils.” See also “Appeal for a Civilian Truce in Algeria,” in Resistance, 37–42

33. The Muslim sponsors (unknown to Camus at the time, all clandestine FLN members) were Mouloud Amrane, Mohamed Lebjaoui, Boualem Mous-saoui, and Amar Ouzegane. The French Algerians were Jean de Maisonseul, Louis Miquel, Mauria Perrin, Charles Poncet, Emmanuel Roblès, and Roland Simounet. See Lottman, Albert Camus, 588–601

34. Camus, “Trêve pour les civils.”

35. Le Comité pour une Trêve Civile to Monsieur le Président du Conseil (n.d.), Paris, Institut Pierre Mendès France, Algérie VI.

36. Lottman, Albert Camus, 600

37. Camus, “Appeal for a Civilian Truce in Algeria,” in Resistance, 134

38. Their commitment to the revolution surfaced when one of the participating Muslims said to Camus: “Only the men who do battle have the right to address that subject [civil truce].” See Roblès, Albert Camus et la trêve civile, 7

39. Feraoun, Journal, 71

40. Monsieur Bret to Albert Camus, Strasbourg, January 10, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, Courrier Express, 1955–1956, a4

41. Albert Camus to Monsieur Bret, Paris, January 23, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, Courrier Express, 1955–1956, a4

42. Camus made a clear ideological distinction between what he considered the positive attributes of colonialism and the Soviet’s appetite for the political domination of Eastern Europe.

43. “POETS, WRITERS, SCHOLARS OF THE ENTIRE WORLD. HUNGARIAN WRITERS ARE ADDRESSING YOU. LISTEN TO OUR CALL. WE ARE FIGHTING AT THE BARRICADES FOR LIBERTY OF OUR COUNTRY, FOR THAT OF EUROPE AND FOR HUMAN DIGNITY. WE ARE DYING. BUT OUR SACRIFICE SHOULD NOT BE IN VAIN. AT THIS SUPREME HOUR, IN THE NAME OF A MASSACRED NATION, WE ADDRESS OURSELVES TO YOU, CAMUS, MALRAUX, MAURIAC, RUSSEL, JASPERS… AND MANY OTHER FIGHTERS OF THE MIND. THE HOUR HAS SOUNDED AND THE TIME FOR SPEECHES IS OVER. ACTS ARE NECESSARY. DO SOMETHING. ACT. THROW OFF THE HORRIBLE INERTIA OF THE OCCIDENT. ACT. ACT. ACT.” Telegram from Hungarian insurgents, n.d., IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (10) Politique I.

44. Camus to François Fejtö, October 31, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (10) Politique I.

45. For a fuller description of the failures of the French left concerning the Hungarian tragedy, see Judt, Past Imperfect, 128–29

46. Camus, “Réponse à un appel,” in Essais, 1780

47. Roger Martin du Gard to Camus, November 10, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (10) Politique I.

48. Jacques Rodier to Camus, Paris, November 10, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (10) Politique I.

49. Camus to Rodier, December 7, 1956, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (10) Politique I

50. Camus, “Discours de la Salle Wagram,” in Essais, 1783

51. Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” in Resistance

52. Minister of Justice, Direction of Criminal Affairs and Pardons, Legislative Service, “rapport à monsieur le président du conseil, Decret No. Fixant en Algérie le mode d’exécution des condamnés à mort,” IPMF, P. Soudet, Études Algérie.

53. Le Sous-Directeur des Affairs Criminelles et de Grâce to [Monsieur le Directeur du Cabinet a l’attention de Monsieur Aubouin, Chargé en mission], June 13, 1956, IPMF, P. Soudet, Études Algérie, 3

54. Mauriac, Bloc-notes, 1:477

55. Yves Dechezelles to Camus, Paris, July 26, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

56. Giséle Halimi to Camus, Paris, July 28, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

57. Dechezelles to Camus, Paris, September 21, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

58. Camus to Monsieur le Président de la République, Paris, September 26, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I. Guy Mollet was president of the council and prime minister of France at the time.

59. Camus to Monsieur le Président de la République, Paris, October 28, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

60. Guy Mollet to Camus, Paris, November 22, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

61. Stibbe had been informed through a mutual friend of Camus’s position on Ben Sadok, distaste for the FLN, and antipathy for the politics of the new left. Angrily, Stibbe fired off a rebuke to Camus. Pierre Stibbe to Camus, November 30, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I. Sartre testified on behalf of Ben Sadok on December 10, 1957, even comparing him to Charlotte Corday. See Le Monde, December 12, 1957, 20

62. Camus to Monsieur le Président de la Cour d’Assises de la Seine, Paris, December 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I.

63. Camus to Stibbe, Paris, December 4, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3(4) Algérie I.

64. I agree with Tony Judt that “Camus was an unpolitical man,” but only if one defines “nonpolitical” as “unaffiliated” in the strictest political sense. See Judt, Burden of Responsibility, 104. Camus’s position on France’s right to remain in Algeria can hardly be called nonpolitical in the broader sense of the word. Indeed, it is this unhealthy combination of the dual meanings of “nonpolitical” that makes the question of Camus so provocative.

65. This was also the case for other Algerian writers (Feraoun, Mammeri, Chraïbi, and Dib) who, according to Camus, were part of the “European” civilization.

66. Camus, “The Wager of Our Generation,” interviewed in Demain, in Resistance, 243

67. Daniel, “Albert Camus, ‘l’algérien,’ ” 13

68. Feraoun to Camus, Algiers, November 30, 1957, in Lettres à ses amis, 205. In the same letter, Feraoun described the situation in Algeria in a more depressing tone: “That which affects you, affects us all and we all know it. But we live in very difficult times, when the temptation is great to renounce friendship in order to hate.”

69. Camus, “Discours du 10 décembre 1957,” in Essais, 1071

70. Camus, “Create Dangerously,” lecture, University of Uppsala, December 14, 1957, in Resistance, 249

71. “Déclarations de Stockholm,” Le Monde, December 14, 1957, in Essais, 1881

72. Camus to Monsieur le Directeur, Le Monde, Paris, December 17, 1957, in Essais, 1883

73. Schalk, War and the Ivory Tower, 66

74. L’Association des Algériens en Suéde, Stockholm, to Albert Camus, December 17, 1957, in Essais, 1883

75. Jean Sénac (1926–73), born of French and Spanish descent in Algeria, became an FLN sympathizer during the Algerian revolution. His poetry celebrated Algeria’s future independence. He is best remembered for his collections entitled Poésie and Matinale de mon peuple. He was murdered in Algiers in 1973

76. Jean Sénac to Camus, December 18, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I, V Lettres françaises d’Algérie.

77. Sénac, “Camus au secours de Lacoste?”³(manuscript copy), IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I, V Lettres françaises d’Algérie.

78. Camus to Sénac, Paris, December 19, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I, V Lettres françaises d’Algérie. Camus’s mother was deaf.

79. Kateb Yacine to Camus, reprinted in Corpet and Dichy, eds., Kateb Yacine, éclats de mémoire, 33

80. Martinet, “Qu’Albert Camus prenne enfin position,” 15

81. Discours d’Albert Camus communiqué par M. Bernfeld, president des Amitiés Méditerranien, January 22, 1958, 2, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B4 (11).

82. Camus, “Algeria 1958,” in Resistance, 144

83. Camus to Jeanne Sicard, Directeur, El Biar, May 24, 1957, IMEC, Fonds Camus, B3 (4) Algérie I, V Lettres françaises d’Algérie.

84. Camus, “Avant-propos,” to Chroniques algériennes, in Essais, 891

85. Feraoun, “La Source de nos communs malheurs,” Preuves 91 (September 1958), in L’Anniversaire, 36.

86. Ahmed Taleb [Ibrahimi], “Lettre ouverte à Albert Camus,” August 26, 1959, in Lettres de prison. Alleg brought torture in Algeria to the international stage with his devastating book, La Question (see chapter 6). See also Schalk, War and the Ivory Tower, 67

87. Tillion, “Albert Camus et l’Algérie,” 71. Tillion’s comment here supports Tony Judt’s observation that Camus’s conception of Algeria “had been formed in the thirties,” when the notion of an integrated community in Algeria was the dominant paradigm of many Algerians and Europeans alike. See Judt, Burden of Responsibility, 118. The same claim could be made for Tillion, who lived as an ethnographer in Algeria from 1934 to 1940. See Tillion, La Traversée du mal

88. Sartre, “Albert Camus,” 17

89. Bourdet, “Camus on les mains propres,” 18

90. Daniel, “Albert Camus,” 27

91. Feraoun, “Le Dernier message” (January 27, 1960), Preuves 110 (April 1960); in L’Anniversaire, 45

92. Roy, “Pourquoi j’ai écrit: ‘La Guerre d’Algerie,’ ” interview, Vérité-Libérté (October 1960); reprinted as the preface to La Guerre d’Algérie, 17. See also Philip Dines’s excellent discussion of Roy in Images of the Algerian War, 82–88

93. “Un Entretien avec Jules Roy sur la guerre d’Algérie,” 55

94. Roy, La Guerre d’Algérie, 21

95. When I interviewed Jules Roy in Paris, I was struck by his unqualified commitment to his friend Camus. As Roy said to me, Camus was “the master.” Interview with Jules Roy, Paris, October 21, 1993. Roy went to Algeria and published his thoughts on the Algerian question out of profound respect for Camus because he firmly believed that Camus would eventually have changed his mind and broken his silence.

96. Alain Jacob, “ ‘La Guerre d’Algérie’ de Jules Roy,” Le Monde (November 9–10, 1960); in La Guerre d’Algérie, 233

97. Patrick Kessel, “Jules Roy et la guerre d’Algérie,” France observateur (October 6, 1960); in La Guerre d’Algérie, 233–45

98. Claude Roy, “Jules Roy et la guerre d’Algérie,” Libération (October 5, 1960); in La Guerre d’Algérie, 247–54.

99. Charles de Gaulle, “Lettre à Jules Roy, écrivain,” in Lettres, notes, et carnets, 411

100. André Benichou to Monsieur le Directeur de L’Express [Jean Daniel], Paris, n.d., Daniel papers.

101. Jean Daniel to André Benichou, Paris, August 8, 1960, Daniel papers. In a letter to Daniel, Benichou attacked Daniel for his sympathy for the FLN. Benichou went on to argue that Camus’s name had been unfairly cited in connection with the possible negotiation with the FLN and stated that it was obvious that his letters of protest would never be published because they were censored on reception. They would never be published, moreover, because “the so-called progressivist-liberal-socialists were ardent enemies of freedom of expression,” Daniel Papers.

102. René Char to Jean Daniel, September 4, 1960, Daniel papers.

103. See Wood, “Colonial Nostalgia and Le Premier homme,” Vectors of Memory, 143– 65. For a comparison of Camus’s First Man to Feraoun’s Journal, see Roger Kaplan’s review of Journal, as “The First Man” The New Republic, November 6, 2000, 31–38

104. See Daniel, “Un Intellectuel contre l’Histoire,” 8

105. Chelfi, “Les Beignets de la rue Bab-Azoun.”

106. Milosz, “Un Homme déchiré comme moi-même.” See also Milosz, Captive Mind

107. Kovac, “Camus aurait milité pour l’embargo,” 27

108. See Mimouni, “Camus et l’Algérie intégriste,” 14

5. Shifting Views of Reconciliation

1. Not all intellectuals held this position; many continued to hope for reconciliation until the cease-fire on March 19, 1962

2. Aron later lamented that his criticism of the left in Opium nearly cost him his long-awaited appointment. It was his “most glaring error,” he said, to allow the book to be published three weeks before the election of the new holder of the Sorbonne chair of sociology. See Aron, Committed Observer, 161

3. Aron, Opium of the Intellectuals, 312

4. Aron, “Bandoeng conférence de l’ équivoque,” 1

5. Aron, “La France joue sa dernière chance en Afrique,” 18

6. Aron, La Tragédie algérienne, iii.

7. Aron’s vision of the West, for which he used the term Occident, included Western Europe and the United States; by non-Occidental countries he meant Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. It is important to remember that Aron pictured the East-West (Orient-Occident) conflict as primarily involving a confrontation between the Americans and Soviets.

8. This was especially true, Aron claimed, since neither had been willing to grant internal autonomy to Tunisia and Morocco until terrorism forced the issue.

9. Aron’s claim is absurd. According to French figures cited by John Ruedy (which Ruedy admits could be incorrect), in 1948 only 3 percent of male Muslims in Algeria had more than one wife. These statistics show a rapid decline in polygamy: in 1886 the French recorded that 16 percent of male Algerians had more than one wife. In this case, Aron’s arguments tell us more about his own stereotypes of Algerians than about the Algerian people. See Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 128–29

10. This is also how Germaine Tillion had referred to France’s obligations in Algeria.

11. Aron did not think very highly of the Algerians who would assume leadership after the French departure: “The Algerians want the French to recognize their right to self-government. The fact is, in every way you look at it, that we have before us, in Algeria, the National Front (the FLN) and not the Neo-Destour and no civilian leader comparable to Mr. Bourguiba, no religious leader comparable to the Sultan [of Morocco]” (65).

12. See Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals

13. Aron made several references to correspondence between him and Camus; oddly, no trace of these letters can be found in either Camus’s or Aron’s papers.

14. Roger Duchet to Raymond Aron, Paris, June 20, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Raymond Aron, Algérie Lettres. See Duchet’s collection of editorials for France Indépendante published as Pour le salut publique. In his article of July 29, 1957, “Pas de nouveau ‘Genève,’ ” Duchet attacked Mohamed Yazid (a prominent FLN leader who represented Algeria in the United States) for his intransigence on the issue of independence for Algeria and argued that the French leftist intellectuals had become just as dangerous to France as the FLN: “The political men such as Daniel Meyer, François Mitterrand, and Mendès France (we saw their collusion with the Communists in the famous night of special powers), the journals such as L’Express, L’Observateur, and Témoignage chrétien, the intellectuals such as François Mauriac, Maurice Duverger, and even, Alas! Raymond Aron, used the same arguments and defend the same thesis [as the FLN]. They sow doubt. Now a country that doubts is a country which abandons itself” (104).

15. Aron to Duchet, Paris, June 22, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

16. Duchet to Aron, Paris, June 23, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres. Duchet, along with others like Georges Bidault, Bachaga Boualem, and Jacques Soustelle were active participants in the extreme right-wing orga-nization Rassemblement pour l’Algérie Française.

17. Jean Bommant to Aron, n.p., n.d., CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

18. Claude Monflier to Aron, Colomb-Béchar, November 20, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

19. Robert Brassy to Aron, Paris, July 26, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

20. Robert Lacoste to Aron, Algiers, June 21, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

21. Jean Fabiani to Aron, June 19, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

22. H. Légier Dergranges to Aron, Paris, July 3, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algérie Lettres.

23. In the letter, Amrouche spoke of a recent attack made on Aron by Maurice Schumann during a gathering of intellectuals. Schumann was one of Aron’s fiercest critics. See Schumann, Le Vrai malaise des intellectuels de gauche

24. Jean Amrouche to Aron, Paris, December 3, 1957, CRPRA, Fonds Aron, Algrie Lettres.

25. Soustelle, Le Drame algérien et la décadence française, 1

26. Soustelle may very well have been thinking of Camus in writing this.

27. Charles de Gaulle to Jacques Soustelle, August 19, 1957, private papers of Madame de la Croix.

28. This point is extremely important because Soustelle always maintained that he had been duped by de Gaulle, meaning that de Gaulle, not Soustelle, was the one who changed his position on Algeria. See Soustelle, Vingt-huit ans de gaullisme and L’Espérance trahie, for his account of De Gaulle’s “betrayal” of French Algeria. See also James D. Le Sueur, “Before the Jackal: The International Uproar over Assassination!” historical essay to Ben Abro, Assassination! July 14, 183–254

29. Daniel, “Des Vacances algériennes…,” 4

30. Interview with Germaine Tillion, Paris, May 17, 1994

31. Tillion, Algeria: The Realities, vi.

32. When Soustelle attacked Aron for his analysis of the Algerian drama in 1957, Soustelle pointed to Tillion’s Algérie en 1957 as proof of the mission that remained for France in Algeria.

33. She continued by arguing that the reverse was also true: “And the other way round. In other words, when it comes to the religious attitudes, a Breton shepherd has more in common with a shepherd of the Ouarsenis than either of them has with compatriots who have university degrees.” In my interviews and conversations with Tillion she often stressed the differences between contemporary Algerians and the French, thus indicating how estranged the two communities had become as a result of the increased influence of Islam in Algeria.

34. The actual number of Algerian workers in France during the war was closer to two hundred thousand.

35. By responsibilities, Tillion meant France’s obligation to be involved in Alge- rian politics and society.

36. See Conklin, Mission to Civilize

37. In 1955 Servan-Schreiber wrote to Soustelle, asking that he not misinterpret the L’Express writings as attacks on his administration.

38. Servan-Schreiber, “Un Rappelé parle,” 15

39. Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant in Algeria, 46

40. The term bicot, the closest English translation of which is “gook,” was a highly derogatory word commonly used to denote Algerian Muslims. Its original meaning is related to “sheepskin.”

41. Mouloud Feraoun also lamented the totalitarian character of the French state and the potential for the FLN to act in an authoritarian way. See Feraoun, Journal

42. Serge Hurtig to Pierre Mendès France, Paris, March 27, 1957, IPMF, DPMF, Algérie XIV, A.F.N.

43. Mendès France to Hurtig, April 2, 1957 IPMF, DPMF, Algérie XIV, A.F.N.

44. Peyrega, “Le Doyen de la Faculté de Droit d’Alger écrit à M. Bourgès-Maunoury,” 4. It appeared later in other publications such as L’Express. See also Jacques Peyrega to Monsieur le Ministre de la défense nationale,” Algiers, March 18, 1957, IPMF, DPMF, Algérie XIV, A.F.N.

45. Very soon after de Bollardière’s house arrest, several supporters, including Christian Pineau, François Mitterrand, and Gaston Defferre, defended him. Even former Resistance hero Vercors sent his Legion of Honor back to President Coty in protest against the government’s treatment of the general. As a result, in the Assembly, Guy Mollet publicly distanced himself from General Massu’s paratroopers. See Horne, Savage War of Peace, 233

46. Comité de Résistance Spirituelle, Des Rappelés témoignent, 5

47. “Mélée, decembre 56…” in Des Rappelés témoignent, 77

48. “Il faut absolument que je fasse partager à quelqu’un ma culpabilité,” in Des Rappelés témoignent, 76

49. Capitant, “Le Miracle français.”

50. Le Dossier Jean Muller: De la pacification à la repression

51. Mauriac, Bloc-notes, 1:445

52. Sartre, “Vous êtes formidables,” reprinted in Situations V (Paris: 1964), 57.

53. In his argument, Sartre pointed to Mollet’s April creation of the Commission de Sauvegarde des Droits et des Libertés en Algérie. Lacoste had asked Camus to take part in this commission, but Camus refused.

54. Simon, Contre la torture, 11–12

55. “Le Complot,” Le Monde (April 17, 1957), in Contre la torture, 133

56. “Où le FLN se trompe,” Le Monde (April 19, 1957), in Contre la torture, 137

57. Message des Forces Armées, Morale de la guerre et morale de l’armée (no. 21), April 1957, SHAT,1 h2579/3.

6. Visions of Reconciliation, Visions of Rupture

1. The sources vary on the number killed, from 301 to 303

2. “Un Allocution du président René Coty,” 1. Coty was speaking specifically to countries such as the United States, which had an FLN “ambassador” in Washington dc.

3. Bellounis himself was later killed on July 23, 1958

4. I thank William Cohen for this information. For an excellent analysis of the extent of FLN propaganda concerning violence as it relates to Mélouza, see Ihaddeden, “La Propaganda du FLN,” 184, 190

5. “Note de renseignements,” P.R.G. de Médéa, n. 2909, Médéa, June 24, 1957, SHAT,1 h1685/D1

6. Mélouza has been written about by several historians. Alistair Horne attributed the massacre to the FLN on the basis of statements later made by Yacef and documents taken from the body of Amirouche, the Wilaya 3 leader. Horne and others have long agreed that responsibility for Mélouza can definitely be imputed to the FLN. Historians such as John Ruedy, Yves Courriére, and Mohammed Harbi also support this claim.

7. The Mélouza massacre was more commonly mentioned than the Wagram massacre.

8. It is difficult to know whether Fanon actually thought the French had carried out the massacre or whether he was trying to minimize the moral damage it had caused to the revolution. Since at this writing Fanon’s personal papers remain inaccessible, it is impossible to know whether there is any evidence that would support or contradict his claims made in the name of the FLN.

9. Fanon, “Disappointments and Illusions of French Colonialism,” El Moudjahid 10 (September 1957), in Toward the African Revolution, 59

10. The harkis were Algerians who fought on the French side during the war. In 1957–58, the estimated total number of harkis collaborating with French authorities reached about sixty thousand. Clayton, Wars of French Decolonization, 139

11. “Aprés le drame de Mélouza, Enquéte de l’onu,” 1

12. Moreau, “Assez de sang et d’horreurs!” 1

13. “Mélouza était un village FLN,” 1

14. Note to le Colonel Chef du Bureau Psychologique de la 10ring R. M., Algiers, July 4, 1957, SHAT,1 h2464/D2

15. Bachir Hadj Ali, “Lettre à nos amis français,” Algiers, June 9, 1957, SHAT,1 h2464/D2. Hadj Ali’s letter was also published in France observateur under the heading, “Mélouza and the Algerian Communists” (June 20, 1957): 20

16. Ben Smaïl, “Un Journaliste tunisien revient de Mélouza,” 10

17. Daniel, “L’Algérie: l’indignation est justifiée,” 3

18. Folliet, “Non à l’atroce!” Folliet had written several articles on the progressivist trials. He had also criticized the French government’s handling of the issue of torture and the French army; see “Se taire ou dire vrai?”

19. “Communiqué du Bureau politique de la Nouvelle Gauche,” 4

20. Bourdet, “Mélouza, crime et faute,” 4

21. Domenach, “Les Enchéres de la terreur,” 104

22. Feraoun, Journal, 212

23. Cited in Horne, Savage War of Peace, 246

24. I saw these photographs in Germaine Tillion’s private papers and was told they were sent to other politicians and advisers. Tillion was part of a fivemember group called the Commission Internationale contre le Régime Concentrationnaire that visited Algeria’s “relocation camps” and also the Mélouza site. See Tillion, La Traverses du mal, 108–9

25. L’Opinion mondiale juge les sanglants “libérateurs” de Mélouza et de Wagram, 1

26. Signed by Robert Barrat, Claude Bourdet, René Capitant, Jean Daniel, Gilles Martinet, Jean Nantet, André Philip, Jean Rous, Pierre-Henri Simon, Pierre Stibbe, and George Suffert, the text was published in France observateur on June 6, 1957, reprinted in the pamphlet.

27. Ministre de l’Algérie, Cabinet du Minister, Aspects véritables de la rébellion algérienne. It is not clear whether the French distributed the book in the United States in the same manner as in France.

28. True Aspects of the Algerian Rebellion, 6

29. Louis Marin to Monsieur Gorlin, November 15, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

30. Louis Papy to Gorlin, November 13, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

31. Charles Brunold to Monsieur le Conseiller, November 15, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

32. Faculté des Sciences de Lille, Cabinet du Doyen [name illegible] to Gorlin, Lille, November 14, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

33. F. Charles-Roux to Michel Gorlin, November 27, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

34. Paul Vienney to Robert Lacoste, Paris, November 17, 1957, CAOM, Lacoste 234

35. Domenach, “Les Enchères,” 104

36. Gorlin to Jean-Marie Domenach, Algiers, March 29, 1958, IMEC, Fonds Esprit, ESP2 C3–01-01

37. Casamayor, “Lettre à un ultra,” 276; see also, Le Bras séculier

38. Though not Algerian by birth, Fanon was one of the major contributors to El Moudjahid. I refer to him as an Algerian nationalist only in his capacity as a spokesman for the FLN.

39. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

40. Fanon, “Letter to a Frenchman,” in Toward the African Revolution, 48

41. Fanon, “Letter to the Resident Minister” in Toward the African Revolution, 53

42. Fanon, “Algeria Face to Face with French Torturers,” in Toward the African Revolution. Fanon was expelled from Algeria for participating in a strike of doctors sympathetic to the FLN.

43. Fanon, “French Intellectuals and Democrats and the Algerian Revolution,” in Toward the African Revolution, 76

44. Fanon called this “active pseudo-solidarity.”

45. Recall that the Comité d’Action des Intellectuels dissolved precisely over this issue.

46. Fanon is clearly referring to Tillion’s and Soustelle’s arguments.

47. Mauriac did not mention here that Ferhat Abbas had also converted to the FLN, thus destroying hopes for Algerian moderation.

48. Mauriac, “Bloc-notes,” L’Express (January 9, 1958): 32; in Bloc-notes, 2:14–15. The loi-cadre was a series of moderate reforms Lacoste intended to implement; they were never enacted because of the ultras’ resistance.

49. Martinet, “Réponse au F.L.N.,” 4

50. Domenach, “Une Mauvaise philosophic,” 247

51. Mauriac, “Le FLN et nous,” 32

52. Amrouche was a Kabyle Christian. Mauriac then reproduced Amrouche’s letter attacking Mauriac’s recent L’Express article on the FLN:

We [Algerian nationalists] do give the impression that we are merely giving our opinions on the heartbreaking truth for all Algerians: the frightening historical void, the feeling of not existing in one’s own eyes but only in the conscience of the Other [dans la conscience d’autrui], the feeling of not being in the world. To ask the FLN to renounce the claim of Algerian nationality… is to ask them to sign, if not forever, then at least for many years, the official death certificate of the Algerian people. Algeria must first be Algeria, it must simply be [qu’elle soit tout simplement], it must be recognized as foreign to France, it must pull itself out of the political nothingness where the conquest and the colonial enterprise has taken it…. This will be the end of an illusory friendship, but also the beginning of a new relationship where friendship can be reestablished between strangers, on the basis of new equality, and no longer on the relationship between a master and a slave or a master and a student.

53. Amrouche, “Pour un dialogue entre Algériens et Français, 12

54. Martinet, “L’Indépendance, condition nécessaire mais non suffisante,” 12

55. Daniel, “Un Français d’Algerie,” 26

56. Daniel, “Jean-Paul Sartre,” unedited interview, January 13, 1958, in Le Temps qui reste, 251–55

57. In Force of Circumstance Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “In Algeria there was only one choice, Fascism or the F.L.N. In France we thought it was different. It seemed to us that the Left had nothing to teach the Algerians, and that El Moudjahid was quite right to put them in their place. But we still believed that it was possible to work for their independence by legal means” (370).

58. Daniel, “Le Destin algérien, la France, et l’Occident,” 27

59. In an interview with Pierre Vidal-Naquet about the origins of his concern for Maurice Audin, he told me that his primary concern has been the protection of the institutions of the French Republic. Having lost both of his parents in a Nazi concentration camp, he stated that as a Jew he had wanted to do everything in his power to keep an analogous fascism from creeping into France through the French-Algerian War. Interview with Pierre Vidal-Naquet.

60. Mauriac, Bloc-notes, 1:499

61. Vidal-Naquet, L’Affaire Audin, 30

62. Vidal-Naquet went further and claimed that racism with regard to a sans nom patronymique such as Mohammed might prevent the French from getting active in the efforts to end the war. Hence, because Audin was “French,” the French would be more inclined to express outrage at his treatment. The expression “sans nom patronymique” referred to people without traditional French names.

63. Duclos, “L’Allocution de Jacques Duclos.”

64. In 1961 the members of the Bureau of the Comité Maurice Audin were Laurent Schwartz, president; Jean Dresh and Henri Marrou, vice-presidents; Michel Crouzet, Jacques Panijel, Madeleine Rebérioux, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, secretaries. In an interview Vidal-Naquet stated that, as the Comité continued its efforts to discover the truth concerning Audin’s case, one of the greatest obstacles was the PCF. According to Vidal-Naquet, the PCF tried to make sure that every time Audin’s name was mentioned it was done with reference to it. Tensions grew so strong between the Comite, the Audin family (Audin’s wife was a strong PCF supporter), and the PCF that Vidal-Naquet and other members of the Comité were nearly forced to resign. Interview with Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Paris, May 25, 1994

65. Schwartz, preface to L’Affaire Audin by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 53

66. With L’Affaire Audin, Vidal-Naquet demonstrated that the army’s claim that Audin had not been shot but escaped was contradicted by the evidence.

67. Bouvard, “La Sorbonne rend hommage à Maurice Audin,” 4

68. La Question was published in Paris by Éditions de Minuit on February 17, 1958. Minuit had become famous for its clandestine publishing activity during the Nazi occupation.

69. Alleg, The Question, with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre, 39

70. “Une Victoire” was first published in L’Express on March 6, 1958, but was immediately suppressed by the French government. It later became the introduction to Alleg’s work when La Question was republished in March 1958, and was again confiscated and destroyed by the government. Sections of the essay were then republished in L’Observateur on March 8 and in Le Canard enchainé on March 12. Another edition of La Question was published with Sartre’s essay in Switzerland by La Cité on April 11, 1958

71. Sartre, “A Victory,” introduction to The Question by Henri Alleg, 14–15. It is worth noting that the Algerian Muslims who were tortured were also French citizens, just not “French stock.”

72. Mauriac, Bloc-notes, 2:36

73. Mauriac, Lettres d’une vie, 340

74. Denise Barrat was later one of the anticolonialist intellectuals arrested for signing the Manifesto of 121

75. Domenach, “La Seconde victoire,” 6

76. “Note d’information à propos du livre de Henri Alleg intitulé ‘La Question,’ ” SHAT,1 H2464/D2, 3

77. Reprinted in The Question, 123. It is somewhat ironic that when he assumed his post as minister of culture under de Gaulle, Malraux was criticized by Algerians in much the same way as he criticized the government for Alleg’s treatment.

78. Sartre, “Le Peuple ne doit compter que sur lui-même,” Comité de Défence des Libertés Républicaines du VIe Arrondisement, BDIC, O pièce 362 rés.

79. Sartre, Témoignages et documents sur la guerre en Algérie, 3. Other anti-Gaullist intellectuals created a short-lived publication called Le 14 juillet in response to de Gaulle’s “illegitimate” ascension to power at the hands of the colons. Among those contributing were Mormand Babel, Jean-Louis Bedouin, Maurice Blanchot, André Breton, Marguriete Duras, Jean Duvignaud, Louis René des Forêts, Daniel Guérin, Claude Lefort, Gérard Legrand, Dionys Mascolo, Edgar Morin, Maurice Nadeau, Brice Parain, Marcel Péju, Benjamin Péret, Jean Pouillon, Jean François Revel, Jean Schuster, Gérard Spitzer, and Elio Vittorini. See Le 14 Juillet 1 (July 14, 1958); 2 (October 25, 1958).

80. Sartre, “Le Peuple ne doit compter sur lui-même.”

81. Bouhired remained in prison throughout the war. She was released afterward, and Vergès eventually married her. In a 1998 interview, Vergès told me that he much admired her during the war because she was in fact a revolutionary and was not claiming to be entirely innocent, unlike Djamila Boupacha. Interview with Jacques Vergès, Paris, June 20, 1998

82. Cited in The Gangrene, 12

83. See Beauvoir and Halimi, Djamila Boupacha, 203–46

84. Jeanson claimed that it was important for him to go into hiding and that he was actually asked to do so by the FLN leader because he had “in his hands” all the information concerning FLN activities in France. Interview with Francis Jeanson, December 11, 1993

85. Jeanson, “Cette Algérie, conquise et pacificiée… I,” 613

86. See Jeanson’s introduction and afterword to Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs

87. For the most complete history of the development of the Jeanson network see Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman’s Les Porteurs de valises. See also Marie-Pierre Ulloa’s superbly researched thesis, Francis Jeanson

88. Sartre’s letter read at the opening of the Jeanson trial (actually written by Claude Lanzmann, cited in de Beauvoir’s Force of Circumstance, 545–46) stated of Jeanson:

[T]his practical solidarity with the Algerian fighters was not dictated to him solely by the nobility of his principles or by his general wish to combat oppression wherever manifested; it sprang too from a political analysis of the situation in France itself. The independence of Algeria has in fact been won….

This independence, therefore, I repeat is a certain fact. What is not certain is the future of democracy in France. For the war in Algeria has made this country rotten. The increasing restriction of liberties, the disappearance of political life, the general acceptance of the use of torture, the permanent opposition of the military to the civil powers, are all marks of a development that one can without exaggeration qualify as Fascist. In the face of this development, the Left is powerless, and it will remain so as long as it refuses to unite its efforts with those of the only force which today is truly fighting the common enemy of Algerian and French liberties. And that force is the FLN.

This was the conclusion reached by Francis Jeanson, it is the conclusion I have reached myself. … those French people who are helping the FLN are not animated simply by noble sentiments with regard to an oppressed people, nor are they putting themselves at the service of a foreign cause; they are working for themselves, for their own freedom and for their future.

89. Jeanson, “Lettre à Jean-Paul Sartre,” 1535

90. “La Gauche française et le FLN.”

91. Daniel, “Socialisme et anti-colonialisme,” 809

92. “Réponse à Jean Daniel.”

93. Dionys Mascolo, one of the original founders of the Comité d’Action, was one of the principal motivators for the Manifesto of 121

94. Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 420

95. White, Genet, 411. See also Sartre, Saint Genet, for a fascinating discussion of Genet’s “Otherness.”

96. Cited in White, Genet, 411

97. Morin, “Les Intellectuels et l’Algérie,” 5

98. Mascolo, “Lettre,” 3

99. Jeanson, Notre Guerre, 14–15

7. The Politics of Othering

1. By Franco-Algerian or Franco-Muslim reconciliation I mean attempts to find a Political or social solution to the war. Whereas for procolonialist intellectuals reconciliation meant the continued existence of France in Algeria, for anticolonialist intellectuals (at least during the first years of the war), it meant something much more vague, best described as continued cultural and intellectual cooperation between the two sovereign states of France and Algeria.

2. For Sartre’s uses of the concept see Being and Nothingness and Anti-Semite and Jew; for Fanon’s see Black Skin, White Masks

3. Jean-François Lyotard, the French intellectual credited with coining the term postmodern, was extremely active in the struggle against the colonial regime in Algeria during decolonization. See Lyotard’s contributions to the journal Socialisme et barbarie

4. See Schalk, War and the Ivory Tower, 104, 302n48. After amnesty Maschino was allowed to return to France, where he consciously attempted to take on an Algerian identity (under his adopted Arabic name Tarik, following his mar-riage to Fadéla M’Rabet). He later became a lycée professor of philosophy and turned extremely conservative. In 1984 he published Voulez-vous vraiment des enfants idiots?, in which he attacked the youth of his time for intellectual laziness. He continues to write on French educational issues.

5. Maschino, “Pour les français l’algérien lui-même,” 6

6. Jacques Berque, “Étude pour un nouvelle méthode politique de la France au Maroc” (rédigée à Rabat le 1er mars 1947), 8, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, sc7, Dr 4

7. Berque, Arabies, 175

8. Berque, “Leçon inaugurale,” 6, faite le samedi, l décembre 1956, Collége de France, Chair d’Histoire Sociale de l’Islam Contemporain, Bibliothéque de le Musée de l’Homme. The importance of this lecture is also noted by Albert Hourani in his essay, “In Search of a New Andalusia: Jacques Berque and the Arab,” in Islam in European Thought, 129–35

9. Fanon made a similar argument about the power of the radio during the Algerian revolution.

10. Berque, “L’Inquiétude Arabe des temps modernes.”

11. Berque, “The North of Africa,” 18–19. Here Berque is referring to Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew; he also comments on Camus’s contribution.

12. Louis Massignon, “Colloque universitaire du 2 juin 1957 sur le ‘problème algérien,’ ” in Opera Minora, 3:668

13. Jacques Berque and Louis Massignon, “Dialogue sur ‘les Arabes.’ ”

14. Bourdieu, Algerians. The revised edition of La Sociologic de l’Algérie (1970) included an important additional chapter, “The Revolution within the Revolution,” first published as “Révolution dans la révolution” in the October 1961 issue of Esprit

15. Methodologically, these terms were significant to Bourdieu’s account of Algerian identity because they combined structuralism and phenomenology.

16. Tillion, France and Algeria, 56

17. The first half of France and Algeria was devoted to a discussion of the relationships between Algerian and French patriots; the second half focused on the clear divisions created by the radicalization of the revolution. The divisions, she claimed, represented “Volume One” and “Volume Two” of human history.

18. “The war, following inflexible laws, though every day intensifying the practical mixture of the two populations and their anxious curiosity about each other, has seemed to divide them further and further. Between them stretches the smooth, fragile, but continually renewed partition that isolates two elements: air, water—autonomous universes. Nothing was more alarming than to listen to the echoes of two worlds so close and so distant, and to lean over mute Algeria, when the chatter of fraternization still vibrated in our memory” (172).

19. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, 189

20. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, Theory of Practical Ensembles. For a comprehensive analysis see McBride, Sartre’s Political Theory, and Laing and Cooper, Reason and Violence.

21. Sartre was not only attacking anthropology in Critique. He claimed that both “sociology” and “economism” had to be “dissolved in history” (716). More specifically, he criticized the “contemporary work of sociology” (Tillion) that used the term “pauperization” to explain the relationship between “backward” and industrial societies. In fact, he went as far as to claim that “the term ‘pauperization’ and the pseudo-concept which underlies it become utterly useless” because “they are both designed to take us modestly back to the process.”

22. In an interview, Lévi-Strauss told me that as an anthropologist he did not feel qualified to offer his opinions on decolonization in Algeria. Indeed, one of the problems during the French-Algerian War, according to him, was that too many unqualified intellectuals were entering the debates without sufficient expertise on the subject. He also expressed regret that so many French intellectuals had been for Algerian independence, since it was clear that Algeria’s leaders had been unable to lead the nation properly. Interview with Claude Lévi-Strauss, May 28, 1994

23. Lévi-Strauss, Savage Mind, 245. It is important to note that Lévi-Strauss dedicated Savage Mind to Merleau-Ponty.

24. Aron, History and the Dialectic of Violence

25. In Savage Mind Lévi-Strauss did admit that “in both our cases Marx is the point of departure of our thought” (246).

26. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21

27. There are important similarities between Levinas’s and Louis Massignon’s use of “hospitality.” Both use the term to describe ethical relations between individuals.

28. Berque, French North Africa, 331

29. “For the European, who, or rather, what was the ‘native’? A menace, an uncertain quality, something to be made use of or at best to be taken care of” (388).

30. Sartre, review of Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, précédé du Portrait du colonisateur

31. Sartre, introduction The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi, xxii.

32. Laing and Cooper, Reason and Violence, give a very good explanation of Sartre’s obsession with this issue.

33. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 9

34. It is pretty clear here that Memmi was warning against the excessive use of force by organizations such as the FLN and MNA.

35. In an interview, Memmi told me that part of the reason he decided to write Dependence (the follow-up to The Colonizer and the Colonized) was his desire to avoid unnecessary violence and move beyond strict binary categories. Interview with Albert Memmi, Paris, October 6, 1993

36. Fanon, Dying Colonialism, 24

37. Fanon, “Pourquoi nous employons la violence.” Fanon was appointed ambassador for Algeria’s provisional government in Accra in 1960

38. According to Simone de Beauvoir, it was Fanon who asked Sartre to write the preface to The Wretched of the Earth. See Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, 591

39. The Melun Conference, held June 25–29, 1960, was the first important step in arriving at the cease-fire that would be secured by the Evian Accords. It was announced on June 14 when de Gaulle stated publicly that France was willing to negotiate with the “insurrection’ ”s leaders, the GPRA. Because de Gaulle demanded a conditional cease-fire before talks could begin, the conference was quickly abandoned by the FLN.

40. Sartre, preface to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, 24

41. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 36

42. Others such as Feraoun and Camus did understand that the violence of the French-Algerian War would not simply disappear after independence. Camus warned against this throughout the war, and Feraoun wrote about it quite extensively in his Journal. Here it must be stated that while Fanon (as a non-Algerian) helped solidify the mythology of violence, Feraoun (as an Algerian) and Camus (as a pied noir) understood that violence would pose a danger for Algerians because they would be unable to avoid the authoritarianism of the FLN, which relied almost uniquely on this violence.

43. Fanon went still further in borrowing Aimé Césaire’s expression when defining what it would mean to educate the masses politically after independence: it would mean “to invent souls.”

44. For Sartre, the question of the youth was extremely important because, according to him, “the only true men of the left in France today were found among those under twenty years old.” Karol, “Un Entretien avec Jean-Paul Sartre,” 2

45. “Entretien avec Jean-Paul Sartre,” 3

46. Daniel, “Essai ‘Les Damnés de la terre’ par Frantz Fanon,” 36

47. Daniel, Le Blesseur, 65

48. Daniel also wrote that Sartre was hypocritically attacking the “West, Europe, France, the bourgeoisie” at the same time that he denied his membership in each of these communities. It was for this reason that he looked to Fanon, in whom he found “the exemplary alienated [l’aliéné exemplaire]” (69).

49. Daniel did not criticize only Sartre, he also attacked Mauriac and others, though for other reasons.

50. Bourdieu, “Révolution dans la révolution.” Bourdieu wrote the essay while teaching a course on Algerian culture at the University of Algiers. In publishing it he was taking dangerous chances. He had already been forced to go into hiding several times and was placed on the “red list”—the arrest and menace list of the French military. French colonels were present during lectures on Algerian culture, waiting to arrest him. Luckily, he managed to escape each of the attempted arrests. Interview with Pierre Bourdieu, March 30, 1994 Paris.

51. Aron, preface to Bourdieu’s Algerians, v.

52. Bourdieu, Algerians, 146

53. Bourdieu also acknowledged that Algerians were making a further distinction of the “Europeans of Algeria,” which meant essentially that, as with those of Spanish origin, the Algerians refused to “ascribe” to them the “qualities of the true Frenchmen” (152).

54. Bourdieu was undoubtedly relying on a phenomenological method to explain some of the cultural aspects of colonial society. For instance, he made several references to how the “looks” and “critical eyes of Europeans” altered Algerians’ behavior, one of the most salient examples being clothing (e.g., the veil) which according to him represented the symbolic “language of refusal” (157).

55. Speculative is Bourdieu’s word for Fanonian writing. In discussing his distrust for Fanon’s analysis, which was representative of many other writers, Bourdieu claimed: “But above all I wanted to get away from speculation—at the time, the works of Frantz Fanon, especially Wretched of the Earth, were the latest fashion, and they struck me as being both false and dangerous.” See “Field Work in Philosophy,” an interview with Axel Honneth, H. Kocyba, and B. Schwibs, reprinted in Bourdieu, In Other Words, 7

56. Interview with Pierre Bourdieu, March 30, 1994, Paris.

57. Ricardo René Laremont has also made this claim in Islam and the Politics of Resistance in Algeria. In particular, Laremont points out that Houari Boumediene—who overthrew Ahmed Ben Bella in 1965 in a coup d’état and instituted a firm authoritarian regime in Algeria—adopted Fanon’s ideas concerning the revolutionary potential of the Algerian peasantry. Laremont argues that because Fanon did not understand the importance of Islam, Fanon’s position on Islam did not have enduring consequences. However, Fanon’s misguided views on the peasantry and violence did have lasting importance because Boumediene appropriated them: “Besides embracing Fanon’s views on the peasantry’s role in the revolution, Boumediene fully accepted Fanon’s ideas about the need for violence to effect political change, and he shared Fanon’s suspicion and disdain for the urban bourgeoisie” (151).

58. See Stora, “Deuxième guerre algérienne?” In particular, Stora argues that the original violence of colonization in 1830 was further compounded by the anticolonial violence from 1954 to 1962. The authoritarian postindependence Algerian state continued to compound the violence in order to ensure the status of the FLN, until, finally, the Islamists employed the same pattern of mimicry in their attempt to overthrow the corrupt and abusive FLN in the 1990s. Fanon was without question one of the intellectuals who helped ensure the perpetuation of violence in the postcolonial era. Stora also writes: “Algerians find themselves confronted by a falsified overflowing memory [trop plein de mémoire] that valorizes the use of force, the overthrow of society by armed struggle. The memory of the war of independence is transmitted in a magnified, legendary, heroic manner according to one theme: France was defeated militarily, defeated by arms. This history depicts violence as good, as the decisive ‘motor’ [of history].” Stora, “Algérie: absence et surabondance de mémoire,” 150. See also Carlier, “D’une Guerre à l’autre.”

59. It goes without saying that the French right and extreme right (especially the OAS and CNR) were in very real terms far more dangerous than the left.

8. The Legacy of Violence

1. For an early warning, see Bourdieu and Sayad, Le Déracinement

2. Roberts, Battle Field Algeria, 354. For Algerian comments on this shift during the war, see Feraoun, Journal

3. Julliard, “La morale on question,” 357

4. Vidal-Naquet, Torture

5. For more on the OAS, see my essay, “Before the Jackal,” in Assassination!

6. See Death Squadrons: The French School, directed by Marie-Monique Robin (New York: Icarus Films, 2003).

7. Cohen, “Algerian War,” 219

8. See Le Sueur, “Torture and the Decolonization of French Algeria”; see also Branche, La Torture et l’armée, and Aussaresses, Battle for the Casbah

9. Massu, La Vraie Bataille d’Alger, 168

10. For a full account of this debate, see Cohen, “Algerian War,” 219–39

11. Le Monde, June 22, 2000. See also Shatz, “Torture of Algiers,” 53–56

12. “L’appel à la condamnation de la torture durant la guerre d’Algérie,” L’Humanité, October 31, 2000

13. Bigeard, J’ai mal à la France, 174

14. Ighilahriz, L’Algérienne, 258

15. For Jacques Massu, see Le Monde, November 22 and November 24, 2000

16. Cited from BBC News, January 9, 2001

17. New York Times, January 26, 2002

18. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, 152–53. Alan Dershowitz had already argued on November 8, 2001, in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, for the introduction of torture warrants in the United States’ fight against terrorism.

19. It is worth pointing out that crevette, the French word for shrimp, sounds like the verb crever—to die painfully.

20. Alleg, Retour sur “La Question,” 22

21. Le Monde, October 28, 2002

22. “Le nouvel appel des 12,” L’Humanité, May 13, 2004. This petition was again signed by eleven of the original twelve. Laurent Schwart had died in July 2002

23. Stora, Algeria, 1839–2000, 181–82

24. Taleb Ibrahimi, De la décolonisation à la révolution culturelle, 16

25. See Abbas, L’indépendance confisquée.

26. Stora, Algeria 1839–2000, 191

27. Larzeg, Eloquence of Silence, 155. For a full discussion of the Family Code, see Larzeg’s description on pp. 150–57

28. Messaoudi, Unbowed, 48. Khalida Messaoudi has since retaken her maiden name and now goes by Khalida Toumi.

29. Messaoudi, Unbowed, 72–74

30. Djebar, Algeria White, 228–29

31. Germaine-Robin, Femmes rebelles d’Algérie, 79

32. Quandt, Between Ballots and Bullets, 66

33. “Être femme en Algérie,” Lien Social 656 (March 2003).

34. Interview with Alek Toumi, January 15, 2002. Hereafter referred to as “interview” in the text.

35. See Mouffok, Être journaliste en Algérie

36. In 1991, Anouar Haddam was elected to the Algerian National Assembly from Tlemcen as a member of the FIS party. After the government canceled the second round of the elections in January 1992, he fled the country. In April 1993 Haddam filed for asylum with the Chicago Asylum Office in the United States. Haddam took up residence in Washington DC, as the leader of the FIS in exile. At the same time, according to Rachid Boudjedra, Haddam also helped recruit young Algerians to fight in Afghanistan on behalf of the cia; see Boudjedra, Lettres algériennes, 205. In December 1996, Haddam’s asylum request was denied and he was taken into custody by the United States government. At the same time, charges were brought against him by U.S.-based human rights organizations citing terrorist campaigns waged by the FIS and GIA of the kind which had targeted Toumi’s sister. Haddam later was held by the U.S. Justice Department, on order of Attorney General Janet Reno, on “secret evidence” charges in November 1997. He remained in custody until February 2002. While in an American jail in 1997, he was condemned to death in absentia by the Algerian government, and the U.S. government has refused to extradite him to Algeria because it believes his life is still in danger there.

37. See Messaoudi, “Le voile, c’est notre étoile jaune,” Le Nouvel Observateur 22–28 (September 1994): 11–12

38. See Souaïdia, La sale guerre. See also Souaïdia, Le procès de la sale guerre

39. De beauvoir à beau voile and Ben M’hidi are not yet published.

40. “Discours de Monsieur Jacques Chirac président de la république a l’occasion de la journée d’hommage national aux harkis,” Interpress Service, October 1, 2001, http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/francais/interventions/discours_et_ declarations/2001/septembre/discours_de_m_jacques_chirac_president_ de_la_republique_a_l_occ…

41. Dominique de Villepin, “Algeria Year” and “Opening Speech by Mr. Dominique de Villepin, Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Paris, November 6, 2002, France-diplomatie. See also Dominque de Villepin, Toward a New World (New York: Melville House, 2004).

42. Elaine Sciolino, “Algerians Give Chirac a Warm Welcome,” New York Times, March 3, 2003

43. Barry James, “Chirac’s Trip to Algeria Seen as a Balancing Act,” International Herald Tribune, February 27, 2003

44. Elizabeth Bryant, “Chirac Softens Tone on Baghdad,” United Press International, March 4, 2003

45. Elaine Sciolino, “Hostages Urge France to Repeal Head Scarf Ban,” New York Times, August 31, 2004. After this manuscript went to press, these journalists were released in December 2004, after four months of captivity.

Conclusion

1. As cited in Claude Liauzu, “Une loi contre l’histoire,” Le Monde diplomatique 52, no. 613 (April 2005): 28