Chapter 2: A Silence that Never Was? Appropriating the Algerian War of Independence

Lotem, Itay

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-63719-4_3

Itay Lotem⁴

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Abstract

In 1991, the historian Benjamin Stora embarked on a mission to confront the French with their Algerian history. In a period when introspection concerning the role of France and the French during the years of Nazi occupation was turning into a defining feature of French discourse, Stora turned his gaze towards the Algerian War of Independence. Notably, he identified a specific kind of malaise—a particular silence about the war—that was eating into the flesh of French society. Confronting it, he claimed, would heal the nation’s wounds and put it on the road to recovery. In so doing, Stora presented himself as the first and foremost memory activist, a public figure who sought to break the silence on Algeria. Convinced by the power of images to shape people’s consciousness, Stora used documentaries to reach larger audiences, a countermeasure against the forgetfulness about Algeria. His first television production, Les années algériennes, included an interview with Jean-Pierre Farkas, a veteran of Algeria, who tried to find a way to speak of the silence he had encountered since returning from the war:

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Notes

1.
The name of the war that took place in Algeria is just as fraught as the war itself. The general term used in France was La guerre d’Algérie. This denomination became increasingly problematic in the 1990s. First, it assumed a French perspective that marginalised any other wars in Algeria. Second, the civil war in Algeria, sometimes called the ‘Second Algerian War’, blurred the definition. Benjamin Stora coined the term La revolution algérienne. This, however, minimises the event’s character as a war. James Lesueuer introduced the term ‘French–Algerian War’, which is problematic in that it assumes parity between France and Algeria and thus overlooks the war’s colonial context. More recently, French scholars have adopted the term La guerre d’indépendence algérienne, which this work will largely adopt. However, the name ‘Algerian War’ still has its merits as the term used in primary sources and for the sake of brevity in some cases.
2.
Jean-Pierre Farkas in Les années algériennes, 1991. Also quoted in Stora, 1991, p. 266.
3.
Stora, 2001.
4.
See, for example, Peyrouglou, Jean-Pierre, Bouchène, Abderrahmane, Tengour, Ouanassa Suari and Thénault, Sylvie (eds.), Histoire de l’Algérie coloniale (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), and Shepard, 2006.
5.
For general works on the Algerian War of Independence, see Stora, Benjamin, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie (La Découverte, 2004); Thénault, Sylvie, Histoire de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne (Paris: Flammarion, 2005).
6.
The popular use of the term ‘guerre sans nom’ began with the release of Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary film of the same name in 1992.
7.
For a reflection on the processes involved in imbuing wars with meaning on a national scale, see Dan Todman’s work on the developing narratives on the Great War in Britain: Todman, Dan, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007).
8.
For the most detailed account of the French military’s use of torture, see Branche, Raphaëlle, La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).
9.
Cohen, William, ‘The Sudden Memory of Torture: The Algerian War in French Discourse, 2000–2001’, in: French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 19, no. 3, Fall 2001, p. 83.
10.
France-observateur, no. 244, 13.01.1955: an article published by the former deportee and member of the resistance Claude Bourdet.
11.
See Cohen, 2001, p. 83; see also Berchadsky, Alexis, La Question d’Henri Alleg: un livre évènement dans la France en guerre d’Algérie (juin 1957–juin 1958) (Larousse, 1994).
12.
Stora, 1991.
13.
For a discussion of the representation of Algeria in the metropole prior to the referendum, see Shepard, 2006.
14.
See Branche, 2005, p. 29. See also Gacon, Stéphane, L’amnistie, De la Commune à la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Seuil, 2002), p. 257, where Gacon notes that the amnesty had not been negotiated in Evian, but rather resulted from a French initiative, which then proceeded to present it as ‘reciprocate’.
15.
Quoted in Branche, 2005, p. 29.
16.
Amnesties did not initially apply to porteurs de valises, deserters and members of the OAS, all of whom played a role in an inter-French conflict. See Branche, 2005, p. 29 and Cohen, William, The Algerian War, the French State, Official Memory, in: Historical Reflections, vol. 19, no. 3, 2002, p. 223.
17.
For a discussion of amnesties in the context of Vichy, see Rousso, Henry, ‘Vichy, le grand fossé’, in: Vingtième siècle, revue d’histoire, vol. 5, no. 5, 1985, pp. 55–80.
18.
Djamila Boupacha, a former FLN activist, filed suit in France after she had been arrested and tortured in 1960. See de Beauvoir, Simone and Halimi, Gisèle, Djamila Boupacha (Paris: Gallimard, 1962).
19.
Maurice Audin, a Communist mathematics instructor at the University of Algiers, was arrested in 1957 and disappeared. The case mobilised public opinion and the very active Audin Committee was created to keep the case in the public eye. After the dismissal of the representative lawsuit, his widow continued to seek justice for his wrongful death and won only 100,000 francs in compensation for her and their children 15 years later. See Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, L’Affaire Audin (Paris: Minuit, 1989).
20.
Berchadsky, 1992, pp. 12–13.
21.
Courrières, Yves La Guerre d’Algérie, four volumes (Paris: Fayard, 1968–1972); for the figure of a million copies sold, see Stora, 1991, p. 242 and Branche, 2005, p. 21.
22.
Branche, 2005, p. 21.
23.
ORTF, Journal télévisé, 3 June 1970 and 10 June 1970.
24.
ORTF, Journal télévisé de 13h, 25 March 1972.
25.
Pâris de Bollardière, Jacques, Bataille d’Alger, bataille de l’homme (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972) and Roy, Jules, J’accuse le général Massu (Paris: Seuil, 1972).
26.
See Cohen, 2001, p. 86 on different polls showing that a majority of French men and women accepted the use of torture in the war.
27.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, La torture dans la République: essai d’histoire et de politique contemporaines, 1954–1962 (Minuit, 1972). In Italy it had been published under the name Lo Stato di Tortura (Rome: Laterza, 1963), while its British title was Torture: Cancer of Democracy (London: Penguin, 1963).
28.
See Branche, 2005, p. 23.
29.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, Mémoires. Le trouble et la lumière, 1955–1998 (Paris: Seuil/La Découverte, 1998), p. 353.
30.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, Les crimes de l’armée francaise (Paris: Maspero, 1975), p. 11.
31.
For the number of victims see Cohen, 2002, p. 223.
32.
See Stora, 1991, pp. 265–6.
33.
See Interview with Serge Drouot, Head of the FNACA’s Memory Committee, Paris, 27 June 2018.
34.
Stora, 1991, p. 267.
35.
JORF, Loi n° 74-1044 du 9 décembre 1974.
36.
Le Monde, 18 October 1977.
37.
See Cohen, 2002, p. 224 on the way ‘events in North Africa’ was used as an umbrella term for the Algerian War, together with the skirmishes in Tunisia and Morocco.
38.
Interview with Serge Drouot, 27 June 2018.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Ibid.
42.
See Branche, 2005, p. 48 and Pervillé, Guy, ‘La date commemorative de la guerre d’Algérie en France’, in: Cahiers d’histoire immediate, Toulouse, no. 26, autumn, 2004, p. 61. As the FNACA was close to the PCF, it is hardly surprising that most municipalities that chose to cooperate on the issue of 19 March were left-wing ones. Still, the left—right cleavage was not a given, and some centre—right municipalities also followed the FNACA’s lead.
43.
See pied-noir memory in Chap. 3.
44.
See Stora, 2001, p. 348 and Branche, 2005, p. 42. See also the FNACA’s publication L’ancien d’Algérie, no. 260, November, 1987.
45.
The conflict with the Mitterrand government reached its peak in 1990, when another demonstration was banned due to ‘fears for the public order’. L’ancien d’Algérie dedicated a whole volume to the ‘manifestation intérdite’: see L’ancien d’Algérie, no. 288, June–July, 1990.
46.
This expression was first used by Jacques Chirac in September 1996 in a declaration of intent. By 1999, it had become a common phrase used by many other politicians such as Jacques Floch and Alain Masseret. See Pervillé, 2004, p. 64 and Libération, 10 June 1999.
47.
Libération, 10 June 1999.
48.
See JORF, Loi n° 99-882 du 18 octobre 1999, accessible at: http://legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000578132 (accessed on 19 June 2015).
49.
See for example Julien Dray in: Reuters, 10 June 1999.
50.
Libération, 10 June 1999.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Ibid.
53.
See Chap. 3 for more links to the memory of Vichy.
54.
On this issue, see Branche, 2002, p. 43.
55.
For more on the memory of veterans, see Dalisson, Rémi, Guerre d’Algérie: L’impossible commémoration (Paris: Armand Colin, 2018).
56.
These testimonies include: Périot, Gérard, Deuxième Classe en Algérie (Paris: Flammarion, 1962); Le Cornec, Michel and Flament, Marc, Appelés en Algérie (Paris: Editions Jacques Grancher, 1964); Gohier, Jacques, Instructeur en Algérie (Rodez: Subervie, 1966); Labro, Philippe, Des Feux mal éteints (Paris: Gallimard, 1967); Machin, René, Djebel 56: En maintien de l’ordre en Algérie (Lettres du Monde, 1978); Fredefon, Luc, Le Grand Guignol ou la vie quotidienne d’un appelé en Algérie (Mérignac: Eddibor, 1981); Klotz, Claude, Les Appelés (Paris: JC Lattès, 1982); Frémont, Armand, Algérie, El Djezaïr. Les carnet de guerre et de terrain d’un géographe (Paris: Maspéro, 1982).
57.
France2; Stora, Benjamin and Pesnot, Patrick, Les années algériennes, 1991.
58.
Quoted in Branche, 2005, p. 92 and Fabre, Thierry, ‘France-Algérie: questions de mémoire’, in: Basfao, Kacem and Henry, Jean-Robert (eds.), Le Maghreb, l’Europe et la France (Paris: CNRS, 1992), p. 354.
59.
‘Entretien de Benjamin Stora avec Dimitri Nicolaidis’, in: Nicolaidis, Dimitri (ed.), Oublier nos crimes? L’amnésie nationale, une spécificité française? (Paris: Autrement, 2002), p. 211.
60.
Branche, 2005, p. 90.
61.
The introspection of the Vichy past owed to a process of historical scholarship, most notably with the publication of Robert Paxton’s work, an increasing visibility of the Holocaust in popular—and mostly international—culture and Jewish activism. See Rousso, 1987 and Conan, Éric and Rousso, Henry, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Paris, Fayard, 1994).
62.
Branche, 2005, p. 92.
63.
See Stora, Benjamin, Le Dictionnaire des livres de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Harmattan, 1996). In this work, Stora lists over 2000 books relating to the Algerian War of Independence.
64.
See Cohen, 2002, p. 228.
65.
Paris-Match, 13 September 1990. Also quoted in Stora, 1991, p. 348; Cohen, 2002, p. 229; and many others.
66.
Coulon, Alain, Connaissance de la guerre d’Algérie. Trente ans après: enquête auprès des jeunes français de 17 à 30 ans (Paris, 1993).
67.
See Interview Benoît Falaize with IL, 26.11.2014 and Interview Gilles Manceron with IL, 22 September 2014. Both spoke of an emotion they identified within networks of French left-wing academics and activists.
68.
On the role of public emotions within the emergence of debates, see Prochasson, 2008.
69.
See Chap. 3.
70.
Le Monde, 20 June 2000.
71.
Le Monde, 23 June 2000.
72.
Ibid.
73.
See Cohen, 2001, p. 227.
74.
For more about the reception of Ighilahriz’s testimony, see Vince, Natalya, ‘Colonial and Post-Colonial Identities: Women Veterans of the “Battle of Algiers”’, in: French History and Civilization, Vol. 2, 2009, pp. 163–168; see also Vince, Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, memory and gender in Algeria, 1954–2012 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 212–40.
75.
The most notable example was Le Monde’s publication of Kheira Garne’s story in November 2000. She had been raped and tortured by French soldiers and had then given birth to a child, Mohamed, who later sued the French state for recognition as a war victim. See Le Monde, 9 November 2000.
76.
La Croix, 3 March 2001.
77.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet in Le Monde, 27 November 2000.
78.
Le Monde, 23 November 2000.
79.
See Cohen, 2001, pp. 228–30 and Branche, 2005, pp. 51–2.
80.
Aussaresses, Paul, Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001).
81.
Most notably, see the appel des Douze in L’Humanité, demanding an official condemnation of torture, as ‘Le silence officiel serait ajouter au crime de l’époque une faute d’aujourd’hui’; see L‘Humanité, 31 October 2000. The signatories included the historians Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Madeleine Rebérieux, Henri Alleg and Gisèle Halimi.
82.
L’Humanité, 28 November 2000.
83.
Le Monde, 16 December 2000.
84.
See Branche, Raphaëlle, La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie (Paris; Gallimard, 2001). Branche’s thesis was published in 2001 at the same time as Thénault, Sylvie, Une drôle de justice: Les magistrats dans la Guerre d’Algérie (Paris: La Découverte, 2001).
85.
General Maurice Faivre, a former officer who had served in Algeria, became a defender of the army’s reputation against the left’s ‘campagne de désinformation’. For the publication of the book, beginning with a manifesto signed by 300 officers, he cooperated with a publishing house of the far right and many well-known figures of the far right. See Branche, 2005, pp. 63–4 and Faivre, Maurice et al., Livre blanc de l’armée française en Algérie (Paris: Contretemps, 2001).
86.
Interview with Raphaëlle Branche, Paris, 11 April 2018.
87.
Interview with Raphaëlle Branche, Paris, 11 April 2018.
88.
On 4 May 2002, just after the FN’s candidate made it to the second round of the presidential elections, Le Monde published an article on its front page with the image of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s army knife, which he had dropped after torturing a man in front of his wife and six children in 1957 in Algiers. The story of Le Pen’s personal involvement in torture was followed by a second article a month later with four other testimonies. Subsequently, Le Pen filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for libel, which he lost.
89.
General Maurice Schmitt, chief of the defence staff between 1986 and 1991, came into the spotlight in 2004 for his activity as the head of one of the most notorious detention and interrogation centres in Algiers, the école Sarouy. At the end of the year, a testimony dated from 1957 was published under the title of ‘Un été en enfer’. Just after the publication of the book, Le Monde published an article with testimonies of five Algerians who claimed Schmitt had been ‘chef d’orchestre’ of their torture. Schmitt’s public denial of this as ‘pure affabulation’ ended the affair. See Le Monde, 19 March 2005 and France Inter, 19 March 2005.
90.
In 2012, Florence Beaugé wrote in Le Monde that the press had stopped interrogating Schmitt due to ‘fatigue’ after the long years of the torture controversy. See Le Monde, 17 March 2012.
91.
As early as 1962, Vérité-Liberté published ‘documents sur le tortionnaire Le Pen’, while other articles about the far-right politician’s involvement in torture continued to appear at regular intervals, especially after the 1984 report by Le canard enchaîné and Le Pen’s subsequent recourse to the courts. See Branche, 2005, pp. 68–71; Stora, Benjamin, 1999, p. 84; Albertini and Doucet, 2013, pp. 115–18.
92.
Interview with Raphaëlle Branche, 11 April 2018.
93.
JORF, Débats du Sénat, séance du 5 octobre 1999, online at http://www.senat.fr/seances/s199910/s19991005/st19991005000.html (last accessed on 10 August 2019).
94.
Ibid.
95.
According to surveys by IFOP and the FNACA, 73% of French adults were in favour of the creation of a national commemoration day for the Algerian War in 1984 (54% for 19 March), a proportion which rose to 76% in 1996 (with 69% in favour of 19 March) and 89% in February 2007 (with 86% for 19 March); see Dalisson, 2018, pp. 212–6, but also Ifop, Les Français et la commémoration de la fin de la guerre d’Algérie, January, 2012, accessible online at: https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1787-1-study_file.pdf (last accessed: 20 January 2020).
96.
See Eldridge, 2016, pp. 180–191.
97.
See Pervillé, 2004, pp. 65–6.
98.
Discours de M. Masseret au 24e Congrès de la FNACA, accessible online at: http://discours.vie-publique.fr/notices/003002892.html (last accessed 24 June 2015).
99.
JORF, Assemblée nationale, Proposition n°3064, accessible online at: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/11/propositions/pion3064.asp (last accessed 24 June 2015).
100.
See Barcellini, Serge, ‘L’Etat républicain, acteur de mémoire: des morts pour la France aux morts à cause de la France’, in: Blanchard, Pascal and Veyrat-Masson, Isabelle (eds.) Les guerres de mémoires: La France et son histoire (Paris: La Découverte, 2008), pp. 209–20.
101.
JORF, Proposition n°3064.
102.
Texte adopté n°762, on http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/ta/ta0762.asp.
103.
Libération, 18 September 2003.
104.
Ibid.
105.
Mékachéra was a descendant of a prominent harki family which had been active in the French military for generations. However, he did not publicly evoke his harki heritage in this period, nor did the media focus on his harki roots.
106.
JORF, propositions nos. 789, 854 and 1028, the first in favour of 19 March, the second in favour of inclusion in existing 11 November celebrations and the third in favour of 5 December.
107.
Décret n° 2003-925 du 26 septembre 2003, accessible online at: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000797564 (last accessed 24 June 2015).
108.
Libération, 18 September 2003.
109.
République du Centre, 1 February 2010.
110.
See Alain Gal’s speech in Midi libre, 9 January 2010, bemoaning the passing away of more and more members. See also Interview with Serge Drouot, 27 June 2018, where he bemoaned that ‘there will be no FNACA in five years’ due to passing away of members.
111.
AFP, 10 March 2012.
112.
Le Figaro, 19 March 2012.
113.
AFP, 10 March 2012.
114.
Le Monde, 17 March 2012.
115.
This is supported by the 2011 change to school curricula that made ‘Les mémoires de la guerre d’Algérie’ a subject for the baccalauréat in history-geography. See the official French programme on Edusol: http://cache.media.eduscol.education.fr/file/H-G_2015/96/4/Ress_Hist_TermES-L_Theme1_memoires_503964.pdf (last accessed 10 July 2016).
116.
L’Histoire, May 2012.
117.
RFI, 20 May 2012.
118.
See Dalisson, 2018, pp. 154–160, but also Edusol’s curriculum for the history baccalauréat in the final year of high school (version 2012): https://cache.media.eduscol.education.fr/file/lycee/12/3/01_RESS_LYC_HIST_TermS_th1_309123.pdf (last accessed 20 January 2020).

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Lotem, I. (2021). Chapter 2: A Silence that Never Was? Appropriating the Algerian War of Independence. In: The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63719-4_3

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