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Colonialism is a System* 19 institutions, that room would be made in the French National Assembly for a hundred Algerian members of parliament, that the Muslims would be assured a standard of living equal to that of the French through effecting agricultural reform and the industrialization of the country. Assimilation taken to its extreme meant, quite simply, the ending of colonialism; how could one expect to get that from colonialism itself? But, since the colonists have nothing but hardship to offer the colonized, since they keep them at a distance, since they make them a bloc which cannot be integrated, this radically negative attitude must have the necessary concomitant of producing an awakening among the masses. The effect of the liquidation of the feudal structures, after weakening Arab resistance, has been to facilitate this collective awareness; new structures are born. It is as a reaction to segregation and in the daily struggle that the Algerian personality has discovered itself and has been forged. Algerian nationalism is not simply a revival of ancient traditions, old attachments; it is the only way for the Algerians to put an end to their exploitation. We saw Jules Ferry declare in Parliament: ‘Where there is political predominance, there is economic predominance …’ The Algerians are dying of our economic predominance, but they draw benefit from this lesson: to rid themselves of it, they have decided to attack our political predominance. Thus the colonists themselves have taught their adversaries; they have shown the hesitant that no solution was possible other than force. The only good thing about colonialism is that, in order to last, it must show itself to be intransigent, and that, by its intransigence, it prepares its ruin. We, the people of mainland France, have only one lesson to draw from these facts: colonialism is in the process of destroying itself. But it still fouls the atmosphere. It is our shame; it mocks our laws or caricatures them. It infects us with its racism; as the Montpellier episode proved the other day, it obliges our young men to fight despite themselves and die for the Nazi principles that we fought against ten years ago; it attempts to defend itself by arousing fascism even here in France. Our role is to help it to die. Not only in Algeria but wherever it exists. People who talk of the abandonment of Algeria are imbeciles. There is no abandoning what we have never owned. It is, quite the opposite, a question of our constructing with the Algerians new relations between a free France and a liberated Algeria. But above all let us not allow ourselves to be diverted from our task by reformist mystification. The neocolonialist is a fool who still believes that the colonial system can be overhauled – or a clever cynic who proposes reforms because he knows that they are ineffective. The reforms will come in their own good time: the Algerian people will make them. The only thing that we can and ought to attempt – but it is the essential thing today – is to fight alongside them to deliver both the Algerians and the French from colonial tyranny.
Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized* Only the southern Confederates are qualified to talk about slavery: that is because they know the Negro; the Yankees of the north, abstract puritans, only know Man, who is an entity. This fine reasoning is still employed: in Houston, in the New Orleans press, and also, since one is always somebody’s Yankee, in ‘French’ Algeria. The newspapers there keep telling us that only the colonists are qualified to talk about the colony: we, the people of mainland France, do not have their experience; we will see the burning land of Africa through their eyes or we will see only fire. I recommend those who are intimidated by this blackmail read The Colonized and the Colonizer. This time it is experience against experience; the author, a Tunisian, has recounted, in The Pillar of Salt, his bitter childhood. What is he exactly? Colonizer or colonized? He himself would say: neither one nor the other; you will say, perhaps: both one and the other; it comes down to the same thing. He belongs to one of the indigenous but non-Muslim groups, ‘relatively privileged compared with the colonized masses and … rejected … by the colonizing groupings’ who nonetheless do not ‘completely discourage’ their efforts to become integrated into European society. United with the subproletariat by a de facto solidarity, separated from it by meagre privileges, their members live in * Les Temps Modernes, Nos. 137–138, July–August 1957. a perpetual malaise. Memmi has experienced this double solidarity and this double rejection: the movement which pits the colonists against the colonized, the ‘colonists who refuse their identity’ against the ‘colonists who accept it’. He understood this so well because he first felt it as his own contradiction. He explains very well in his book that this tearing apart of the soul, the pure internalization of social conflicts, does not encourage action. But, if he becomes aware of himself, if he realizes his complicity, his temptations and his exile, the person who suffers from it can enlighten others by talking about himself: a ‘negligible force in the confrontation’, this suspect individual represents nobody; but, since he is everybody at once, he is the best of witnesses. But Memmi’s book does not tell a story: if it is nourished with memories, he has assimilated them all; it gives form to an experience. Between the colonists’ racist usurpation and the future nation that the colonized will build, in which he ‘suspects he will have no place’, he attempts to live his particularity by transcending it towards the universal. Not towards Man, who does not yet exist, but towards a rigorous Reason which applies to all. This sober and clear work can be classified under ‘passionate geometries’: its calm objectivity is suffering and anger overcome. It is because of this, no doubt, that he might be reproached for an appearance of
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Albert Memmi’s<br />
The Colonizer and the Colonized*<br />
Only the southern Confederates are qualified to talk about slavery: that is because they<br />
know the Negro; the Yankees of the north, abstract puritans, only know Man, who is an<br />
entity. This fine reasoning is still employed: in Houston, in the New Orleans press, and<br />
also, since one is always somebody’s Yankee, in ‘French’ Algeria. The newspapers there<br />
keep telling us that only the colonists are qualified to talk about the colony: we, the<br />
people of mainland France, do not have their experience; we will see the burning land of<br />
Africa through their eyes or we will see only fire.<br />
I recommend those who are intimidated by this blackmail read The Colonized and the<br />
Colonizer. This time it is experience against experience; the author, a Tunisian, has<br />
recounted, in The Pillar of Salt, his bitter childhood. What is he exactly? Colonizer or<br />
colonized? He himself would say: neither one nor the other; you will say, perhaps: both<br />
one and the other; it comes down to the same thing. He belongs to one of the indigenous<br />
but non-Muslim groups, ‘relatively privileged compared with the colonized masses and<br />
… rejected … by the colonizing groupings’ who nonetheless do not ‘completely<br />
discourage’ their efforts to become integrated into European society. United with the subproletariat<br />
by a de facto solidarity, separated from it by meagre privileges, their members<br />
live in<br />
* Les Temps Modernes, Nos. 137–138, July–August 1957.<br />
a perpetual malaise. Memmi has experienced this double solidarity and this double<br />
rejection: the movement which pits the colonists against the colonized, the ‘colonists who<br />
refuse their identity’ against the ‘colonists who accept it’. He understood this so well<br />
because he first felt it as his own contradiction. He explains very well in his book that this<br />
tearing apart of the soul, the pure internalization of social conflicts, does not encourage<br />
action. But, if he becomes aware of himself, if he realizes his complicity, his temptations<br />
and his exile, the person who suffers from it can enlighten others by talking about<br />
himself: a ‘negligible force in the confrontation’, this suspect individual represents<br />
nobody; but, since he is everybody at once, he is the best of witnesses.<br />
But Memmi’s book does not tell a story: if it is nourished with memories, he has<br />
assimilated them all; it gives form to an experience. Between the colonists’ racist<br />
usurpation and the future nation that the colonized will build, in which he ‘suspects he<br />
will have no place’, he attempts to live his particularity by transcending it towards the<br />
universal. Not towards Man, who does not yet exist, but towards a rigorous Reason which<br />
applies to all. This sober and clear work can be classified under ‘passionate geometries’:<br />
its calm objectivity is suffering and anger overcome.<br />
It is because of this, no doubt, that he might be reproached for an appearance of
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