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Remembering/Imagining Algeria in Contemporary French-Jewish Literature

Tue, December 18, 10:15 to 11:45am, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Federal 2 Complex

Abstract

This paper addresses the ways in which Algeria is remembered and imagined in contemporary French-Jewish literature. It analyzes the meeting point of universal nostalgia towards former mythical places in displaced communities, Jewish cultural patterns of exile and homeland, and the specificity of the French-Algerian-Jewish entangled history, through literary texts that reflect as much as they create the collective memory of French-Algerian Jews. It reflects on the negotiation of a delicate sense of belonging to Algeria which must acknowledge a complex, violent and still painful relationship between colonizing France and colonized Algeria and the paradoxical situation of the Jewish community of Algeria after the 1870 “Décret Crémieux” (a colonial ordinance granting French citizenship to Algerian Jews).
Benjamin Stora’s writings range from historiographical books on the Algerian war of independence to autobiographical memories of his Algerian childhood. Joann Sfar, born in France, recreates the Algerian scene in his highly popular comic books The Rabbi’s Cat and his animation movie based on the story of the iconic Rabbi. Based on the analysis of the relationship between space and self-identity in their works, this paper claims that both authors remember/imagine Algeria as a utopic space of merged and hybrid identities. This formulation of nostalgia and belonging questions the place of France and of French identity in the cultural identity of Algerian Jews.
This paper sheds light on the ongoing shaping of collective memory in the French-Jewish literature and on its relationship with the understanding of history and contemporary crises. Its exploration of a “Nostalgerian turn” in the formulation of the French-Jewish cultural identity contributes to the investigation of Sephardic identities in contemporary literature and reflects on the place of entangled history in the emergence of new reflections on Jewishness in present-day France.

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