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The Interplay betweenHistory/Memory/Space in TassaditImache’s: Presque un Frere andLe Dromadaire de BonaparteKarima Laachir

This article examines two texts by the postcolonial ‘Beur’ writer Tassadit Imache. It

analyses the way the texts represent the link between historical memory, social space andpersonal narratives. It assesses Imache’s criticism of French selective historical memory

and the way North African immigrants’ contribution to the economy and culture ofFrance has been ignored. Imache suggests that colonial violence, prejudice and hierarchy

are still exercising strong effects on the life of the youth of the banlieues, many of them areof North African origin. The differentiation of social space that had already been at workin colonial North Africa where the natives and the colonisers inhabit different social spaces

has been practised in France where spatial barriers have been implemented in big cities.Imache uses the space of the banlieue as the site of historical memory, the memory of

migration and colonial racism but also most significantly for the ‘Beurs’, it is a site ofrevolt against authority and the perpetuation of colonial racist attitudes.

Tassadit Imache is one of the most sophisticated ‘Beur’1 novelists. Her texts Une Fillesans histoire (1989), Le Dromadaire de Bonaparte (1995),2 Je veux rentrer (1998), and

Presque un frere (2000)3 problematise the relationship between history andautobiography, between memory and identity and between memory and space; in

her case, the space of the banlieue4 that has been inherited by many of the descendantsof North African immigrants in France. Like other classical ‘Beur’ writers such as

Mehdi Charef (1989), Nacer Kettane (1985) and Mehdi Lallaoui (2001), Imacheattempts a rereading of French colonial history in Algeria from a pluralistic point of

ISSN 0963-9489 (print)/ISSN 1469-9869 (online)/05/040449-16

q 2005 Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France

DOI: 10.1080/09639480500329531

Correspondence to: Karima Laachir, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

Email: K.Laachir@bham.ac.uk

Modern & Contemporary France

Vol. 13, No. 4, November 2005, pp. 449–464

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view while stressing the violent manifestations of its colonial legacy in contemporaryFrance.5 However, all her novels carry subtle autobiographical elements, marked by

her experience as the daughter of an Algerian immigrant father and a French mother,and her birth at the height of the Algerian war.

Imache’s texts were mostly published in the mid and late 90s. They engender newinterest in ‘Beur’ literature by the way they link narratives of the social space and

images of the colonial past with the present, while recognising the complexity of theintertwined histories of France and Algeria. Imache’s appeal to the interlinked

memory of colonialism, immigration and displacement is not simply used as a strategyto understand the present, but also to question ‘whether the past is really past, over andconcluded, or whether it continues albeit in different forms, perhaps’ (Said, 1994, p.I).

In other words, the past and present inform each other in her texts. Therefore,Imache’s texts constitute key postcolonial narratives, but remain relatively little

known. They displace and reshape the notions of centre (postcolonial France) andperiphery (marginalised ethnic North African communities) in different ways. Hall

(1996, p. 246) argues that one of the most important aspects of the concept of thepostcolonial is that of drawing attention to the fact that colonisation deeply

contaminated the culture of the colonisers and was always inscribed within them.Postcolonial perspectives may imply, as in the case of Imache’s texts, a reading ofdifferent cultural practices to free them from colonial ideologies, but it in no way

means a return to a pure set of ‘uncontaminated origins’, as the ‘long-term historicaland cultural effects of the “transculturation” which characterised the colonising

experience have proved to be irreversible’ (Hall, 1996, p. 247).Imache’s reading of the past and its political use in contemporary France is different

from other ‘Beur’ authors’ work on memory (such as Charef, Kettane and Lallaoui) fortwo main reasons. Firstly, Imache’s texts criticise postcolonial France for failing to

forge a positive history of post-war North African immigration in France, which hasconsiderably contributed to the prosperity of the country. Drawing on the history of

her immigrant Algerian father, Imache disavows the representation of the first-generation immigrants’ history in France as ‘guest labourers’ chained to servitude anddomination. She stresses that the parents’ displacement is historically linked to French

colonial history and the decolonisation process in their own countries. Imache’s textssuggest a remapping of the history of France in which colonial and postcolonial

immigrant parents are seen as historic figures strongly linked to the French imperialpast and not as outsiders with no relation to their ‘host country’. Her work reflects on

the selective nature of French memory, which does not recognise the contribution ofNorth Africans to the French economy and culture. It aims at ‘re-excavating and

re-charting the past from a postcolonial point of view, thereby erecting a new post-imperial space’ (Said, 2000, p.182).

Secondly, Imache’s texts are unique in focusing the postcolonial debate in France

on the site of the marginalised space of the banlieue. The term banlieue is not onlyloaded with negative meanings in the French popular imagination, but also in some

areas of sociological and social studies in France. The banlieue is usually referred to in

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a pathological way as quartiers en difficulte, or zones sensibles. It is usually equatedwith insecurity, crime, violence and a total rejection of French values and the French

way of life on the part of its ‘ethnic’ inhabitants. The French state has continuallypractised policies of spatial exclusion of the immigrants and their descendants;

therefore, the banlieue is known as a zone of economic, social and political exclusion(Silverstein, 2004). Imache’s use of colonial memory addresses the issue of the so-

called ‘banlieue syndrome’. Her reading of the colonial and anti-colonial history of thefirst-generation North African immigrants within France is strategically used to

highlight the continuity of past racist and colonialist exclusion in postcolonialFrance as practised within the space of the banlieue. Moreover, Imache establishes agenealogical link between the first generation and their descendants in their

anti-racist struggle and in their revolt against any attempt to confine or control them.Imache’s criticism is directed at the idea that the violence of the banlieues is

something inherent in the ethnicity of the youth and that their physical and culturaldifferences make them essentially violent and criminal. These ideas are part of the

colonial legacy of ‘ethnic’ segregation that Imache addresses in her novels. Her textsdo not explicitly challenge these depictions of young people of the banlieues which

regulate public official discourse about them. Rather, her texts, significantly andironically, reveal the contradictory essentialism of these depictions through thecharacters of the novels who come from a French mother and an Algerian father: an

embodiment of the entwined histories of both countries that resists any form oftotalisation.

This article will map out the significance of historical and colonial genealogy astraced in Imache’s texts in order to understand the reciprocity between the colonial

past and the postcolonial present and the way the violent legacy of the past has markedthe life of the descendants of North immigrants and their parents. It will begin by

exploring how and to what effect the history of immigration is subordinated to that ofFrench imperialism and its consequences in Le Dromadaire de Bonaparte. It will then

examine how, in Presque un Frere, Imache juxtaposes the violence of the colonial pastwith postcolonial marginalisation of the youth of the banlieues, many of whom haveNorth African origins. Finally, the article will consider how the space of the banlieues is

represented intertextually in Presque un Frere and some other ‘Beur’ texts as the site ofthe perpetuation of colonial violence, but also as a space that can be reappropriated by

its inhabitants. These texts are read in the light of theories of social space and especiallyanalyses of the colonial and postcolonial segregation of space.

Le Dromadaire Imperial and Forced Displacement

In Le Dromadaire de Bonaparte, Jasmine is one of the seven sisters born to an Algerianimmigrant father and a French mother. They were all raised in a Parisian banlieue

during and after the Algerian war. Jasmine and her sisters are haunted by their past,by the violence and the intricacies of their mixed origin. It is Jasmine, the eldest, who

is most troubled by the silence and absence of her dead father. She embarks upon the

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excavation of a certain colonial memory related to le dromadaire used by Bonaparteto move around during his invasion of Egypt in 1798. Imache suggests a link between

the history of the displaced camel that was forced to migrate to France with that ofthe enforced displacement of les premiers arrivants from North Africa. Jasmine

receives a letter from her sister Rosa about l’histoire of the historical camel in whichshe writes:

Il faut que je te raconte [. . .]. Pour une fois, j’avais pu prendre ma journee. J’etaispartie dans une petite ıle voisine. Et alors, imagine-toi, Jasmine, que je tombe sur unmusee africain. . .Non, ce n’est pas un canular! Le drapeau national flottait au-dessusde la porte d’une des maisons du village. A l’interieur, quelle mise en scene! Desl’entree, la gueule jaunie et sous-titree d’un aristocrate en casque colonial: lefondateur du musee lui- meme. Dans des vitrines, des animaux sauvages empaillessur des fonds decolores de desert, de savane, de jungle. [. . .] Enfin, je decouvre,comme plantee au milieu d’un reve, a deux metres de moi, une pauvre bete,harassee, a l’oeil vitreux, au poil pele. Un dromadaire d’Arabie. Sache que c’est celuique monta le general Bonaparte pendant la campagne d’Egypte! Ramene vivant enFrance, il est mort au jardin zoologique de Paris, ou il a ete naturalise et conserve.Une plaque gravee le certifie. Le Museum d’histoire naturelle en a fait don au grandvoyageur. Vois-tu, sans comprendre pourquoi, tout ca m’a beaucoup remuee. (DB,p.73)

Like Rosa, Jasmine is immensely intrigued by the history of the camel beyond the one

existing in the ‘Exposition coloniale’ on the small African Island (DB, p.26). Shechanges her job in the town hall to work in the archives in the hope of uncovering

some history on the subject, but instead she encounters documents on what she callsles tontons or the first-generation immigrants from North Africa (DB, p.79).

Jasmine treats the term ‘travaux de memoire’ that is put to her by the deputy mayorwith suspicion, since archives for her are not ‘facts’ but certain records that must readagainst their colonial, stereotyped background. In other words, les travaux de memoire

are for Jasmine linked to French imperial history, which had displaced a great numberof people, including her own father. Her search for the history of the displaced camel

is linked with her search for her own tonton, her father’s brother and the only relativethey know from their father’s family in France. The forced displacement of people due

to colonial and postcolonial economic and social upheavals is related in Jasmine’simagination with the captivity and enforced displacement of the poor animal:

‘Imaginez, cet animal historique, immobile, fatigue s’il en est! En captivite loin dessiens, porte les quatre fers en l’air sur le pont d’un bateau, les flancs mouilles d’ecume,decouvrant soudain a travers la brume glacee cet ılot presque! Lui qui croyait enfin

rentrer. . .’ (DB, p. 83). She expresses the same sympathy for les tontons or les etrangersqui viennent de l’autre cote de la mer as they remind her of her own exploited

immigrant father: ‘Ce qui est troublant. . .c’est qu’il y a entre eux et moi comme un airde famille!’ (DB, p. 33). A colleague in the town hall passes her a medical report that

describes the terrible illnesses suffered by the first North African immigrants inFrance (DB, p.31–33). She sees one of those over-exploited old tonton walking on a

street pavement: ‘Il tremble comme un parkinsonien. Ou un Vietnamien sous le

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napalm.’ She immediately thinks of telling him in his own language (which is herfather’s language) what she has learnt at the university that ‘il faut rentrer chez toi!’

but she cannot as she is transfixed to the spot ‘comme bete, pouffante de chagrin’(DB, p. 35). Like the historical camel, their journey is a one-way trip. North African

post-war immigration to France came as a result of the enduring effects of Frenchcolonial policies on the one hand and the shortage of labour in France after the war

on the other. The immigrants in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were mostly single maleworkers. Sayad (1999) argues that North African immigration to France is the

product of the destructive consequences of the modernisation of the villages that hadstarted during the colonial time and that had broken its traditional organisationpushing the peasants to proletarisation and poverty. France has refused to consider

the phenomenon of North African immigration as being historically bound tocolonialism.

Jasmine wants to visit the small island where the animal is kept in a museum. Shewrites to the Natural History Museum for more information. She is, however, sent a

letter in which she is told that the camel does not exist: ‘Le dromadaire de Bonaparten’existe pas et l’etiquetage du Musee est errone. Ce specimen fait partie des dons

qu’accordait le Museum national dans les annees 1930–1935 aux musees qui ledemandaient’ (DB, p. 84). Jasmine is not convinced that the displaced historicalcamel does not exist, but searching the French archives does not seem to be the

answer either. She sends a letter to the deputy mayor asking for permission to stopwork in the archives because of long illness, but she has given up hope of retrieving

the history of the displaced historical camel, not even acknowledged in officialrecords. Like the camel, her uncle tonton, whom they love very much but have lost

trace of a long time ago, is finally found by Lilas in a community cemetery of abanlieue (DB, pp.104–5). Jasmine claims that tonton had changed a lot and become

like their father in his last days, an exploited immigrant with bad health and nofinancial gains as he keeps on moving from one hotel to another with his wife and

daughters (DB, p.104). Like the camel, her uncle dies ignored, as their contribution tothe history of France is not even recognised officially. However, the history of ledromadaire marks the beginning of the French imperial conquest (the conquest of

Egypt in 1798) in North Africa and thus the uprooting of the camel from its own landto die in exile is the beginning of another enforced displacement of people under

colonial subjection. To escape from the confusion of her childhood memories,Jasmine starts to play her violin again. She is haunted by her double origin and the

‘history’ of her father: one of those long forgotten tontons, ‘un immigre de service’,who died, like the historical camel of Bonaparte, unrecognised in a land that was

never ‘his’. Imache’s text criticises the selective nature of the French memory andthe way it excludes the positive contribution of North African immigrants to thehistory and economy of France. It suggests redrawing a new map for the history of

France in which colonial and postcolonial immigrant parents are not perceived asoutsiders with no links to France, but as historic figures strongly linked to the French

imperial past.

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Colonial Violence and Prejudice: Past and Present

In Imache’s novels, the dilemma of her relationship with colonial and anti-colonialmemory in France is represented in a way that reflects the complexity of her position

as someone between two histories, the French and the Algerian. The memory of17 October 19616 is strongly present in Presque un frere through the testimony of

Helene, the French mother married to an Algerian immigrant at the time of theAlgerian war. Helene recalls:

On a regarde ensemble le spectacle religieux de la lucarne d’un grenier. On leur brisait lecrane, on les ramassait et on les soulevait la tete sanguinolente, personne ne comprenantleur langue, eux criant imma. Imma [mother in Arabic]. . . Le troupeau sourd, enuniforme, d’un meme visage, hurlait et frappait contre ces boucliers avec ses matraques,la vue de premier sang ne les rendait pas aveugles, l’odeur au contraire leur venait auxnarines et decuplait leur acuite visuelle. Apres avoir jete les corps, l’un derriere l’autrepar-dessus le parapet. Ils ont couru sur la rive, enfoncer les tetes dans l’eau noire etpuante. Ecraser quelques doigts qui se retenaient. (PF, pp.138–9, italics in original)

Here, colonial violence haunts postcolonial France. The passage occurs in a debate

between the French mother and the Algerian father about remembrance, history andtestimony for the coming generations. The Algerian father wants his child to bear

witness to the massacre of his ancestors to preserve their memory, but the motherwants to protect all her children from getting to know this violence so that they would

be spared the memory of the daily humiliation and racism that she and her husbandhad suffered. Helene wants to empower her children by making them totally ‘French’,that is, by imposing a certain selection of historical memory on them and by denying

them access to their Algerian father’s anti-colonial history. Helene reflects on thatmoment of history: the Algerian war, the massacre of 17 October 1961 and all the

hatred, racism and humiliation undergone by the immigrants and their families inFrance at the time of the war. She questions the way she has imposed amnesia on her

children growing up at the time of the war to protect them and how that has confusedthem further. She uses Greek mythology to reflect on the tragedy by referring to the

story of ‘Astyanax’.7 Helene thinks that she will empower her children by not exposingthem to the atrocities committed by the French against the Algerians during the war

and the humiliation she has undergone as the wife of the enemy. But she discovers thatinstead of protecting them she has made them vulnerable and confused about theirrelationship with their silent father. ‘Protection’ from the cruelty of colonial history is

her children’s ‘Achilles’ heel’. As a porteuse de memoire, Helene problematises thereception of the silenced memory of 17 October by future generations, how many

other people and how many of ‘Le Troupeau’8 would be aware of 17 October 1961?For Helene, memory is the reconstruction of the past, her own individual

experience of the war in Algeria as it happened within the French territories, especiallythe memory of 17 October 1961. However, her construction of that event is strongly

linked with the present revolt of the youth of the banlieue, which is under siege from‘the forces of order’, such as the police force and those in authority. She clearly sees

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their revolt as a revolt against despair, exclusion and racism in a way that reveals thecommonality of these oppressions among the anti-colonial generation of their parents,

though with changing historical circumstances. Besieged in her flat by therepresentatives of authority, or the ‘Office’,9 some soldiers from the city and the

university lecturer who is appointed to ‘study’ the people of les Terrains,10 who are allsurrounding the cite in an attempt to control the youths in revolt, Helene suggests that

the occultation of a certain history that France does not want to recognise, does nothelp heal the wounds of colonial crimes.

She is asked by the ‘Office’ to reflect on the violence of the banlieue where shelives or as they put it to her ‘ou a commence l’histoire’ (PF, p.125). She clearly linksthe history of les Terrains with that of the colonial history that the French have

consigned to amnesia. The representatives of the ‘Office’, however, ask her to starther ‘recit au commencement de l’histoire, et non aux origines’, a discourse that

severs the genealogical link with les origines colonialistes and thus explains theviolence and the conflicts in the banlieues by using migrancy as an explanation in

itself for all the misfortunes that have befallen the immigrants and their descendants(PF, p.137). This French official discourse shows a strategic blindness and refusal to

recognise the influence of the violent legacy of the colonial past in contemporaryFrench society. If Helene suggests colonial racism to be the focal point in theexclusion and violence of the youth of the banlieue, she subverts the official

discourse that explains them by reference to migrancy and thus blames theimmigrants and their descendants for being the cause of their own misfortunes.

In other words, when migrancy is seen as the only decisive element in explaining theexclusion of the ethnic banlieues, it allows opportunities for explanations that

‘legitimise’ the violence and hostility directed against the immigrants and theirchildren by their reluctant ‘hosts’ because they are seen as representing the reaction

of ‘ordinary people’ to ‘differences’.Xenophobia, hatred and violent murders in French society are strongly linked to

French imperial history with its long-established legacy of colonial racism. Thesequence of racial murders against the descendants of North African immigrants thatwere perpetrated in France especially during the 1980s has raised serious questions

about the failing role of the institutions of justice, the institutional racism of thepolice force and also most significantly the rising star of the Front National with its

racist and xenophobic politics. The famous Marche pour l’egalite et contre le racisme in1983 came as a response to the increasing number of racist massacres. Hundreds of

thousands of ‘Beurs’ marched in the big cities of France and ended their journey inParis. However, the promises they received from the socialist government were just

illusions as racist crimes have continued to haunt the young ‘Beur’ with the failingrole of the police force.11 The effects of colonialism as Fanon (1961) suggests are tohumiliate and dehumanise the natives, and it is this dehumanisation that is still at

work with the North African immigrants and their descendants.Helene’s sons and daughters of the Algerian immigrant are lost in les Terrains:

Tintin is looking for un contrat d’apprentissage but is always rejected by employers;

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Didi is about to leave prison; Amer passes time with his black friends; Zouzou orSabirna, her adopted daughter, is always lost and confused; Louisa disappears

following their disagreement about her abortion; and finally Lydia, who though verysuccessful is always sad, depressed and haunted with her violent childhood memories

(PF, pp.52–3). Helene suggests that if colonial violence is not confronted, it will alwayscome back to haunt future generations. Le Troupeau, or the young people of the

banlieue who are seen by others as anonymous and invisibly similar,12 suffer fromconstant racist murders sometimes at the hands of the police officers. Imache links the

colonial legacy with the deprivation, violence and exclusion of the residents of lesTerrains who revolt against any authority or the ‘Office’. She clearly compares colonialdepictions of the killing of Algerians during the war with that of the representations of

the killing of the young ‘Beur’ in the banlieues. One can remember the stereotype ofthe Algerian with the knife that has been perpetuated since colonial times in Algeria, a

stereotype that looks at the ‘native Algerian’ with suspicious eyes as he can alwaysstrike you in the back, thus making the murder of the ‘Algerian’ a legitimate act of self-

defence.13 This stereotype of the Algerian with the knife is still perpetuated with theyouth of the banlieue. If in colonial Algeria, a pied-noir killing a native Arab would not

even be considered as a murderer, in France today, the murder of the teenager who isphysically ‘different’ is often legitimated as self-defence as ‘they carry knives—everyone knows that’.14 The same pattern of colonial violence still exists: ‘the natives

with the knife’ is replaced with ‘the boys with the canif ’ in the banlieues which resultsin their racist murders at the hands of not only policemen, but also householders, bar-

owners and other French citizens going unnoticed and blame being put on theteenagers.

MacMaster (1997, pp.153–71) traces the ‘criminalisation’ of the Maghrebianimmigrants back to the inter-war period in France as the North African single male

immigrants were portrayed as thieves and criminals. This practice had already beenestablished in the colonies through colonial French ideology with its racist

depictions of the natives. Fanon (1961, p. 353) links the French ‘scientific’inferiorisation of the natives in colonial discourse with their criminalisation. Hereflects on the way the constructed myth of the moral debasement of the North

Africans causes them to be seen as ‘. . .menteurs nes, voleurs nes, criminels nes’. Such‘racial’ constructions are still pursued in the way descendants of North African

immigrants in France are perceived in France. Rosello (1998, p. 43) captures thecontinuity of this stereotyping when she refers to the list of stereotypes that follows

the word ‘Arab’ which is used interchangeably with that of ‘Beur’ or ‘Maghrebi’ andwhich aims at classifying and stigmatising the ‘Beurs’ in the same racist way as their

parents. She claims that:

say the word ‘Arab’, and you will have pressed a discursive and cultural button,unleashing a Pavlovian herd of images: ‘Arabs’ or ‘Beurs’ or ‘Maghrebis’ equal Islamand fundamentalism and mosques and crowds and suburbs and fanaticism andfundamentalism and racism and antiracism and fear and insecurity and immigrantsand illegal aliens and Pasqua’s laws and S.O.S. Racisme and the Algerian war.

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Rosello identifies this reflex as lying beyond a certain opposition between left-wing orright-wing politics. This homogenisation implies that the figure of the young ethnic

delinquent is ‘unavoidable’, since ‘youth equals delinquency equals immigration,equals children of immigrants, equals Maghrebi’ (Rosello, 1998, p. 48).15 One can

relate this form of postcolonial stereotyping to the one that appeared in the aftermathof the Algerian war during which ‘(u)n climat de psychose anti-algerienne est suscite

ou l’on faire croire que tous les criminels sont Algeriens et que tous les Algeriens sontcriminels’.16

In Presque un frere, Helene tells her daughter that she was sent a messenger beforethe events took place in the Terrains (when le Troupeau was hunted by the police forceand a young boy was killed) who told her that all studies agreed on the danger of

la meute: ‘. . .ceux que vous appelez le Troupeau. . .Nous sommes au courant.Regardez-les se contorsionner comme des alienes, ecoutez-les pousser des cris!’

(PF, p. 11). She identifies the messenger as belonging to the same family as theguardian of the Terrains, those who refuse to see the despair and void of le Troupeau

leading to their revolt, ‘des gens qui refusent de voir que le gris sera mange. Ils ignorentque dans le troupeau, ils ont tous un canif, dans la poche, ou sous la peau’ (PF, p. 11).

In Presque un frere, the youth of the banlieue are seen as a threat to society by therepresentatives of authority and order in the sense that their revolt against exclusionthreatens society.

If colonial missionaries were sent to study the natives (in order to facilitate theprocess of colonisation though the claim was to carry out la mission civilisatrice),

‘experts’ are sent to study the ‘banlieue syndrome’ in order to control the rebelliousyouth. Helene reflects on the ‘Office’s’ strategy of ‘inventing’ things to deal with the

residents of les Terrains to the extent of sending ‘experts’ to study them (PF, p. 55).In other words, Imache’s criticism is directed at the idea that the violence of the

banlieues is something inherent in the ethnicity of the youth as if their physical andcultural differences make them essentially violent and criminal. These ideas are

inherited from the colonial dissemination and codification of knowledge, which hadimposed biological and cultural inferiority on the natives and thus had in turnproduced a ‘duty’ towards ‘civilising’ them (Said, 1994, pp. 130–140). ‘Knowledge’ has

always been complicit with colonial rule and domination. Balibar (1997, p. 391) raisesthe issue of how the idea of the ‘Empire’ with its hierarchical ‘racial’ differences that

subordinate those seen as ‘inferior’ still exercises influence in French society: ‘C’est quela frontiere interieure est en jeu: L’“Empire” n’existe plus, mais son idee est toujours la,

comme le fantome de ses “sujets” avec leurs “superstitions” ou leurs “fanatismes”’.Thus it plays the role of an interior frontier between the French and those who are

carrying the image of the colonial subjects, the North African immigrants and theirdescendants.

In Le Dromadaire de Bonaparte, Jasmine encounters in her research in the French

official archives in Paris’s town hall ‘la fiche mecanographiee: populations etrangere’.It was a research project of the year before about les premiers arrivants of North African

immigrants. Jasmine expects to find all the cliches in the files;17 in one document,

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she discovers that the researcher has acknowledged ‘flagrants delits de police et desminutes de proces’ while also claiming that ‘ces gens-la [the immigrants] ont une

baisse inflationniste de moral’ (DB, p. 80). Ironically, Jasmine comments on this linkbetween ethnicity and lack of morals, a legacy inherited from imperialist thinking

which ostensibly aspired to civilise the natives, with the expression ‘tous ne pourrontetre sauves’ (DB, p. 79).18 Another document focuses on the immigrants’ medical

records which refer to the serious health problems of lung failure, kidney and heartproblems, and sexually transmitted diseases, but the document does not refer to the

fact that their damaged health is the result of overworking in chemical industries,mining and other dangerous jobs without any health or security measures. The youngdescendants of the first immigrants are also categorised in the research archives as

‘foreign populations’ and the cliches about them are similar to those of their parents.Young men (in contrast with young women) are ‘documented’ as disinterested in

education and having a particular liking for fire, a reference to the burning of cars andviolence in the banlieue, seen in this case as ‘inherent’ in their nature. The girls, like

their mothers, are seen as submissive and not causing much trouble (DB, pp. 79–80).These widely accepted stereotypes stored in an archive room as a piece of ‘research’ still

perpetuate the same colonial representations of North Africans.19 In other words,powerful colonial racism that was based on the superior ‘racial’ morality of thecolonisers has been perpetuated in the metropolis, not only in relation to the first

immigrants who are seen as colonial subjects subordinated to this hierarchy, but alsoto their descendants who have not migrated from anywhere and who are immersed in

French values.Imache’s texts do not directly challenge these stereotyped depictions of young

people of the banlieues; rather they ironically play on the contradictory essentialism ofthese depictions through characters who come from a French mother and an Algerian

father. These complex Franco-Maghrebi characters stress the intertwined histories ofFrance and North Africa and hence resist any form of binary opposition. The revolt of

young people in Presque un frere is a refusal of the authority and tyranny of the state orthe nation as these young people challenge the principle of confinement so specific toevery governing body. The ‘Office’ searches for renewed modes of governing them and

keeping them under control.

Territorial and Social Boundaries: The Space of the Banlieue

The ethnicised space of the banlieues and the way it is kept at a distance from the centre

are the focus of Imache’s Presque un frere. Lorcin (1995, p. 253) analyses the mise adistance that was widely implemented in colonial Algeria in terms of how the natives

and the colonisers were separated not only culturally and ‘racially’ but also spatially.She argues that a ‘clear distinction had to be maintained between the settler and the

indigenous population’, a distinction that has been at work in the banlieues with theirsupposed ‘ethnic difference’. Fanon (1961, p. 27) expresses the same view when he

claims that: ‘la zone habitee par les colonises n’est pas complementaire de la zone

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habitee par les colons. Ces deux zones s’opposent (. . .) elles obeissent au principed’exclusion reciproque: il n’y a pas de conciliation possible, l’un des termes est de trop’.

The differentiation of social space that had already been at work in colonial NorthAfrica where the natives and the colonisers inhabited different social spaces has

been practised in France where spatial barriers have been implemented in big cities.The space occupied by the North African immigrants and their descendants is at the

periphery of the social map, which reproduces the past hierarchical colonial relationsbetween France and its colonial subjects.20 ‘The appropriation of history, the

historicisation of society’, in Said’s words, ‘. . .include the accumulation anddifferentiation of social space, space to be used for social purposes’ (Said, 2000, p. 93).

The social privatisation of a territory is not about territorial boundaries any more

than it is about ethnic and social ones. The panoptical dimension of the structure ofthe banlieues (situated outside the centre of the cities, especially in Paris) is an

important dimension of the power relations between the centre and the periphery.Foucault (1977) uses the concept of panoptic spaces to describe the relation of power

between the centre and the periphery especially in hospitals, prison and schools.Panoptic architecture implies a central tower open to peripheral buildings around it

with windows directed towards the tower which allows the latter to exercise acontrolling gaze over them while itself being protected from such a gaze (it allows thesurveyor to see without being seen). Laronde (1993, p. 96) argues that the panoptic

model of architecture is mainly found in Paris where the centre of the city issurrounded by a great number of suburbs predominantly inhabited by the

immigrants. This has produced an architectural structure where geographic exclusionis internal to it, in terms of spreading the banlieues around the outskirts of Paris (they

are not in communication with each other). This emphasises the dimension ofsurveillance, which aims to keep the immigrants in control.

The ethnicisation of the neighbourhood or the cite, which is translated into spatialsegregation or territorialisation, is the work of society, which converts social

inequalities into cultural features. In other words, neighbourhoods are beingethnicised and spatially segregated through the claim that they do not accept the‘civilisation’ of the dominant culture because of their ‘cultural difference’. However,

behind this argument lies the fact that this ethnicisation of territory allows for thecovering-up of social inequalities and exclusion. The young people coming from the

(ethnicised) cites are inhabited by ‘les figures du territoire plus qu’ils ne l’habitent’ andfrom this comes the non-mastering of public spaces as the already existing

classification affects their circulation (Guenif Souilamas, 2000, p. 97).‘Beur’ writers innovate in their description of the space of the banlieue. While

Imache calls it les Terrains, Charef (1983, p. 11) gives it the name of le beton, a placedominated by emptiness (le rien). Both writers focus on the way the space of thebanlieue inhabits its residents in a way that continues to haunt them throughout their

life. Imache’s Je veux rentrer reveals how the space of the cite Bleuets, where Sara themain protagonist grew up, has been haunting her. Though she has been living in ‘un

immeuble en pierre de taille entre les murs de la capitale’, she has never ceased to be

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‘la fille de la cite des Bleuets’ where her memory and history have been inscribed. At theend of the text, Sara is confronted by a police car during regular night patrol and the

first thing that she thinks of telling them is that she has been away from the cite foreleven years, as if living in the cite and criminality are inter-linked. Social movement is

haunted by the deprived space of childhood memories.In Presque un frere, Helene’s daughter Lydia (whom she describes as most

complicated and intelligent and who is successful in her career) tells her that she willnever come back to les Terrains again, because it haunts her life. Even though she tries

to lead a ‘normal’ life after leaving les Terrains with her successful career, she falls intoher ‘neurasthenia’ every time the people outside les Terrains ‘represent’ them: ‘Ce qu’ilsimaginent me cloue au sol et me detruit. . . Il y a cette peur qui monte, sauf que je ne

sais pas si c’est la mienne ou la leur’ (PF, pp. 55–6).Charef also stresses this idea of being inhabited by the banlieue when Madjid in

Le The au harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983, p. 63) reflects on how the children internalisethe coldness and dryness of le beton. This internalisation makes them not only cold but

apparently indestructible; nevertheless, their fissures, like those of the buildings, caneasily be seen in times of crisis. Charef highlights the way in which ‘les momes de

beton’ are seen as threatening in their collectivity (1983, p. 64). Imache links the threatof le Troupeau with its collective despair.21

Young people living in the banlieue find themselves carrying the stigmatisation of

this space and thus they are seen as representing the image of the place (delinquency,drugs, violence, etc.). Bourdieu (1993, p. 42) argues how stigmatised territories

(banlieues) degrade those who live in them and they in return degrade themsymbolically. But whatever the attitude of the young people towards the debasement of

the banlieue, the suburbs remain in ‘Beur’ texts a territorial or an appropriated spacewhere certain cultural and social roots were formed (Lepoutre, 1997, p. 42). In most

‘Beur’ texts such as Charef ’s Le the au harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983), Mehdi Lallaoui’sLes Beurs de Seine (1986), and Akli Tadjer’s Les ANI de Tassili (1984), ‘Beur’ characters

invest in specific spaces on the thresholds of the banlieue, such as staircases, buildingentrances, caves, and terraces, in order to appropriate them and mark them with theirown presence. Helene remarks in Presque un frere upon her visit to les caves of the cite

that the young people have totally marked the space with their own presence: ‘Ils sontprets a tout pour avoir un endroit avec leur propre odeur et non melangee avec la

notre’ (PF, p. 100).Therefore, if territory as a ‘normative’ social construction is imposed by the

dominant discourse (the ethnicisation and segregation of territory), the complex andcontradictory efforts of the (poor and young) inhabitants of the cites to recompose

and re-appropriate this territory, in order to give it a meaning different from theexternal world, is a strategy of resistance to the confinement to which they aresubjected. In other words, young people refuse to accept the space of the banlieue as a

space of confinement but see it as a space of possible cultural innovation: ‘il[le territoire] traduit la rupture tangible entre les usages dominants et la multiplicite

des procedes qu’inventent les “territorialises” pour cesser d’etre enchaınes a leur

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territoire’ (Guenif Souilamas, 2000, p. 80). In Leila Sebbar’s Sherazade (1982), thebanlieue is portrayed as the centre of urban fashion, rap music, squatting, and as

labyrinth of exploration. Julien, one of the main characters in the text, suggests makinga film in which Sherazade, the banlieue protagonist, will be the heroine; it is called ‘la

banlieue c’est beau’. The idea of the beautifying ( faire beau) of the space of the banlieueis important in most ‘Beur’ texts as the ground for resisting the stereotypical images

that degrade their space.

Conclusion

The space of the banlieue constitutes a major support for the identity of the youth since

they are rooted in it and thus strongly attached to it. It is a culturally constructedterritory to be appropriated and mentally invested in by the adolescents especially in itsrelation to the history of the parents’ migration to France. In Imache’s texts, this history

of immigration provides the inter-generational link, which, though stressing thedifference between the parents and their descendants, creates a certain foundation for

the continuity of exclusion and marginality. The ‘Beurs’ reject the memory of theirparents’ emigration as being linked solely to the mere economic logic that situates them

in a relative position in relation to the role they played in helping France to reproduceitself, this time not in the colonies but within the metropolis. In other words, the ‘Beurs’

disavow the representation of their parents’ history in France as ‘guest labourers’chained to servitude and domination. They stress that their parents’ displacement is

historically linked to French colonial history and the decolonisation process in theirown countries. The parents’ anti-colonial memory in France at the time of the nationalliberation in North Africa, especially the events of the Algerian war, provides grounds for

the ‘Beurs’ to consolidate internal bonds with their parents’ struggle againstracism. October 17, 1961 can be seen as the beginning of another history in France,

which is that of the presence of Algerians and North Africans on French soil.Giudice (1992, p. 340) claims that ‘Si les “Beurs” sont ce qu’ils sont et, avant tout, s’ils

existent, c’est bien, en premier lieu, parce que leurs parents ont refuse le couvre-feu,impose leur presence au risque de leur vie, en payant le prix fort du sang’. Giudice

stresses how the North African immigrants’ anti-colonial struggle within France haspaved the way for their descendants to voice their political struggle for a better life inFrance.

For Imache, survival as suggested by the character of Helene, is through theconnection of histories, the French and North African, and not through their essential

separation. Helene, a French woman married to an Algerian immigrant at the time ofthe Algerian war emphasises this link by insisting in her address to those who represent

French officialdom on le droit a la memoire. In other words, Helene suggests that byconfronting the violence of the past, a move towards the present and future without

violence in the banlieue could be possible as the youth of the banlieues, mostly of NorthAfrican descent, still suffer from the legacy of that violence. In reading Imache’s texts,

one comes to the conclusion that her characters are always inhabited by other echoes

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coming from other histories since history is not ‘linear’ but collisional. The marriageof a French-Algerian couple at the height of the war with all the enmities and hatred

between Algeria and France has deeply shaped the psychology of Imache and isstrongly reflected in that of the protagonists of her texts. Imache uses the space of the

banlieue as the site of historical memory, the memory of migration and colonial racismbut also, most significantly for the ‘Beurs’, it is a site of resistance to authority and to

the perpetuation of colonial racist attitudes. Imache’s texts provide a counter-narrativespace for those who have been written out of this history, the displaced and the

excluded, a minority history or counter-narratives to official histories.

Notes

[1] The term ‘Beur’, as used by the ‘Beur’ themselves, expresses the rejection of rigid classification:

neither Arab nor French (See Begag and Chaouite 1990: 82). However, the term as taken bypoliticians and the media becomes a tool for stigmatisation (Ibid.: 83). I use the term ‘Beur’strategically to refer to the descendants of the North African immigrants in France in theircollective formation of diasporic communities that refuse to be held outside the Frenchnational hearth as ‘immigrant outsiders’. One cannot draw a general image of the descendantsof North African immigrants in France, especially in terms of their political beliefs, opinions,and social status, as that would be to homogenise the itineraries of individuals and theirdifferent responses to their social and economic situations. But it does not mean that theseyoung people do not share a certain common history (parents’ immigration and colonialhistory, working class background, ZUP, HLM and cites of the banlieues at the periphery of theFrench society, and ethnic stigmatisation (Ibid.: 84)).

[2] Abbreviated hereafter as DB.

[3] Abbreviated hereafter as PF.

[4] The banlieue is a set of small neighbourhoods united only because of their geographical

proximity to each other and their distance from the centre. Most North African immigrantsand their descendants live in HLM cites of large banlieues where delinquency, crimeand violence reign. Those neighbourhoods are designated for those in the lowest social ladder.They are the targets of violent police interventions, which are most of the time marked byprejudice and institutional racism. (See Begag and Chaouite (1990), Laronde (1993),MacMaster (1997)).

[5] See Charef: Le harki de Meriem (1989); Nacer: Le sourire de Brahim (1985) and Lalaoui: Une

nuit d’octobre (2001). Charef ’s novel treats the history of the arrival of the harkis (i.e., AlgerianMuslims who served in the French army during the Algerian War) in France and how these new‘French Muslims’ were treated as second-class citizens and suffered from racism and exclusion.Nacer’s and Lallaoui’s texts revisit the events of the massacre of 17 October 1961 of Algerianimmigrants in Paris and the silenced legacy of its repressed violence.

[6] A peaceful demonstration was organised on 17 October 1961 in Paris by the Front de liberation

nationale (FLN), the main nationalist Algerian organisation leading the movement ofliberation in Algeria. Around 25,000 Algerian protesters consisting of whole Algerian families:men, women and children participated in the event protesting against bloodshed in Algeria andthe night curfew imposed on Algerian immigrants in France. The demonstration was savagelysuppressed by the French police. During and in the aftermath of the demonstration, around200 Algerians were massacred and thrown into the river Seine and others were massivelyarrested, tortured and repatriated. See Brunet (1999), Einaudi (1991).

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[7] In Greek mythology, this is the story of Achilles, a hero of the Trojan War, son of Peleus and

Thetis. When a child, his mother plunged him in the river Styx and so all his body was strongexcept for the heel by which she held him. She was unable to plunge him completely in the riverthinking that he would die if she did so, but her act of protection turned out to be fatal as hisheel was the only vulnerable part of his body. Thus, in the Trojan War, he was killed by an arrowin his vulnerable heel, hence the expression: Achilles’ heel.

[8] Imache uses this word to refer to the young people of the banlieue with their self-defensive

mechanism of looking invisibly similar.

[9] The ‘Office’ refers to those in authority as Helene claims: ‘S’il s’etait trouve une personne pour

prendre le temps de reflechir. La-haut, dans les bureaux de l’Office’ (PF, 125).

[10] A significant word used by Imache to refer to the banlieues with their socio-economic

deprivation.

[11] See Giudice 1992. The book provides a brilliant chronicle of the events of those continuous

murders of French citizens of Arab origin in the 1970 till 1991. Those murders were treatedmost of the time by the French justice system as ‘work accidents’, or ‘simple delit’. Giudice citesmore than 200 murders in 21 years.

[12] Helene, une femme de Terrains, talks of how she lost her son to le Troupeau: ‘J’ai peur, lorsque je

cherche son visage dehors, je ne le vois plus. Ils se ressemblent tous. Il est dans le troupeaumaintenant’ (PF, 10).

[13] See Macey 1998. He refers to the link between the ‘Algerian’ and the ‘knife’ in Albert Camus’s

L’Etranger when the anonymous Arab pulls a knife on Meursault, who immediately fires fourshots from the gun he has been concealing. Nothing bothered Meursault afterwards exceptdestroying the silence of the beautiful day; the murder of the Algerian passed unnoticed likemany other murders of the natives by les pieds noirs.

[14] Most of the time, the figure of the ‘Algerian’ represents all North Africans in France, and thus

Algerians are North African and Algerians carry knives (Macey 1998: 160–1).

[15] ‘Beur’ novelists such as Begag: in Quand on est Mort, C’est pour toute la Vie (1998) and Charef:

Le The au harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983) use the stereotypes inherited by descendants of NorthAfrican immigrants in France, especially that of being thieves, to ‘strike back’ at the dominantsociety and thus weaken in an ironic way the link between the ethnic youth and criminality.

[16] MRAP or Mouvement contre le racism, l’antisemitisme, et pour la Paix (1965, 48). Cited in Jim

House’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis Antiracism and Antiracist Discourse in France From 1900 tothe Present Day, University of Leeds, 1997, p 214.

[17] ‘Elle repousse le tas de papiers et scrute avidement les cliches’ (DB, 79).

[18] This echoing of French colonial doctrine on North Africans’ morality has been perpetuated in

other contexts as even writers such as Engels wrote on 17 September, 1857 that the Moors ofAlgeria were a ‘timid race’ because they were oppressed but ‘reserving nevertheless their crueltyand vindictiveness while in moral character they stand very low’. Cited in Said, 1994, p. 203.

[19] For a detailed analysis of colonial stereotypes in North Africa, see Lorcin (1995).

[20] MacMaster (1997: 87–89) examines how North African immigrants were given the poorest and

most deprived areas for accommodation when they arrived in France. Heavy industrialfactories and their primitive barracks were kept for the exploited racialised North Africans whowere classified as the least competent among other immigrants such as the Poles, Belgians andItalians. The condition of living in those places was very poor as the companies did not care toprovide good accommodation and the immigrants were driven by their desperate need to savemoney. ‘The urban enclave’ witnessed the concentration of immigrants to the extent of formingthe ‘Arab ghetto’ (in the suburbs of Paris, North and North west of Paris such as Goutte d’Or,Aubervilliers, Colombes, Argenteuil. . .) near industrial zones and factories.

[21] ‘Tout ca, c’est la faute de temps. Ailleurs, le temps mange la couleur. Ici, le gris c’est la couleur

du temps. Rien ne l’entame. Juste a esperer qu’un coup de canif ecaille a force. Et quelquefois

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un accident. A faire jaillir le rouge de sang. Comment voulez-vous empecher un garcon de plusde sept ans de prendre un canif?’ (PF, 10).

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