Moving Beyond the Legacies of War in Second-Generation Harki Narratives

Summary

In their thought-provoking article ‘France and the Memories of “Others”: The Case of the Harkis’, Géraldine Enjelvin and Nada Korac-Kakabadse emphasize the need for ‘a timely discussion of how to maintain social cohesion within France whilst including the memories and contributions of those regarded as “others”’ (2012: 153). In a similar vein, at the beginning of his essay on ethnic minority memory and French national identity in relation to the Algerian War of Independence, Richard Derderian asks, ‘If the essence of the national spirit lies in shared memories, as Ernest Renan has argued, how do we build a memory consensus today?’ (2002: 28). For these scholars, the question of how to integrate the perspectives of France's post-migratory Others into a unified vision of the nation constitutes an important challenge for the country, especially in relation to contentious events such as the Algerian War. Indeed, despite the proliferation of memory works related to this conflict, very little consensus has emerged, and remembrance of the war has instead resulted in a ‘mémoire diffuse’ [‘diffuse memory’] (Harbi and Stora, 2004: 9) composed of the parallel, often conflicting narratives of specific constituencies, each presenting their own version of events. These partial, one-sided accounts, which have been characterized as a ‘rhapsodie des plaintes des victimes’ [‘rhapsody of the victims’ complaints’] (Harbi and Stora, 2004: 10), have forcefully brought to light the trauma and unhealed wounds of groups such as the harkis, the pieds-noirs, and French conscripts, all of whom were profoundly affected by the war and whose primary concern has, for the most part, been the expression of their own experiences. For this reason, terms such as ‘memory wars’ and ‘mémoires cloisonnées’ [‘compartmentalized memories’] (Stora, 1997: 190) form a leitmotif in studies of the ways in which the war has been remembered, a situation which has led well-known historian Benjamin Stora to call repeatedly for the various parties involved to foster the ‘restitution des mémoires plurielles’ [‘restitution of plural memories’] he deems necessary if the wounds of war are to be healed (1997: 190).

As Enjelvin and Korac-Kakabadse suggest in the subtitle of their article, the harkis – the Algerians who sided with the French during the conflict – serve as an important example of one of France's Others, and they provide an illuminating case study of what it means to be French today.