Page 15 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

with refugees representing a just cause. They be- ogeneity and, in some cases, their liminal posi-
longed to a ‘prosaic’ mass of people expelled or tion as ‘subalterns’ identified with the colonial
asked to leave because of their active or passive empires.
association with the colonial system. Without This work, initiated in the early 1990s, en-
pretending to be exhaustive, I would like to re- compasses two research fields – memory and
4
trace the experience and legacy of this cartogra- massive population displacements. It addresses
phy through the words that carry the ghosts or a paradoxical observation concerning those
corpses of several languages (Mauthner, quot- defined by researchers as privileged or co-ethnic
ed in Ravy 1996, 447), place names, daily, ritu- migration (Čapo Žmegač 2010): although
5
al and commemorative practices, objects, senses everything that refers to their past became not
and sensations. By emphasising the malleability relevant, even disqualified - from the most per-
of languages, spaces and material things, I would sonal and ordinary moments to major historical
like to explore how temporality can be traversed, and political events – and rarely exchanged ex- 15
stopped, restarted, turned back and projected
ti forward through places. This exploration leads cept within close relational circles, it still sticks
to the present through languages, emotions and
me to address the diversity of populations and
their history of previous displacements – a het- practices. I worked on and with people who, for
a long time, felt that they were forbidden to talk
ta Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco tend to relegate to about their past, that nobody was listening to
erogeneity that images of exiles from Algeria,
them. It nurtured their sense of being out of His-
the background. This emphasis allows an un-
tory to the point where, ‘in the end, some could
derstanding of how each border crossing has re-
no longer remember what they did or did not
di drawn the cartography of attachments and de- have to say about it’ (Milosz 2001, 13). I tried to ‘between myself and myself lies my true country’ ...
tachments, displacements and the crystallisation
understand the impacts of a morally problemat-
of social boundaries, and how each rupture has
ic condition of an exile not socially recognized as
reinvented continuity.
such, undermining their solidarity and isolating
here My article stems from a long research experience This field did not exist when I began my research which
‘To Begin Where I am’
2
It falls today under the umbrella of memory studies.
4
draws on the cumulative knowledge on memory issues
forged through approaches both complementary and dis-
based on multiple fieldwork - from France to Al-
tinct and from disciplines such as History, sociology, an-
geria, Egypt and the Israeli-Palestinian areas, the
thropology and the social sciences of politics. These disci-
United States and several European countries,
plines all played their part in gradually developing knowl-
edge and a shared understanding of the concept. They pro-
addressing dynamics of diasporisation, de-di-
duced a range of definitions (Lavabre 2000), strengthening
asporisation et re-diasporisation (Trier 1996)
to speak of ‘memories’ as subjects, acting, thinking, trav-
among specific displaced minorities, such as Eu-
studiauniversitatis
elling, fragmenting, multi-directional, communicative,
3
ropean of Algeria and Egyptian Jews . These its increasingly metaphorical character and the tendency
transcultural, traumatic, giving second place to the ac-
populations share several migrations – towards tors who produce and carry them. As for me, I opted for
the pioneering work of Maurice Halbwachs (1939; 1941;
or within colonised territories, between empires, 1994; 1997) and the extensive analysis of memory provid-
and finally, outside them-, their internal heter- ed by Marie-Claire Lavabre (1994; 2000), which circum-
scribed the collective memory as the homogenisation of
2 I borrow this subtitle from the title of Czesław Miłosz’s representations of the past or the reduction of the diversi-
book. ty of memories that occurs when a shared experience is re-
3 For Europeans of Algeria with fieldwork in France from counted within a group, a family, a party, or an association,
1996 to 2001, and in Algeria in 2003- and for Egyptian in the present.
Jews, with fieldwork in France, Egypt, Israel, United 5 This term is particularly problematic when used to de-
States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy and Switzerland, scribe heterogeneous minorities that underwent numer-
from 2008 until now. These fieldworks are rooted in a clas- ous internal or external displacements to countries colo-
sic ethnographic methodology combining in-depth qual- nized by European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries
itative interviews, participant observation, and archival and then dispersed outside these countries following their
work. independence.