Page 19 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

expectations. And it persisted, despite its se-
lective and generalised disavowal, in France, in
the society to which they had been transposed.
Sometimes, a remnant, a faint trace, or a tena-
cious ‘presence’ (Stoler and Cooper 2013) in the
negative, its complex experience translated into
a living, multiform presence, something that is
and yet is not (Trouillot 1995). This ‘visible’ in-
visible occupied a substantial place, sometimes
expanded, sometimes constricted.
What we saw was doubled by what we did
not see: from the outside, buildings of identical
design and appearance and streets named after 19
famous French places or people, with discreet
ti markers (shops, synagogues or prayer halls); in-
side the buildings, markers based on family
Figure 2: ‘What we saw was doubled by what we did not names, religious, local and sometimes nation-
ta (sketch by Michele Baussant 2023) This marking reshaped borders, hierarchies and
see’: a double cartography of my childhood building
al references, and multiple ritual temporalities.
encounter zones. All at once, palimpsest and
tuted the background of most inhabitants: espe-
cially Algerian Jews, Algerians transformed into heteroglossia (Bakhtine 1970), sedimentations
of time and places were revealed there, symbols
di ‘foreigners’ once Algeria was independent, as and images, separate and dispersed pieces, lacu- ‘between myself and myself lies my true country’ ...
8
well as Europeans of Algeria. The latter formed
nar, mourning memory, ‘where the part is worth
a rather heterogeneous mix of ‘settlers’ and ‘ar-
riving’ populations (Byrd 2011), mainly from the the whole and more than the whole that it ex-
ceeds’ (Derrida 1988, 54).
here migrants’ (Smith 2003) – with whom Algeria no with a sense of not being where they should be. It
European shores of the Mediterranean, labelled
This space was never for putting down
pieds-noirs during the Algerian War – ‘invisible
roots, even less so for all those who lived there
longer wanted to deal and whom France had to
was ‘a doubt’ (Perec 1974), from which the other
integrate while imagining that their history was
places of these ‘interrupted’ lives were reflected,
not entirely its history. Other populations, exiles
‘cracks’, ‘friction points’, a ‘hiatus’. In discovering
from other Maghreb or Mashrek countries, were
France, they realised that Algeria imagined and
also present.
These buildings of the housing estate,
tion’, was, in fact, another land. It was enough
most people said, had been built for them. They lived as a contiguous extension of the ‘French na-
to walk a few hundred metres in the old histor-
formed a landscape without a past where Algeria ic district of this suburb to feel that ‘que ça se co-
was rarely mentioned. With little or no reference ince quelque part, ou que ça éclate, ou que ça se
to it, perhaps most of their inhabitants had come cogne’ (‘that it sticks somewhere, that it bursts,
to believe they had never lived in Algeria. Col- or that it knocks’) (Perec 1974). Haunting mod-
onisation was an officially closed history, rele- ifies the experience of being in time and how we
gated to a past ‘irrelevant to the present’ (Barnes sequence the past, present and past, present and
1990, 28). However, it sealed their destinies and future (Gordon 2008). These spectres are neither
8 studiauniversitatis invisible nor excess: their whole essence ‘resides
After independence, Algerians with civil status under local
law lost their French nationality, except for those who sub- in the fact that they possess ‘a real presence that
scribed to the declaration of recognition of French nation-
ality before 22 March 1967 (order of 21 July 1962). claims its due and demands your attention’. The