Amnesia and Revelation in Algerian Contemporary French-speaking Theater: Au loin, les caroubiers by Fatima Gallaire and Mémoire à la dérive by Slimane Benaïssa

Castadot, Elisabeth
(2012) The legacy of the Algerian war: between history, memory and representations — Location: Florida International Universty (Miami) (22.March.2012)

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  • Castadot, ElisabethUCLouvain
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Abstract
The unworthy practices of the war of independence – such as infiltration, betrayal and torture – have had lasting effects on Algerian communities. This damage was insufficiently recognized and taken into account in the construction of the history and identity of the country. Yet, as Ricoeur shows in his work on historical memory 1, any concealment, any omission in the treatment of the history of a community leaves a door open for the return of the repressed. Any attempt at forgiveness and reconciliation is doomed to failure. This is also the hypothesis developed by Benjamin Stora in La gangrène et l’oubli2. The subject of amnesic amnesty granted to executioners or traitors reappears throughout the works of Algerian contemporary French-speaking playwrights. This paper seeks to put into perspective the correlation between lack of memory and the resurgence of the wounds of history through the analysis of two plays, written by Slimane Benaissa and Fatima Gallaire. These authors from the same generation have chosen to write some of their drama in French, but always in order to directly evoke the history and problems of their native country. Both also question the paradoxical position in which they find themselves as Algerian and Berber writers steeped in French culture. Au loin, les caroubiers (1993), by Fatima Gallaire, depicts the reunion, fifteen years after independence, of an Algerian Muslim family with a “pied-noir” family of French origin. This meeting is marred by painful revelations. The revelation of a forgotten identity is also the primary dramaturgical principle of Mémoires à la dérive (2001), by Benaissa, where the character of the author, suffering from amnesia and unable to write, realizes that the French actor in his company who wants to help him recover his memory, was one of the executioners of his father, a “fellagha” who disappeared during the war.
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Castadot, E. (2012). Amnesia and Revelation in Algerian Contemporary French-speaking Theater: Au loin, les caroubiers by Fatima Gallaire and Mémoire à la dérive by Slimane Benaïssa. The legacy of the Algerian war: between history, memory and representations, Florida International Universty (Miami). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/229346