'Filling in the Blanks: Memories of 17 October 1961 in Leïla Sebbar's "La Seine était rouge"'
published in 'Modern & Contemporary France'
Leïla Sebbar's La Seine était rouge (1999) traces the attempts of three characters to uncover the suppression of... more
Leïla Sebbar's La Seine était rouge (1999) traces the attempts of three characters to uncover the suppression of Algerian demonstrators by the Parisian police on 17 October 1961, an event which has hitherto been concealed from two of the three characters by their families. This transmission of silence reflects the wider reluctance to remember the Algerian War on the part of the French state, which only officially acknowledged the war in 1999. Though a wave of commemoration with regard to this past was instigated in the 1990s, this breaking of the silence has not led to a calm levelling of memory, but to a turbulent surge of memories in which opposing representations of the past clash. Sebbar's novel underlines this instability, bringing to light a plurality of memories collected from various actors in the events of 17 October 1961. Through a close textual analysis of how La Seine était rouge constructs a narrative of plurality and incompleteness, this article outlines how Sebbar exposes the intricacies of a past which is characterised by a mix of both remembrance and forgetting. Such an account of history shows itself able to fill in the blanks left by state-sponsored acts of commemoration and the distorted history put forward by colonialism.
La Seine était rouge (1999) de Leïla Sebbar retrace les démarches effectuées par trois protagonistes pour lever le voile sur l'élimination de manifestants algériens par la police parisienne le 17 octobre 1961, un événement qui avait été jusqu'alors dissimulé à deux des trois personnages par leurs familles. Cette loi du silence reflète la réticence plus générale de l'État français à commémorer la guerre d'Algérie, ce dernier n'ayant officiellement reconnu la guerre qu'en 1999. Malgré l'émergence d'une vague mémorielle au cours des années 1990, ce n'est pas à un « calme plat de la mémoire » que cette rupture du silence a mené, mais plutôt à un « flot turbulent » de souvenirs, où s'affrontent diverses représentations contradictoires de l'histoire. Le roman de Sebbar souligne cette instabilité, révélant ainsi une multitude de souvenirs recueillis auprès de différents acteurs des événements du 17 octobre 1961. À travers une analyse textuelle minutieuse des différentes façons dont se construit ce récit de pluralité et d'inachèvements dans La Seine était rouge, cet article expose les ressources (méthodes/stratégies) employées par Sebbar pour livrer les subtilités d'un passé, où se mêlent le souvenir et l'oubli. Un pareil témoignage historique se révèle apte à combler les lacunes, que les actes de commémoration approuvés par l'État, et l'histoire déformée avancée par le colonialisme, ont laissées.
(Re)turning to Ruins: Pied-Noir Visual Returns to Algeria
by Amy Hubbell
Modern and Contemporary France, Volume 19, Issue 2
2011, Pages 147 - 161
[accents omitted]
In commemoration of the 45th year of their exile, 500 pieds-noirs and their families... more
[accents omitted]
In commemoration of the 45th year of their exile, 500 pieds-noirs and their families gathered in Toulouse, France in May 2007. During their meeting, the Amicale de Saida viewed the film Sada… On revient! sur les pas de notre enfance, which chronicles the return voyage of members of the community and their encounters with the places of their past. The amateur film provides a return to Algeria for the pieds-noirs who could not physically make the journey. While many buildings in the images were in ruins, the pieds-noirs did not view the present and experienced a return to somewhere other than what was filmed. Sada… On revient! is one of numerous journeys to Algeria that have occurred in the past 50 years. Notable Algerian-born authors Albert Camus, Marie Cardinal, Leila Sebbar, Jacques Derrida and Helene Cixous have all participated in written and real returns to Algeria, and they all reflect on the ruins of Algeria that haunt them in their exile. By analysing the representation of real ruins in documented returns to Algeria, this article demonstrates how ruins of lost locations hold potential to ruin the stability of the past.
Textual and Visual Selves: Photography, Film, and Comic Art in French Autobiography
by Amy Hubbell
Co-edited with Ann Miller and Natalie Edwards. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011.
This collection of essays explores links between the visual and written self in autobiographical pieces in... more This collection of essays explores links between the visual and written self in autobiographical pieces in contemporary French and Francophone literature.
Dual, Divided, and Doubled Selves: Three Women Writing between France and Algeria
by Amy Hubbell
In This 'self' which is not one : Women's life writing in French. Ed. Natalie Edwards and Christopher Hogarth. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 35-46.
Collecting Souvenirs or Hoarding Memory: The Literary Reconstruction of Algeria
by Amy Hubbell
This work in progress, posted here as it was presented at the University of Queensland on 2 September 2011, provides the English version of the paper below from CIEF with elaboration including works by Leila Sebbar and Nicole Guiraud. Please contact me if you are interested in the corresponding PowerPoint presentation.
For the former French citizens of Algeria who left their homeland during and after the Algerian War from 1954-1962,... more For the former French citizens of Algeria who left their homeland during and after the Algerian War from 1954-1962, Algeria lives on as a sacred location of memory. Almost anyone who has lost a “home,” let alone a homeland, experiences a rupture; but for the Pieds-Noirs and other exiles for whom the choice to leave was equivalent to “la valise ou le cercueil” (the suitcase or the coffin), this separation was traumatic. Attempting to appease their painful nostalgia for a place that no longer exists, some exiles find themselves caught up in collecting memorabilia related to what they lost. For others, collecting both souvenirs and memories becomes obsessive. The psychological illness of compulsive hoarding is often related to traumatic ruptures, and it is estimated that worldwide 1 to 2.5% of the population suffer from it. The goal of this presentation is to explore the link between the traumatic separation from homeland and the fixation on “things” that symbolise the lost country such as this phenomenon is expressed in Franco-Algerian exile literature. Through an analysis of literary works by Marie Cardinal and Leïla Sebbar, I hope to demonstrate that instead of protecting place and memory, the act of hoarding threatens to destroy the very thing it attempts to preserve.
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