March 2011

A certain conception of history: back on the idea of assimilation

The use of history for political purposes is a tradition Sarko. His vision of the story is breaking with the tradition of republican identity and revives the worst colonialist overtones. It promotes an essentialist conception of French identity, where men and women are French by nature, by blood, by the past. So a break with the idea of the nation as a community of destiny united around the ideal Republican.

President Sarkozy should be back into the history books - if possible, not those of the Third Republic colonial - including Patricia Lorcini, historian American expert on Algeria.

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The book by Patricia ME Lorcini, university U.S. title:

"Kabyle, Arabic, French: colonial identities"

is fully consistent with a general movement of the human sciences that puts the study of identities, their constitutions and their consequences in the center of research subjects. After a brief summary of the author's thesis, we present the inclusion of his work in historiography before to emphasize specificity.

Patrica Lorcini proposes to study the formation of identities Kabyle, Arabic by the French colonial power. Indirectly, it highlights the constitution of the identity of the colon as well as the French in general by looking at the mirror image that represents the study of another. How scientists the army and the colonial powers describe the Kabyle and Arab can draw a portrait of the French period. It is therefore a cultural history of French colonial thinking throughout the nineteenth century. She has divided her book into three main parts. The first and last are chronological. In the first, it presents the evolution of popular understanding of the conquest of Algeria until the fall of Napoleon III, then in the last part, it presents the evolution of the constitutions of identity following the advent of the Third Republic. The second part is thematically, it seeks to trace the links between "the social sciences and the military."

The study of the Kabyle myth is the apparent heart of the book. The author intends to present why and how the colonizer, scientists, anthropologists have seen the people of Algeria. How they initially differentiate Arab Kabyle then assign negative characteristics to the first and second positive. Especially the author insists on the mirror effect that this operation is categorization. The identity given to each of these categories is not the result of a scientific study, although the scientific aspiration was particularly important - we will return - but the projection of French ideas received on Indigenous Populations. The historian operates a work of deconstruction of identity, in historicizing identity, stressing its construction and the developments that have an identity has been strengthened while others were put on the back plan. These developments are not the result of individual will, is a society as a whole evolving. The sense of identity is a back-and-forth between what preexist in society and the contributions of this. Identity is neither fully experienced, nor fully chosen, it is built into a permanent interaction between past, present and future. However, in doing so, the historian does not deny the identity nor his purpose: it only allows to show that the "identities" are creations of man, born and growing in a historical context.

To conduct its study, Patricia Lorcini, uses the numerous works of scientific, military, politicians and especially the ethnologists of the time. Such sources can make a real cultural history of intellectuals, writers and scientists lay the time. The very fact of its sources, studying the design of the myth Kabila and identity given to the figure of Arabic, she realizes at the same time a book on the history of French colonial mentality. To this end, it is obliged to make ethno history with a back and forth between the anthropological literature of the era and those of the second half of the twentieth century, particularly important for the Kabyle population, including those of Pierre Bourdieu. The thesis of Patricia Lorcini illustrates the porosity between the different fields of research in history: colonial history, cultural history and mentality, ethno-history, history of scientific disciplines, history of France, Algeria's history, military history ...

One of the founders of the Kabyle myth is the significant military resistance that they developed against the French army. For Military French, it was necessary to recognize the qualities of his opponent in order not to lose credibility. Over the Kabyle was described as strong, elusive, see Noble, the more prestigious French victory would be. It is therefore the military, were the first to set the Kabyle and the contrast with the Arab populations that were more easily conquered (or dominated?). The Kabyle was presented as being sedentary, mountain, free, having a social democratic, granting greater freedom to women and having almost deviant practices of Islam, thereby demonstrating the low infiltration of Islamic culture. Conversely, the Arab nomad, living in the plains and the desert, living in a feudal social system, and no separation between religious and temporal power.

The constitution of these ideal types by the military is intrinsically linked to their mission, culture and the French imagination. French soldiers imbued with the desire for order and control of the territory Napoleonic experiencing the greatest difficulty with nomadism. How to achieve population control, and even its security, if we do not know where people live? It is even possible to question the very possibility of the existence of a modern state in which the population is predominantly nomadic. [1] The portion of the misunderstanding of a lifestyle to a negative normative judgments is very easy. The reasoning is that the military is different nomadic, elusive, it is necessarily lower, while the Kabyle, sedentary, with a ground anchor, is therefore closer and more like the French, meaning therefore more akin . There are similarities So superiority. So compared to the scale of values that the French military dichotomy occurs, making a negative identity Arabism, and impossible to assimilate less while the Kabyle is just the opposite.

The need to know each other for better control in a relationship of "knowledge-power" as studied by Michel Foucault provides insight into the reasons for the development of studies on the other operated by the military. Science, race, language as a whole Saint-Simonian ideas are the fruit of their time but are also fully in the colonial and racial ideology. The claim to the scientific nature of the military, this will increase the scope of knowledge, scientism morally justify colonialism. Will ultimately constitute a virtuous circle where the science justifies colonialism and colonialism which allows science to flourish. The author also develops a comprehensive study of the legacy of the French Revolution and Napoleonic work on the relationship between military and science, whether by the Polytechnic or the legacy of the Egyptian expedition. The constitution Field knowledge of the military could only develop through their logic and rationalism, which de facto conditioned the constitution of knowledge. Michel Foucault studied what he calls "regimes of truth [2] ," or how science limits itself to accept that knowledge to validate the assumptions departure. It is possible to have a Foucauldian reading of the book by Patricia Lorcini, including the imposition of a racial difference on the conflict between Arab and Kabyle. She particularly emphasizes the role doctors, progressive ideas, the establishment of a scientific community combining academic experts (mainly located in Paris) and lay experts [3] racialization of identities in the Arab and Kabyle. As Michel Foucault, who yet is never mentioned in the book, which is particularly surprising for an American historian relations "knowledge-power", it establishes a mapping of knowledge, cultural, ideological factors explaining why Such knowledge, however erroneous, were able to develop such time and why they were accepted as true. This is not so much to the story of a misconception that we want to establish here that the story of how misconceptions could be accepted as true and acquire the status of scientific knowledge. As the spread of these misconceptions to the whole society as the colonial French society through the appropriation of the word science.

colonial sciences including anthropology, ethnology, geography had a huge spike on the power societies they studied. In arguing to study the habits and customs, traditional law and then codifying them in producing maps, scientists have set in stone the way they conceived these populations. The latter, particularly through education, have reappropriated this knowledge about themselves have been elaborated by men of colonialism. This phenomenon has been widely highlighted by historians, including Jean-Loup Amselle and Elikia M'Bokolo which deepened this type of research emphasizing the phenomena of "reclaiming" of identity and showing that "the way which the natives perceive themselves is linked to the feedback effect of the stories of exploration and conquest and colonial ethnological texts on colonial and post their consciousness of themselves . [4] "

Scientific activity is not neutral in these study subjects as in the results, it has had a direct impact on how whose populations have been collected are then collected. The loss of importance of Kabyle myth from the 1870s and especially the absence of a policy Kabyle from the French government have averted a caesura into two blocks of the population following independence [5] .

By studying the Kabyle myth, the author can write the history of thought and above all attitudes of the nineteenth century. In presenting the action of France in Algeria, whether that of the military and civilians, she draws the political, ideological and cultural France. In line the open field E. Said with his work on Orientalism, it shows how the study of the other is in many ways a mirror of self. Developments on the formation of a new breed of Algeria, as a "melting pot of the Mediterranean, even to revitalize the French nation are crucial here. It was Louis Bertrand, an author Lorraine, succeeding Maurice Barres to the French Academy, who postulated the idea of the emergence of a new race, the European settlers living in the Mediterranean. The emergence of this idea reflects the upheaval taking place in Algeria with the emergence of the III Republic. With the transition from military rule to civilian authority, the rise of the theses of decline of France, the need to revitalize the nation after the war, as well as some specific social relativism at the end century, the Kabyle myth has lost its centrality in favor of the belief in the emergence of a new European race in Africa. While in the years 1830-1840, had increased resistance Kabyle Kabyle myth, the insurrection of 1871 reinforced the trend to reject assimilation and to emphasize a partnership approach. Again, is the political, social, cultural and scientific production conditions, in the case of Louis Bertrand, literary. This idea reflects the instability of identity Algerian settlers, especially after the acquisition of citizenship for Jewish populations. What does being French, European Jews in Algeria, if born in Algeria and the Kabyle potentially can become French citizens? So there is a need for settlers to establish a common identity that distinguishes them not only Arabs but also to ensure their Kabyle social superiority and to unify because of the disparity origins of the settlers. The beliefs of the era, including the influence of climate on men, have greatly facilitated this process, that of defining a common identity for all the settlers whether French or not.

Finally, in a concluding chapter, the author makes an inventory of "the persistence of stereotypes and decide political row, which can highlight the triple legacy - popular, scientific, policy - the Kabyle myth. Despite its abandonment in the late nineteenth century by settlers, this myth has persisted into the community science as evidenced by the choice of studying this population as particularly did Pierre Bourdieu. Above all, the popular and political legacies to better understand the place given to Algerians in France throughout the XXeème Century. The design of an "Arab" Algerian unassimilable has lasted until today, as the author points out:

" The absence of any concerted effort to accommodate religion within colonial society had made it a foreign religion, which made it the epitome of the Other, an expression still evident at the time present in the propaganda of the French right cons of North African immigrants. [6] "

Lorcini Patricia's work has shed light in particular on scientific peaceful political debates affecting historians, as illustrated in the book Patrick Weil, who seeks to understand the motivations for the assertion of individual identity from opposition to the French republican myth of universality [7] .

The author also presents very briefly the consequences of the myth on the Kabyle people in Algeria, admitting herself that her work does not explore this topic.

In conclusion, the work of Patricia Lorcini can get back into the colonial thinking, by not afraid to study the texts of the colonial thinkers of the time. In doing so, it allows at the same time to study the racialization of identities Kabyle and Arab, the consequences this has had on society as Algerian and French, while writing a dissertation on the French and colonial mentality. It proves that studying the colonial period and not make the story of one country or another but to highlight the power relations and the common history of an era that still weighs heavily on the present. Finally, the book calls for further study on the permanence or not of these myths on both sides of the Mediterranean

[1] We refer here to two dimensions. First, the prominence given to homeless vagabonds and Gypsies in European societies. Then, an abundant anthropological research took place in the Arab-Muslim countries (Egypt, Jordan, all Gulf countries) on how the constitution of a modern state in the second half of the twentieth century has resulted in a loss of nomadism well that it can always be a place of great value? particular Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled sentiments: Honor and poetry in a Bedouin Society . Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosen, Lawrence. 1984. Bargaining for reality: the construction of social relations in a Muslim community . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Caton, Steven Charles. 1990. "Peaks of Yemen I summon" poetry as cultural practice in a North Yemeni tribe . Berkeley: University of California Press.

[2] Foucault, Michel, 1999. Les anormaux: cours au Collège de France (1974-1975) . [Paris]: Gallimard.

[3] differentiation between "scholar" and "profane" is still important in scientific studies. The nineteenth century with the proliferation of scientific associations interspersed between the nesting and scientists recognized that crowd of people pretending to scientific knowledge. An inverse relationship could tend to form in the colonial world and in disciplines such as geography, history, ethnology and anthropology, as were those profane that were on the ground while academic scholars were in the metropolis. Scholars 'outsiders' could thus win prestige they could not obtain by staying in the metropolis. The author could investigate more fully this dimension, especially to see how pressure can play cultural scholars to laymen, however, they, on the ground and how it determines the constitution of knowledge.

[4] AMSEL, JL, & M'BOKOLO, E. (1999). At the heart of ethnicity: ethnicity and tribalism in Africa state. Decouverte / Poche, 68. Paris, Decouverte. pp.IV.

[5] We think particularly here in the case of Rwanda and Burundi, where Hutu and Tutsi identities were social categories and not "race" distinct or even of distinct ethnic groups. They are anthropologists, including White Fathers and the Belgian political consistently have differentiated these social identities into two distinct groups at particular racial and implementing policies on the basis of this distinction.

[6] Lorcini, Patricia E. 2005. Kabyle, Arabic, French colonial identities . Limoges: Pulim. P300.

[7] Weil, Patrick. 2008. Liberty, equality, discrimination: the national identity "in the light of history . Paris: B. Grasset.