1 - Troubling Memories of Colonialism

Summary

Upon opening their literature textbooks, young Algerians in the 1970s were embarking on an unprecedented reading experience. Alongside the French classics that had been a staple of the colonial school were texts by Algerian authors who wrote about familiar landscapes, cultural practices, and history. Students also began to study Arabic, and in the 1970 textbook al-Mukhtār fī al-nuṣūṣ al-adabīyah [A Selection of Literary Texts], they read Algerian nonfiction and poetry as well as a short story by Reda Houhou. Though these excerpts constituted only a small percentage of all texts studied, the presence of Algerian authors in textbooks announced a potentially profound change. Studying local texts chosen by the new Algerian Ministry of Education did more than simply foster a sense of cultural familiarity. These texts also shaped the contours of a new literary canon, formed by local authors, who would participate for the first time inside the classroom in the process of building a vision of collective national identity.

No text better crystalized the many contradictions of this moment, for authors and students alike, than Kateb Yacine's essay “Le génie est collectif” [Genius Is Collective], in the 1976 textbook Recueil de textes à l’usage des classes de 3e année secondaire [Collection of Texts for Use in Third Year Secondary School Classes]. This brief excerpt envisioned a new relationship between authors and their public in postcolonial Algeria. Yacine explained that “what we called theater and literature until now weren't really theater and literature, or they were for so few people that they became suspect” (89). The new task of an author, Yacine argued, was to connect to the people and help express their voices; no longer would Algerian authors write in isolation for a small francophone elite.

While this vision of collective production and consumption of literature was enticing, the manner in which Yacine expressed it was also destabilizing. His excerpt ended with the statement that the literary author would become an “historian” for the public and “be of service in many domains” (89). But whose history would the Algerian author write? One prescribed and tightly controlled by the state? Or that of the people? If so, which groups?