5 - French Lessons

Summary

On sait avec quelle précautionneuse parcimonie, la culture française a été dispensée, et quels obstacles les maîtres coloniaux ont dressé devant elle. On sait moins que ceux des colonisés qui ont pu s’abreuver des grandes oeuvres sont tous non point des héritiers choyés, mais des voleurs de feu.

Le chauvinisme culturel et la conception nationaliste bourgeoise du savoir sont stupides et méprisables. L’oeuvre d’art est d’un homme mais elle s’adresse a tous ceux qui par elle et en elle, communient dans les souffrances et la joie, la misère et la gloire de l’homme.

Jean Amrouche, ‘La France comme mythe et comme réalité: de quelques vérités ameres’ (1958)

French schools in colonial Algeria were bound to be a focus for ‘native’ families’ anxieties about the prospect of déracinement, especially when their contact with French culture and French or European people was otherwise very limited. What is more, those anxieties were well-founded, at least in important respects, as we have seen; numerous authors described the increasing sense of alienation from their family backgrounds as their education progressed. In that context too, the republican principle of laïcité – French, alien and inconsistently applied though allegedly neutral in respect of different religions – looked, from some angles, like part of the problem, whatever its potential to provide a framework for schools’ negotiation of cultural/religious differences.

Nevertheless, in Djebar's story about the refectory we also saw a form of cultural confrontation and disorientation that was more positive, at least in some ways. Extra-curricular and curricular factors, including the opportunity to study French revolutionary history and to hear French revolutionary rhetoric, emboldened the students to dip their toes into the world of political resistance – if only, at that stage, to express dissatisfaction about what they, as ‘Muslims’, were served for lunch. They had some consciousness of, but not necessarily any sense of irony about, the inspiration they took from their French history lessons. And while there was no sign that the notion of laïcité was deliberately brought into play by the young Djebar or her fellow protestors, it was clear that for the adult author/narrator that notion and its peculiar colonial trajectory were part of the story. At some point Djebar was introduced to laïcité as an abstract concept as well as an inconsistent practice, and decided she could use it both to challenge the prejudices and inconsistencies harboured in her school and to question aspects of the culture intowhich she had been born.