Table of Contents
1 Cover
6 Epigraph
7 Foreword – Mariana Wikinski References Notes
8 Introduction: The Difficulty of Acknowledging Colonial Trauma The history of French colonization in Algeria: a blank space in memory and politics A much-needed interdisciplinary approach Note
9 1 Psychoanalysis and Algerian Paradoxes Disarray of the private and public spheres God’s reinforcement of failing institutions The power of religion and the religion of power The literary text and the invisible staging of power The power of the “language, religion, and politics” (LRP) bloc as revealed by clinical psychoanalysis The duplicity of subjects confronting censorship from the LRP Abandoned citizenship and speech acts Notes
10 2 Colonial Rupture The colony: the rogue child of the Enlightenment Colonialism’s destruction of social cohesion A colonial republic divided, or the “duty to civilize [the] barbarians” 1945: a literature of refusal is born Nedjma: an esthetic of colonial destruction? Disrupting genealogical ties: the effect of “renaming” Algerians in the 1880s Subjective catastrophes and the disappearance of the father as symbolic reference Writing against anonymous filiation Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche: a broken voice Notes
11 3 Colonialism Consumed by War 1945–1954: the necessity of war The impossibility of forgetting and madness, a “remedy” for disappearance Silencing the unforgettable mutilation of bodies Toulouse, 2012: the return of murder Constructing the “nation” The writer’s pressing need: transform disappearance into absence Notes
12 4 Colonialism’s Devastating Effects on Post-Independence Algeria The mutilated body of the colonized and the hunger for reparation Colonial hogra and a frantic quest for legitimacy The “orphaning” effect of colonialism and its impact Further distortion of patronyms Divested of a name: a form of colonial murder Manufacturing erasure and denial under colonialism From colonial trauma to social trauma Notes
13 5 Fratricide: The Dark Side of the Political Order The emergence of Algerian nationalist movements in the 1920s The War of Liberation and an impossible fraternity From parricide to fratricide When the murders between brothers are dismissed … Calling on the father A gap in memory sets off an endless deadly battle Notes
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6 The Internal War of the 1990s
Reconsidering the LRP bloc
The tyranny and pleasure of power
The shift of 1988 and the experience of political plurality
An internal war of unprecedented violence
The curse of fratricide
The war comes