From one shore, the other... The image of France in the works of contemporary Judeo- Maghrebi novelists
Résumé
The specific "Idea of France," as expressed by French authors of Jewish-Maghrebi origin, comes from the conflicted relationship they have with the concept. These people are attached to France's republican values, but criticize what they see as a hegemony of Western people over Middle-Easterners. For them, France represents an emancipatory ideal. They remember the French revolution, the Crémieux decree of 1870, and their education in republican schools in Algeria or at the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Tunisia or in Morocco, which only reinforces the idea. Their narratives express many echoes of this shared history, where France is exalted for having brought these emancipatory values. Nonetheless, their image of France is tarnished by three striking events: the fact that Algerian Jews were stripped of their French nationality in 1940, the exile en masse from North Africa when France left her colonies and protectorates, and the difficult time they had getting established in the metropole. Given the particular history of North African Jews, this literature is surely a rare example of a bittersweet relationship to an adopted homeland.