Crapanzano - The Harkis : the wound that never heals

Vincent Crapanzano is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Among his books are Tuhami: A Portrait of a Moroccan and Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2011 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2011.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11876-5 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-11876-2 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11878-9 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crapanzano, Vincent, 1939 author.

The Harkis : the wound that never heals / Vincent Crapanzano.

pages ; cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11876-5 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-11876-2 (alk. paper) 1. HarkisFranceHistory. 2. HarkisEthnic identity. 3. AlgeriaHistoryRevolution, 19541962. I. Title.

DC34.5.A4C73 2011

965'.0461dc22

2010047872

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

The Harkis

The Wound That Never Heals

VINCENT CRAPANZANO

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

For Garrick

to make a kinder world

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There have been so many people, strangers sometimes, acquaintances, friends, students, and colleagues, whose incidental remarks have helped crystallize a thought, uncover a new perspective, point to an omission, or reveal a blind spot in my thinking. To all of them, whoever they are, I want to express my gratitude. There are, of course, many others who have directly helped me in my research and writing. I list them in alphabetical order: Raja Abillama, Laure Bejawi, Elizabeth Alsop, Hacne Arfi, Talal Asad, William Beeman, Louis Begley, Ramu de Belscize, Fatima Besnaci-Lancou, Mary Blume, David Brent, Joseph Brown, Edward Carpenter, Susan Chace, Songeun Choi, Aleksandra Crapanzano, Adelaide de Menil, Ellen di Riso, Walid El Hamamsy, Giulia Fabbiano, Maurice Faivre, Nabile Fars, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Steven Foster, Ferial Ghazoul, Saygun Gokariksel, Fredric Gueron, Yousef Hazmaoui, Larry Hirschfeld, Jonathan House, Elizabeth Hsu, Maurice and Betoule Imbiotte, Rohan Jackson, Lila Kalinich, Banu Karaca, Dalila Kerchouche, Abdelkrim Kletch, Louise Lennihan, Shana Lessing, Tanya Luhrman, Susana Maia, Chowra Makaremi, Shea McManus, Lucy McNaire, Karin Merveille, Jeannette Miller, Caroline Moorehead, Sad Mrabti, Christine Ockrent, Stephan Palmi, Mariella Pandolfi, the late Paul Parin, Maria Pia di Bello, Christine Pinnock, Linda Pitcher, Barbara Posposil, Zahia Rahmani, Aseel Sawalha, Noam Scheidlin, John Burnham Schwartz, Jonathan Shannon, Jonathan Skinner, Susan Slyomovics, Dimitrina Spencer, Ann Stoler, Nomi Stone, Jesse Tandler, Stuart Taylor, Yunus Telliel, Ana Maria Vinea, Jimmy Weir, Kee Yong, and Mohammed Zadatas well as all the Harkis and their children, who must remain anonymous. I thank them all. I assume, of course, all responsibility for the contents of this book.

I want also to thank Tanya Luhrman and Stephan Palmi for arranging for me to deliver the Rapapport Lecture at the joint meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of Religion in 2009, as well as Jonathan Skinner and Rohan Jackson for arranging for the Firth Lecture I gave at the meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists in Belfast in 2010. Those lectures gave me the opportunity to air my thoughts on the Harkison destiny and forgivenessand I benefited enormously from the discussions that followed them, as I did from talks I gave at the City University of New York Graduate Center; the University of California, Los Angeles; the Universit de Montral; the University of Minnesota; Oxford University; and the Humboldt University in Berlin.

I am especially grateful to my friends Jean-Franois and Martine Brun, who were my gracious hosts in southern France for far longer than anyone could reasonably expect and whose conversation contributed greatly to my thinking about the Harkis and France.

Finally, as always, I am indebted to my wife, Jane, for encouraging me, for listening toand contributing tomy thinking aloud at dinner over the five years of my research and writing, and, of course, for her fierce red editorial pen.

The research for this book was supported by grants from the City University of New York Graduate Center (PSC-BHE award), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Different versions of in Alif 30 (2010): 5784.

NOT E ON USAGE

As Michle Baussant (2004) has noted, both the juridical and the popular classification of the peoples of Algeria have presented problems that reflect the precarious relations between Algeria and France and among their inhabitants. The namesthe categorizationof different populations have been inconsistent, at times contradictory, and have often changed over the 132 years of French colonization. As these changes are not of direct importance to this study, for the sake of readability I have adopted rather arbitrarily the following usage. I refer to the native peoples of Algeria, whom the French called indignes, as Algerians. (The European settlers, but not the indignes, were called Algerians until the 1930s.) They include both Arabs and Berbers. Although the Algerians have often been called Muslims, I have avoided the term except when I am referring specifically to their religious identity, for there are also Christian and Jewish Algerians. I refer to the European settlers as settlers, colons, or pieds-noirs, a more recent term meaning literally black feet. Though there has been much speculation, the derivation of pieds-noirs remains obscure. The pieds-noirs, though popularly assumed to be of French origin, are, in fact, the descendants of French, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, and other immigrants; nearly all of them became French citizens, and most remained so. (The Algerian Jews were given French citizenship in 1870 by the Crmieux decree.) I use French to refer to the citizens of France who either lived in the mtropole, that is, continental France, or were temporary residents in Algeria, military officers, for example. For lack of a better term, and in full recognition of the fact that the Harkis are French citizens, I also use French to refer to the European population.

I use Harki (pl. Harkis) in the narrow sense to refer to an Algerian and his immediate family who sided with the French during the war of independence and served as an auxiliary (suppltif) in the French army. I follow Harki usage in referring to their offspring, regardless of age, as the children of the Harkis (les enfants des Harkis). The term, at least among those Harkis who are anxious to preserve their Harki identity, now includes their grandchildren. At times, again following Harki usage, I sometimes refer to the Harkis, their children, and their grandchildren collectively as Harkis. My usage should be clear from the context. Finally, I refer, at least on first occurrence, to those Harki children who spent at least part of their life in one of the camps or forestry villages in which their parents were housed as Harkis of the hinge generation (les Harkis de gnration charnire