How to introduce this anthropologist and director of studies to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Ehess) in Paris? Will it suffice to mention that Tassadit Yacine is HDR (qualified to direct research) or to mention that she is a member of the social anthropology laboratory of the College de France? Or even author of about fifteen books? She is first of all a tireless intellectual, who excels in the art of agitating ideas. You have to have intellectual audacity to dare to venture into the maze of a damaged memory. In this interview, she returns to the symposium entitled Intellectual Opposition to Colonization and the Algerian War, which she co-organized with the historian, Tramor Quemeneur. Tassadit Yacine sheds a little more light on this event to highlight its scientific, historical, social and anthropological dimension.

L'Expression: You co-organized with the historian, Tramor Quemeneur, the symposium Intellectual Opposition to Colonization and the Algerian War. Tell us a bit, how this particular scientific event happened. It took a lot of effort and energy, even under the current conditions. Which?

Tassadit Yacine: First the deadlines, he prepared in record time (and this is also the reason why some colleagues were unable to join us) and the concerns related to the pandemic . Then, two people to follow 34 communicators, it's not a simple matter. I say two people from July, the date which corresponds to my integration into the organization. At the start, it must be recognized that Tramor Quemeneur was alone, faced with this immense responsibility. You have to be grateful to him. As far as I'm concerned, I was then on another file: gathering material around a missing person, Mohand Selhi, a friend of Boumendjel kidnapped, tortured and then murdered in 1957. I'm talking about intellectual follow-up. At the technical level, the logistics were provided by the IMA and the BNF, Cécile Renault and Christine Igier played a formidable role in the links between the institutions and the different people. Finally, as you have been told, it is a real challenge to embrace such a long time frame. It is also a real risk to bring together communicators on such distant periods and on such varied themes. This colloquium tried to shed light on colonization and war under different prisms to show how war mobilized the whole of Algerian society, rubbed off on part of French society to affect the whole world. Intellectuals, on one side and on the other, creators (writers, filmmakers, painters) rose up against the colonial order, each using their own weapons. Writing, painting, poetry etc. Everything went very well. This meeting was attended by a large audience, warm and thirsty for knowledge. Which is encouraging in the current climate.

If you were asked to assess the presentations made during this colloquium, what would your comment be?

All the communications were excellent, as I just said, and showed the conditions in which this commitment against colonization and war took place, as it did in the universe of lawyers or the League of Human Rights etc... Others focused on personalities known for their radicalism during the war. I'm not going to name everyone but many emblematic figures like Mauriac, Ricoeur, Kateb Yacine or Mammeri etc. We learned that in the work of Tocqueville, known for his positions in favor of colonization, there were nevertheless very virulent anti-colonial accents and that the majority ignored it. This raises questions. We learned that Albert Camus intervened against the death sentences, he did the same with General de Gaulle in favor of Mouloud Mammeri (when they disagreed on the question of independence), for the exfiltrate from Algeria in 1957, when he was wanted by paratroopers. Mammeri lent his pen to the FLN to denounce France's repressive policy at the UN. This therefore provides additional information but does not detract from Camus' position against independence. So there are forms of engagement in the plural; a war is a veritable earthquake that shakes up social and ideological structures, because the cracks are of unequal size and this has undoubtedly produced different attitudes among the actors in this war.

You just mentioned names, but do you agree that the list is far from exhaustive?

You are right, the list is certainly not complete... And in a colloquium, it is impossible to name everyone. I am going to be provocative, I would say that there are especially women who are missing: Simone Veil, (the philosopher) has written very beautiful texts against colonialism which, for her, is barbaric. She also compares French colonialism to the Roman barbarian, without culture which, in turn, inflicts on Greek civilization its own barbarism. She wrote a very beautiful poem: which is called the poem of force, where she denounces the colonial balance of power. It also showed the usefulness for the peoples of North Africa to preserve their cultural heritage (tales, poems) to protect themselves from alienating and deculturing French domination. The colonial scourge is analyzed from the French example in North Africa and Asia. A comparative look that helped her to dismantle the modes of domination of colonization. She deserved to be in our colloquium. The same goes for Madeleine Rébérioux, friend and colleague of Vidal Naquet, or even a great personality like that of Rosa Luxembourg (I would have liked René Galissot to be there to talk about it...). To return to the Algerian terrain, we must add Anna Gréki, Yamina Mechakra, even if she wrote after independence, but the trauma in her writing has its origins in the war. I won't quote you the poetesses of Aurès, Kabylia or Ouarsenis who wrote poems about the war, because our people transmit their history in their language. Because for me, they are intellectuals insofar as their discourse concerns the city and the contestation of the social order. In 2015, we brought together for a conference on 1871 a number of poems on the insurrection but very few people are aware.

Here we are no longer in history, but in literature. Aren't you digressing?

It is true, if I bring you back to literature and especially to oral literature because it is the original form of expression of this country. When we suffer and when we are in pain, we say it in our language. Amrouche said: "I only know how to cry in Kabyle." I'm still on the subject, it was just to say that our bearers of images, sound, dreams who came to talk about Algeria (Algerians or not) are also actors in their own way, transmitters of memory , the scope of which should not be overlooked. That's why I come back to art... Art is also war, colonization but in another form of expression, it's a metaphorized pain, which cannot be seen, cannot be heard not but is transmitted beyond hearing or sight but through the senses. Beyond any discourse, art goes to the goal because, as Lévi Strauss would say about the myth: “It is beautiful and it touches.”. It's just to tell you that for me, who is not a historian, there are still many sections of this literature (oral / written), or, to put it in another term, literacy (all sorts of documents concerning the war) are lacking and that does not shock me insofar as (I use Gilles Manceron's formidable expression about the Stora report) we are taking, including in research, the "small steps" policy. What does this expression mean? It is heavy with meaning. She sends everyone back to their place. Whoever takes small steps is in a dominated position. He does with what we want to give him. In Kabyle we say: "takutift deg aâdaw d atas", it is better to pinch an enemy if you can not do more. All Algerian or French researchers, whether confirmed or not (students) are always reduced, including currently, to going slowly, not to make waves, because we are in an illegitimate position. We worked with the means at hand. This symposium is important in terms of its scientific quality, but beyond that, it aims to lift a taboo: that of symbolically freeing the Algerian question from any possible obstacle. The descendants of Algerians do not have to live through the Algerian-French dispute which is not theirs. They must be freed from this unbearable, insurmountable weight. This struggle which is no longer “conscious” (as it used to be but has not completely disappeared), it is unconscious, it crosses the generations.

But working on memory, on colonization and war is an exciting undertaking, isn't it?

We often imagine that it is easy to work on colonization and war, it is an illusion. As if with the signing of the Evian agreements, everything is back to normal, peace is established once and for all. But the “war” of memories, the war of signs and symbols is omnipresent. Nothing is given, everything is snatched from a high struggle. I come back to the case of Gisèle Halimi, a true icon proposed to be pantheonized. This formidable gesture met with incredible resistance, because she was an important figure in the struggle for independence. Between ourselves, let it be said, it is up to Algeria to recognize it. The example of Gisèle Halimi perfectly illustrates the obstacles placed in front of this field of research. Go back to Soustelle (sixty years after independence) to explain in fact that Aron (right-wing man, certainly but intelligent and courageous, favorable to the independence of Algeria) would have signed a petition (omitted from his memoirs), illustrates well what I have just said. That said, it's pathetic, but if I come back to it, it's precisely to emphasize that the resistances are tough and the guardians of the temple (of refusal, of denial) are still there. The only interest (if there is one) was undoubtedly to understand the conditions in which the radicalization of an important figure in the history of colonization took place. I know that we often think in terms of acceptance/rejection, but the idea is to go beyond this binary vision and to understand the backgrounds and political formations of the actors in this war, including those of fascists like Soustelle, that's obvious. There are also very great militants in favor of Algeria who, at the start, in 1945, pleaded the opposite. The objective of historical research, however, requires studying the trajectories of actors in a social and historical process.

It's not just him?

Absolutely. There may be people who did not appreciate Florence Beaugé's book on General Aussaresses, we can understand that. But that's no reason to refuse it. Conducting the investigation is essential and we must not confuse the investigator with his object. His testimony was a determining factor in research on torture in Algeria. It is not the fact of evoking Aussaresses that matters but what does the researcher do with it? In France, there are left researchers who work on the last members of the OAS or communists who work on the big bourgeoisie. This is not contradictory, it is to advance knowledge even if it does not go in the direction of our convictions.

Some people wonder and say: “Why did you then give the floor to Pervillé?”:

Excellent question! It's hard not to be offended, horrified, words can't translate the feeling, that at the level of subjectivity and immediate reaction. This concerns me personally, I was socialized in this war and it determined the direction of my life... But at some point you have to try, when you can take a step back, to do it, because it is necessary to analysis. But this also concerns my colleagues, they are even more committed at the scientific level, they have deep convictions, because they were trained in the anti-colonialist fight. Algeria was a shock to the point where many of them devoted an entire life to it (André Nouschi, Annie Rey, Gilbert Meynier, Bruno Etienne, etc.). I risk shocking your readers, but there are French people who, by dint of fighting colonization, "France" as we used to call it, have somehow become Algerian. They married Algeria in all its adventures, the most beautiful and the others.

Can you elaborate?

I mean that we can interpret this question differently, the current climate is divided, because we try to reduce the field of social sciences in general and, more particularly, what affects colonization, Islam, Arabic, to gender, it should be borne in mind that attempts to put an end to this field of study exist. I do not know if the refusal of this contribution would not have made more waves than its acceptance. It is also perhaps a way of showing our adversaries, despite our total opposition to this way of thinking, the attachment to freedom of expression and dialogue is essential. I think it should be noted that this is the only communication out of 34... It is literally drowned by a veritable ocean of reverse current papers. This is to say that the current situation is delicate and that there is a great unknown due to several factors and especially to the fact that the old militants and academics are withdrawing from the scene. It is difficult these days to guarantee a succession. There is cause for concern for the future (both on this side of the Mediterranean and on the other), if both political and economic means are not put in place to promote knowledge. The problem of research arises in France, for France (French children and grandchildren and descendants of Algerians), but it also arises for Algeria. The two should therefore help each other to shed light on this a moment in history that is "bygone" certainly, but nevertheless present.