Histoire Et Memoire Coloniale : (im)possible Partage ? Relecture De Zohra, La Femme Du Mineur De Hadj Hamou Et Mamoun, L’ebauche D’un Ideal De Chukri Khodja

Abstract

The anthologies of French-language literature dedicated to the Maghreb almost always leave aside the forerunners of Algeria (1920-1930). One would argue that the praise of colonization has justified their disappearance from any form of remembrance or genealogy. Yet again, a carefully reading of some forgotten narratives such as Zohra, the miner’s wife (1925) by Hadj Hamou and Mamoun, the outline of an ideal (1928) by Chukri Khodja, shows that those texts cannot only be seen as documents presenting the colonial violence, the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed or the latter’s assimilation of these imposed values. Even though, just like in both writers, the characters come from a privileged social background and they are actually moving back and forth between two languages, two cultures in two divided worlds, they come up against the impossibility of being in surroundings that are hostile to those who want to change sides. Thus, the figure of social and cultural defector embodied by both Mamoun, and Meliani the miner, cannot be fully expressed. The literary space reveals the (im)possible overcoming of the resistances confronted by the colonized subject.