MY ALGERIANCE by Hélène Cixous

MY ALGERIANCE by Hélène Cixous- Review, Reaction
by 0018922

This is basically a story more than an essay, Hélène Cixous' childhood. Her childhood is evidently full of hardship and an atmosphere of oppression. Yet, she does such a wonderful job of describing the gritty sincere people, dramatic landscapes and settings pregnant with meaning, that one cannot help but feel nostalgic with the protagonist. Impressions, imprints, mirrors of her life, it is a wonderfully romantic war story. One wonders at the irony of such beautiful humanity amidst such conflict and oppression.

The colonial and European wars are "violent plays" which give a lot of political significance to her Algeria. Her family has its own piece of the action when bullets lodge in their door from the American liberation forces.

The Algeriance title is a clever wordplay on Allegiance and Algeria. Poignant with the colonial themes of the essay. Apparently the noun 'Algerian' is new, it was only an adjective before. I don't really understand what that signifies.

Hélène was a "clandestine" little girl. This is how she describes her out of place existence. Yet evidently she was formed by Algeria and the harsh contrasts there. She recalls longing to live elsewhere but also hospitality and gratitude. "Nowhere is home."

She is in a torn land, symbolised by the two cemeteries Catholic and Jewish. I'm not sure why there aren't more cemeteries of the other groups, but I suppose it just wasn't part of her childhood. She relates a terribly poetic situation of having to sell the roses her dead father had wished they maintain, both soiling and growing from his memory.

She sees herself as an outsider. "My house is encircled." There are various colonial ethnic divisions: There are the Arabs versus the French occupiers. She is neither because she is colonial but not accepted as Catholic because she is Jewish. It is around WW2, and there is extreme persecution of Jews. So, she uses the letter 'J' to describe herself, instead of Jew, it becomes her favourite letter. Also, her leftist family describes the groups as Israelites, Muslims and Indigènes - the latter, I guess are the indigenous 'black' people in Africa? Jewish and Arab groups are divided, as well, by a "poisoned gift" of citizenship - extended only to the Jewish group. Divide and Conquer is the classic and is demonstrated. There certainly is a mix of groups but all of them are not united against the occupying French.

She has mixed feelings about having a French passport. It opens doors for her. For her family it was a "lucky landing" in the chaos of war. Yet it makes her part of the oppressive colonial group, that those around her hate. Despite her opinions of sympathy with the oppressed, Hélène feels she is part of the colonial class also because her family has a maid by the name of Aïcha, though that was not her real name. Evil impoverishment surrounds her but as a child she does not share. This the author expresses with some obvious regret. Her own name of Cixous is curiously of Arab Berber name origin even though she is Jewish. She still feels totally foreign with that name and almost disavows it.

Her family was expelled from circles of military before and after war, intersecting contradictory social circles. They lived in the "uninhabitable" Clos Salembier, under siege as enemy due to strange misplaced anti-colonial sentiment and racism. She says she feels like Cinna the poet, murdered for presumed allegiance to Caesar. Yet she loved the Algerians who spurned her, she identifies with the oppressed. Her only friend 'Kabyle boy' also with a lost name. Wanted to love but too early too late.

She can forgive the hate of the oppressed not the hate of the colonialists. She remembers the colour navy blue as the fascist youth.

She feels sexual repression and identity as a girl. She is a girl afraid of cunning, and is picked on and spat upon by the tricky boys. Cunning is an interesting choice of word, coming from Cixous the feminist; it is related to the much maligned word 'cunt,' and has been recently re-associated with female knowledge and traditional wisdom. However, as a girl she feels lucky to be able to hide her Jewishness more easily than her brother. Her brother is circumcised and the tricky boys are more rough with her brother.

She comes to live, in 1941, on the a hill and no longer feels like the guilty oppressor. She has the "Peace of the poor" in Oran with the sailors who were really French. Water carriers are still there, the oppressed. Yet, the climax of the writing is an incident with a shoeshine boy. Her new white shoes get bloodied. Why still the hate? I think she is meaning to show how overwhelming it all is. She went home without retaliating and tried to be dignified.

The end of the story feels a bit unfinished. She tacks onto the end a part with a positive spin, about Madame Bals the Spanish Grocer who said, there's "no point using kid glove[s]" and taught the children four letter words. Somehow she united the children but it doesn't say how. She makes a point about the year and living in the past that I don't understand: 1940 or 2000?
Legitimacy is one of the key issues of her essay and she shows how illegitimacy and the law serve to divide the various ethnic groups against each other for the French to rule. The division of friend and enemy is very muddled.

Question: What is Oran? What year is she talking about written in the stairwell, surely not the year 2000?