The Phenomenology of Francophonia in Three Philosophers and a Historian: Memmi, Derrida, Ben Aych, and Bénabou

This article analyzes how four writers whose works lie at the intersections of philosophy, history, and literature explore the intimate yet alienated relationship of Jews from the Maghreb to the French language. Albert Memmi, Jacques Derrida, Gil Ben Aych, and Marcel Bénabou contribute to what may be called the phenomenology of francophonia, a description of “what it feels like” for them to be acutely self-conscious speakers of French. Particulars of each case include the writer’s knowledge of other ancestral languages (Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, Hebrew), the circumstances of his arrival in France, and the respective experiences of Jewish communities under direct or indirect Vichy authority in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The article also considers how use of French among Jews of North African origin has become all the more unproblematic, even as they experience a distance from their French identity generally.