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  • Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria
  • Todd Shepard
James D. LeSueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)

James D. LeSueur’s new book offers both a rich history of intellectual debates during what he names the “French-Algerian War” (1954–1962) and a reflection on the subsequent effects of these particularly contentious disagreements. Uncivil War focuses on intellectuals’ ongoing responses during the conflict to the forms of violence the combatants engaged. It details how these responses forced the emergence of the concept of the “Other” out from scholarly reflections into widely available political rhetoric. In this way, LeSueur shows how intellectual tempests that had little effect on public policy about Algeria formed the understandings that current discussions of “post-coloniality,” difference, identity politics, and universalism continue to rely on while also, he insists, redefining the role of the intellectual. Specifically, Uncivil War argues that intellectuals confrontation with Algeria’s decolonization set the terms and revealed many of the dangers of post-1962 “identity politics.”

Uncivil War examines the wide range of reactions to the war among liberal and left-wing intellectuals, outlining evolving positions and shifting alliances and carefully mapping crucial disagreements among his subjects. It is not quite clear why LeSueur ignores the small minority of French intellectuals in the period who identified as far-right or even just right-wing. Extensive research in primary sources-and his use of them-distinguish LeSueur’s work from much recent English language scholarship that attends solely to questions of “memory” or that focuses on “representations” only in published sources.

The book’s seven chapters are divided into two sections book-ended by Introduction and Conclusion. Part I: “Decolonization and Visions of Reconciliation” begins with a short chapter that traces the history between 1830 and the mid-1950s of French theories about how and why they ruled Algeria. It describes how the now classic poles of French colonial theory, assimilation and association, were applied in Algeria. It also introduces the policy of “integration.” LeSueur is one of the first scholars to treat integration as a distinct phase in French understandings of their relationship to most Algerians, those who had one of the “Local Civil Statuses” (with “Muslim Civil Status” the most common). He pursues this analysis in Chapter 3, which centers on the “Algerian” author Mouloud Ferraoun and his role in the Services des Centres Sociaux, an agency established to educate Algerian “Muslims” as part of the policy of “integration.” LeSueur is incorrect in stating that the “Centres were truly the final attempt to bridge the gap between the metropolitan French government and the Muslim community in Algeria” (57). Yet given that the extensive “integrationist” programs the government put in place after 1956 and especially between 1958 and 1962 remain largely unstudied (with the investment policy of the Constantine Plan a major exception), LeSueur’s discussion of one such program is welcome.

The chapters of Part I all center on the question of “Franco-Muslim reconciliation,” an ideal that, LeSueur insists, obsessed “French” intellectuals and that “Algerian” intellectuals roundly criticized as unrealistic and paternalist. Its final chapter is wholly concerned with “The Question of Albert Camus.” This chapter is rich in documentation, compellingly written, and constantly attentive to what Camus’ public and private interventions during the war and his eventual silence reveal about the role and the responsibility of intellectuals in the period. LeSueur explains that Camus was against Algerian independence “because he simply refused to acknowledge the existence of two irreconcilable ‘personalities’ in Algeria and believed that France (and the French) belonged there” (87). As Part I of Uncivil War makes clear, almost all “French” intellectuals shared this view for much of the conflict. Unlike the majority of intellectuals, however, Camus announced in 1957 that he would no longer publicly criticize or defend French policies in Algeria.

Whereas LeSueur is very insightful on Camus’ unique early interventions for peace and justice in Algeria and on his lonely silence, his description of Camus’ widely shared refusal to embrace Algerian independence reveals a persistent shortcoming. “French” intellectuals receive repeated scoldings for their inability to recognize...

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