A Practical Guide to French Harki Literature ed. by Keith Moser (review)

Reviews 231 Moser, Keith, ed. A Practical Guide to French Harki Literature. Lanham: Lexington, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7391-9009-8. Pp. xv + 256. $90. This first book in the emerging field of Harki Studies gathers essays from established specialists in Francophone Studies, anthropology, history, and sociology. It holds its promise“to explore the diversity, complexity, and richness of this literature” and “foster a meaningful, nuanced dialogue related to the past and present repercussions of the construction of the social group known as the‘Harkis’”(xi), the Algerians who served in the French army during the Algerian War (1954–62). As a whole, the eleven articles deny the reductionist, Manichean view commonly imposed on the Harkis, challenge the French (and Algerian)“master narrative”about this community forgotten by History, and break the Harkis’ self-imposed silence as well as the institutional silence around them. The first four articles (by Moumen, Fabbiano, Pierret, Sims) provide the historical and sociological contexts that turned, through their 1962 abandonment and massacres and their internment in French camps until the mid-1970s, the heterogeneous Harkis into a collective that now comprises a second generation, which Fabbiano subdivides into “demiurges” (militants in Harki associations who cemented the mythical narratives produced by Bachaga Boualem in the early 1960s) and “historians” (who break with the past and serve the present). This second generation is given prominence in the book since they broke their fathers’ silence by rioting (in 1975 and 1991), by starting various associations and attempting to bring France to justice, by writing and bearing witness for the Harki condition. In the second section of this volume, the texts of four Harki daughters—Besnaci-Lancou, Kemoum, Kerchouche, and Rahmani—are given special attention by several contributors (Enjelvin, Olsson, Reeck, Moser), whose insightful, in-depth analyses, using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic power” and Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory, point to a more nuanced perspective on the Harkis and the psychotherapeutic nature of writing. By bringing together Kemoum’s text and novels by pied-noir Vircondelet and French conscript Levacher, Ireland illustrates how contemporary texts create “shared rather than parallel or competing memories of the war” (102). The last two articles (by Howell and Knight-Santos) show the uniqueness and importance of the graphic novel in this production, as it allows Blancou to make visible the lack of traces of the Harki history and community in France and“to re-inscribe lost sites of memory onto the French memoryscape”(194).A 2003 interview with Mehdi Charef (Le Harki de Meriem), the translation of excerpts from Rahmani’s Moze and of Le Clézio’s short story “L’enfant de sous le pont” (thus including children literature in the study), and an index close the volume. Despite its many qualities, this guide presents some shortcomings, such as repetitiveness, typos, and the lack of year of publication for most journal articles listed in the references. Also, does this “littérature naturelle” contain its own death (Enjelvin, 86) or does it have a“very promising future”(Moser, xv)? Can one refer to the slim corpus as “literature”? Still, this volume fills a dire lack; as such and intended as a “point of departure” (xv), it is a must-read. Eastern Connecticut State University Michèle Bacholle-Bošković Pelckmans,Paul. La sociabilité des cœurs: pour une anthropologie du roman sentimental. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. ISBN 978-90-420-3724-3. Pp. 278. 76 a. This volume comprises some twenty articles concerning the roman sentimental in France, most of which have appeared in print elsewhere. The book’s strength thus derives not so much from its originality but from the fact that it brings together original scholarship on works extremely popular in their day and seeks to understand its popularity, given their almost complete neglect today. The first chapter situates the genre within the broader socio-historical transformations consequent to the rise of modern individualism. Drawing on Louis Dumont’s distinction between holistic and individualistic societies, he argues that the roman sentimental participates in the move away from the former—in which the individual is embedded and to which he is subordinated—by privileging the expression of individual sensibility, a feature of...