Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory

Notes

163 Notes Introduction 1. Examples include Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations; Graebner, History’s Place; and Hayes, Queer Nations. 2. See Wimsatt and Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy.” 3. I borrow here Umberto Eco’s notion of textual intention: “between the intention of the author . . . and the intention of the interpreter . . . there is a third possibility. There is an intention of the text.” Interpretation and Overinterpretation , 25. 4. The kouttab were preschools focused on religious education. In Memmi ’s case, the formation was Hebraic; however, the term kouttab is also used to designate Koranic schools. 5. Application of the Vichy laws began in Tunisia in November 1940; two years later, with the arrival of the German occupying forces, the Jewish community’s administrative committee was dissolved and Tunisian Jews were ordered to participate in forced labor programs. Unlike the Jewish communities of Morocco, Algeria, and even Western Europe, the Tunisian Jewish community was forcibly reorganized into a system with a Judenrat, a council of Jews who served as a governing body for the local Jewish community and acted as intermediaries for Nazi dictates (as was the case during the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe). Thus the task of organizing and providing the required number of workers fell to the Jews themselves. See Sabille, Les juifs de Tunisie sous Vichy et l’occupation. 6. L’Action would become Jeune Afrique in 1961. A weekly French-language magazine, Jeune Afrique remains in circulation today and is the premier francophone publication devoted to African politics and culture. 7. Memmi specifically cites philosophers François Châtelet and Paul Sebag as valuable interlocutors. 8. “The universality, openness and social mobility—opportunities that only the colonizer could provide at the time—traditionally appeared to the Jews as a bargaining chip for their alienation; as a result such opportunities were for them an object of deep longing.” Dugas, La littérature judéomaghr ébine, 28. 164 Notes to pages xvii–xviii 9. Memmi, La terre intérieure: Entretiens avec Victor Malka (The land inside: Interviews with Victor Malka), 77. Habib Bourguiba, the first president of independent Tunisia, governed the country from 1957 until 1987 when he was removed from office by his prime minister, Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali, who forcibly replaced the ailing president and took over in his stead. Ben Ali remained in power until January 14, 2011, when the events of the Tunisian Revolution (2010–11) forced him to flee to Saudi Arabia. His trial, in absentia, began in July 2011. 10. Memmi has given different reasons for the nearly twenty-year gap between his settling in France and his acquisition of French citizenship. In a 2006 interview with Dennis Pereira-Egan for Radio France internationale (rfi), Memmi stated: “I had decided to request French citizenship but I was told ‘you’ll never get it . . . because your book Colonizer and Colonized was damaging to France.’ For three or four years that’s how it went; I had to keep resubmitting dossiers, forms kept getting lost, they put me through all kinds of suffering, but a few well-placed friends in Paris were able to intervene on my behalf and I was finally granted French citizenship.” In a more recent interview, Memmi stated that he waited so many years before applying for French citizenship because he feared upsetting Tunisian friends who viewed his move to Europe as a kind of treason. Memmi, interview with author, October 30, 2009. 11. Memmi recounts that Sartre asked him to direct a special issue of Les Temps modernes focusing on Tunisia; however, Memmi was quickly disenchanted with the tm group. Memmi, La terre intérieure, 170. Memmi’s first meeting with Sartre had taken place several years earlier, in 1953, and in 1955 Memmi met Camus, who agreed to preface the new edition of The Pillar of Salt. 12. Speaking about his brief collaboration with Sartre, Memmi noted: “I viewed Sartre with both admiration and skepticism. He generously invited me to join the Temps modernes editorial board, and I went to several meetings before I realized that Sartre was dangerous, that it was dangerous for a young man such as myself to frequent someone so successful and powerful, and for whom one has such admiration.” Memmi, interview with author, October 30, 2009. 13. “The Scorpion was not very successful. Readers did not understand what I was trying to do; that discouraged me.” Memmi, interview with author , October 30, 2009. 14. Memmi’s definition of racism initially took the form of...