Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T07:30:06.869Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Historicity, Peoplehood, and Politics: Holocaust Talk in Twenty-First-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2018

Kimberly A. Arkin*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Boston University

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from the mid-2000s as well as accounts from French Jewish newspapers and magazines from the 1980s onward, this paper traces the emergence of new French Jewish institutional narratives linking North African Jews to the “European” Holocaust. I argue that these new narratives emerged as a response to the social and political impasses produced by intra-Jewish disagreements over whether and how North African Jews could talk about the Holocaust, which divided French Jews and threatened the relationship between Jewishness and French national identity. These new pedagogical narratives relied on a very different historicity, or way of reckoning time and causality, than those used in more divisive everyday French Jewish Holocaust narratives. By reworking the ways that French Jews reckoned time and causality, they offered an expansive and homogenously “European” Jewishness. This argument works against a growing postcolonial sociological and anthropological literature on religious minorities in France and Europe by emphasizing the contingency, difficulty, and even ambivalence around constructing “Jewishness” as transparently either “European” or “French.” It also highlights the role played by historicity—not just history—in producing what counts as group “identity.”

Type
Religious Others and the French Republic
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abitbol, Michel. 1989. The Jews of North Africa during the Second World War. Tihanyi, Catherine, trans. Mazal Holocaust Collection. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Aderet, Ofer. 2014. Israel Marks First-Ever National Day Remembering Jewish Exodus from Muslim Lands. Ha'aretz, 30 Nov. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/.premium-1.629226 (accessed 16 July 2015).Google Scholar
Agence France Presse. 2000. Les victimes de la Shoah reincarnation d’âmes pécheresses. 6 Aug., sec. Informations Generales, n.p.Google Scholar
Agence France Presse. 2012. Polémique Enderlin: le parquet général favorable au rejet du pourvoi. 10 Jan.: n.p.Google Scholar
Albert, Phyllis. 1977. The Modernization of French Jewry: Consistory and Community in the Nineteenth Century. Waltham: Brandeis University Press.Google Scholar
Allali, Jean-Pierre. 2014. Les Juifs de Tunisie sous la botte allemande: chronique d'un drame méconnue. Paris: Editions Glyphe.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict R. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Arkin, Kimberly. 2014. Rhinestones, Religion, and the Republic: Fashioning Jewishness in France. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2003. Muslims as a ‘Religious Minority’ in Europe. In Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2006. French Secularism and the ‘Islamic Veil Affair.’ Hedgehog Review 8, 1/2: 93.Google Scholar
Assaraf, Robert. 2005. Une certaine histoire des Juifs du Maroc: 1860–1999. Paris: Jean-Claude Gawsewitch.Google Scholar
Atlas, Jacqueline. 1983. Letter to the editor. Cooperation Feminine, Apr.: 11.Google Scholar
Bel-Ange, Norbert. 2006. Quand Vichy internait ses soldats juifs d'Algérie: Bedeau, sud oranais, 1941–1943. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Benayoun, Chantal. 1993. Identité et citoyenneté: Juifs, Arabes, et Pieds-Noirs face aux événements du Golfe. Revue française de science politique 43: 209–28.Google Scholar
Benbassa, Esther. 2004. La République face à ses minorités: les juifs hier, les musulmans aujourd'hui. Paris: Mille et une nuits.Google Scholar
Benbassa, Esther. 2006. La guerre des mémoires: la polémique autour de l'héritage colonial français libère les revendications mémorielles. Libération, 2 Jan.: 3132.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1974. On the Concept of History. In Gessammelte Schriften. Redmond, Dennis, trans. Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Bensimon, Doris and Pergola, Sergio Della. 1984. La population juive de France: socio-demographie et identité. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.Google Scholar
Bensoussan, George. 2012. Juifs en pays Arabes, 1850–1975. Paris: Tallendier.Google Scholar
Bensoussan, Philippe director. 2003. Décryptage. Documentary film, Jacques Tarnero, writer, Sophie Dulac, producer. Ciné+ Classic.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Pierre. 2000. Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Blanchard, Pascal, Lemaire, Sandrine, and Bancel, Nicolas. 2006. Culture post-coloniale, 1961–2006: traces et mémoires coloniales en France. Paris: Autrement.Google Scholar
Bonniol, Jean-Luc. 2007. Les usages publics de la mémoire de l'esclavage colonial. Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 85: 1421.Google Scholar
Borgel, Robert. 2007. Etoile Jaune et Croix Gammée. Collection Témoignages de La Shoah: Fondation Pour La Mémoire de La Shoah. Paris: Editions le Manuscrit.Google Scholar
Boum, Aomar. 2014. Partners against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews Respond to Nazism in French North African Colonies, 1936–1940. Journal of North African Studies 19, 4: 554–70.Google Scholar
Bowen, John. 2007. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bowen, John. 2009. Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Boyarin, Jonathan. 2009. The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bunzl, Matti. 2003. Austrian Zionism and the Jews of the New Europe. Jewish Social Studies 9, 2: 154–73.Google Scholar
Bunzl, Matti. 2004. Symptoms of Modernity: Jews and Queers in Late-Twentieth-Century Vienna. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bunzl, Matti. 2007. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.Google Scholar
Cesari, Jocelyne. 1998. Musulmans et Républicains: Les Jeunes, L'slam, et La France. Paris: Ecitions Complexe.Google Scholar
Cesari, Jocelyne. 2014. Self, Islam and Secular Public Spaces. In Göle, Nilüfer, ed., Islam and Public Controversy in Europe. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 4757.Google Scholar
Chaumont, Jean-Michel. 2010. La concurrence des victimes. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Cherif, Fayçal. 2011. Jewish-Muslim Relations in Tunisia during World War II: Propaganda, Stereotypes, and Attitudes, 1939–1943. In Gottreich, Emily Benichou and Schroeter, Daniel J., eds., Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 305–20.Google Scholar
Chouraqui, André. 1985. L'histoire des Juifs en Afrique du Nord. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Cohen, Erik. 2002. Les juifs de France: valeurs et identité. Paris: Fonds Social Juif Unifié.Google Scholar
Conan, Eric and Rousso, Henry. 1994. Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives. 2011. La SHJT rappellera le souvenir de la rafle des Juifs de Tunis. NEWS Press, 7 Dec., sec. FRANCE; Actualités sociales; Associations et groupements. n.p.Google Scholar
Cukierman, Roger. 2015. Discours de Roger Cukierman au dîner annuel du CRIF. Paris, 23 Feb. http://www.crif.org/fr/lecrifenaction/%C2%ABnous-serions-moins-fran%C3%A7ais-si-nous-n%C3%A9tions-pas-juifs%C2%BB/54603 (accessed 25 Feb. 2015).Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Naomi. 2012. Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Naomi. 2015. ‘Brothers from South of the Mediterranean’: Decolonizing the Jewish ‘Family’ during the Algerian War. French Politics, Culture and Society 33, 2: 7696.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile and Mauss, Marcel. 1967. Primitive Classification. Rodney Needham, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Enderlin, Charles. 2010. Un enfant est mort: Netzarim, 30 septembre 2000. Paris: Don Quichotte.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1969. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fallows, James. 2003. Who Shot Muhammed Al-Dura? Atlantic, June. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/06/who-shot-mohammed-al-dura/302735/ (accessed 24 Nov. 2016).Google Scholar
Fassin, Eric. 2006. Aveugles à la race ou au racisme? Une approache stratégique. In Fassin, Didier and Fassin, Erice, eds., De la question sociale à la question raciale. Paris: La Découverte, 106–30.Google Scholar
Fernando, Mayanthi. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gasquet, Béatrice de. 2016. ‘Dépasser l'interdit’ Le châle de prière des femmes en France au XXIe siècle. Clio: Femmes, genre, histoire 44 (Dec.): 123–46.Google Scholar
Gasquet, Frédéric. 2006. La lettre de mon père: une famille de Tunis dans l'enfer Nazi. Paris: Editions du Félin.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali. In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Martin. n.d. Les juifs d'Afrique du nord dans la Shoah. Harissa.com. http://harissa.com/D_Histoire/lesjuifsdanslashoahgilbertshaked.htm (accessed 22 July 2015).Google Scholar
Gilbert, Martin. 1993. Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William Morrow and Co.Google Scholar
Goldhagen, Daniel. 1997. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian. 1968. The Consequences of Literacy. In Goody, Jack, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Graetz, Michel. 1996. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Jane Todd, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Haggiag, Yvan. 2000. Letter to the editor. Actualité Juive, 31 Aug.: 4.Google Scholar
Hammerschlag, Jessica. 2016. After Charlie Hebdo: The Representation of Jews and Muslims in France. The Critique, Jan. http://www.thecritique.com/articles/after-charlie-hebdo-the-representation-of-jews-and-muslims-in-france/ (accessed 21 Jan. 2017).Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Alec. 1995. Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 2011. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Jarville, Eric. 2000. Letter to the editor. Actualité Juive, 7 Sept.: 4.Google Scholar
Jazouani, Hanane. 2011. Juifs du Maroc: Indemnisation controversée des victimes de la seconde guerre mondiale. Yabiladi.com, 27 Sept. http://juifdumaroc.over-blog.com/2014/05/juifs-du-maroc-indemnisation-controversee-des-victimes-de-la-seconde-guerre-mondiale.html (accessed 22 June 2015).Google Scholar
JMT Films. 2002. A Matter of Time: The Story of the Jewish Communities of North Africa during WWIII. New York: Filmakers Library.Google Scholar
Judt, Tony. 1992. The Past Is another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe. Daedalus 121, 4: 83118.Google Scholar
Kalman, Samuel. 2013. French Colonial Fascism: The Extreme Right in Algeria, 1919–1939. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Katz, Ethan. 2012. Between Emancipation and Persecution: Algerian Jewish Memory in the Longue Durée (1930–1970). Journal of North African Studies 17, 5: 793820.Google Scholar
Katz, Ethan. 2015. The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Katz, Steven T., Biderman, Shlomo, and Greenberg, Gershon, eds. 2007. Hayim Yisrael Tsimerman. In Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press, 157–67.Google Scholar
Kenbib, Mohammed. 2014. Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime, 1940–42. Journal of North African Studies 19, 4: 540–53.Google Scholar
Laurence, Jonathan and Vaisse, Justin. 2005. Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Leff, Lisa Moses. 2006. Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lindenberg, Daniel. 2002. Le rappel à l'ordre: enquête sur les nouveaux réactionnaires. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Malkki, Liisa Helena. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mallmann, Klaus-Michael and Cüppers, Martin. 2010. Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. Krista Smith, trans. Oxford: Enigma Books.Google Scholar
Mandel, Maud L. 2003. In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mandel, Maud L. 2014. Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mandel, Ruth. 2008. Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Marienstras, Richard. 1975. The Jews of the Diaspora, or the Vocation of a Minority. European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 9, 2: 622.Google Scholar
Marienstras, Richard. 2007. Pour la Diaspora. Le Débat 144, 2: 103–8.Google Scholar
Marrus, Michael and Paxton, Robert. 1981. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mopsik, Charles and Krygier, Rivon. 2014. Une discussion avec Charles Mopsik: la Shoah comme Punition Divine. http://www.charles-mopsik.com/Texte44.html (accessed 21 Jan. 2016).Google Scholar
Morin, Edgar, Naïr, Sami, and Sallenave, Danièle. 2002. Israël-Palestine: le cancer. Le Monde, 4 June n.p.Google Scholar
Msellati, Henri. 1999. Les Juifs d'Algérie sous le régime de Vichy. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Nataf, Claude, ed. 2012. Les Juifs de Tunisie sous le joug nazi. Paris: Editions le Manuscrit.Google Scholar
Oliel, Jacob. 2005. Les Camps de Vichy: Maghreb-Sahara, 1939–1945. Montréal, Quebec: Editions du Lys.Google Scholar
Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Podselver, Laurence. 1986. Le mouvement Lubavitch: déracinement et réinsertion des Sepharades. Pardès 3: 5468.Google Scholar
Poirier, Veronique. 1998. Ashkénazes et Séfarades: une étude comparée de leurs relations en France et en Israél (1950–1990). Paris: Cerf.Google Scholar
Rettig, Haviv. 2006. Rights Sought for Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands. Jerusalem Post, 23 Oct., sec. News.: 4.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, Luc. 2010. Charles Enderlin et l'affaire Al Dura. Cités 44: 161–66.Google Scholar
Rousso, Henry. 1994. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, Olivier. 2005. La laïcité face à l'islam. Paris: Stock.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Saraf, Michal. 1988. The Hitler Scroll of North Africa: Moroccan and Tunisian Jewish Literature and Tunisia on the Fall of the Nazis. Lod: Mekon Habern le-Mehqere Sifruit.Google Scholar
Satloff, Robert. 2006. Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands. New York: PublicAffairs.Google Scholar
Schechter, Ronald. 2003. Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schley, Rachel Eva. 2015. The Tyranny of Tolerance: France, Religion, and the Conquest of Algeria, 1830–1870. PhD diss., UCLA Department of History. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/52v9w979 (accessed 15 Apr. 2018).Google Scholar
Schreier, Joshua. 2010. Arabs of the Jewish Faith the Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Shaked, Edith. 2015. Israël et l'Holocauste: Y a-t-il une perspective historique authentique? Blog terredisrael.com. http://www.terredisrael.com/infos/israel-et-lholocauste-y-a-t-il-une-perspective-historique-authentique-jacques-et-isabelle-par-edith-shaked/ (accessed 30 June 2015).Google Scholar
Shefler, Gil. 2011. Moroccan Jews to Be Compensated for Nazi Crimes. Jerusalem Post, 28 Apr, sec. News: 7.Google Scholar
Shepard, Todd. 2008. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Shepard, Todd. 2013. Algerian Nationalism, Zionism, and French Laïcité: A History of Ethnoreligious Nationalisms and Decolonization. International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, 3: 445–67.Google Scholar
Shryock, Andrew. 1997. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sibony, Daniel. 2003. Proche-Orient: Psychanalyse d'un conflit. Paris: Editions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Paul. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Anne. 1983. Debat. Cooperation Feminine, Apr.: 12.Google Scholar
Sitruk, Joseph. 1997. Chemin Faisant: entretiens avec Claude Askolovitch et Bertrand Dicale. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Spiegel, Gabrielle. 2002. Memory and History: Liturgical Time and Historical Time. History and Theory 41, 2: 149–62.Google Scholar
Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. 2014. Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stora, Benjamin. 2006. Les trois exils juifs d'Algérie. Paris: Stock.Google Scholar
Szlakmann, Charles. 1990. Untitled. Actualité Juive, 25 Apr.: 11.Google Scholar
Taguieff, Pierre-André. 2001. The Force of Prejudice: On Racism and Its Doubles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Taguieff, Pierre-André. 2002. La nouvelle judéophobie. Paris: Mille et une nuits.Google Scholar
Taguieff, Pierre-André. 2010. La nouvelle propagande antijuive. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Ternisien, Xavier. 2000. Indignation en France après les propos sur la Shoah d'Ovadia Yossef, leader du Shass en Israël. Le Monde, 9 Aug., sec. Dernière page.Google Scholar
Tetreault, Chantal. 2015. Transcultural Teens: Performing Youth Identities in French Cités. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trigano, Shmuel. 2002. L'islamisme et les Juifs: un test pour la République. Observatoire du monde juif, Dec.: 12.Google Scholar
Trigano, Shmuel. 2003. La démission de la République: juifs et musulmans en France. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Trigano, Shmuel. 2006. ‘Abus de mémoire’ et ‘concurrence des victimes’ une dépolitisation des problèmes. Controverses 2 (June): 3944.Google Scholar
Trigano, Shmuel. 2015. A Journey through French Anti-Semitism. Jewish Review of Books. http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1534/a-journey-through-french-anti-semitism/ (accessed 27 Sept. 2016).Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Weinstock, Nathan. 2004. Histoire de chiens: La dhimmitude dans le conflit israélo-palestinien. Paris: Mille et une nuits.Google Scholar
Wieviorka, Annette. 1992. Déporatation et génocide: Entre la mémoire et l'oubli. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Wolf, Joan. 2004. Harnessing the Holocaust: The Politics of Memory in France. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Michelle. 2015. The Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Yablonka, Hanna. 2009. Oriental Jewry and the Holocaust: A Tri-Generational Perspective. Israel Studies 14, 1: 94122.Google Scholar
Yerushalami, Yosef Hayim. 1996. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar