Subversive Representations of Education in Francophone Novels of the Colonial Maghreb

Subversive Representations of Education in Francophone Novels of the Colonial Maghreb A Thesis Presented by WHITNEY LEIGH BEVILL Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2011 French and Francophone Studies Subversive Representations of Education in Francophone Novels of the Colonial Maghreb A Thesis Presented by WHITNEY LEIGH BEVILL Approved as to style and content by ___________________________________ Kathryn Lachman, Chair ___________________________________ Patrick Mensah, Member ______________________________ Luke P. Bouvier Graduate Program Director French and Francophone Studies DEDICATION With love, to my parents. ABSTRACT SUBVERSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF EDUCATION IN FRANCOPHONE NOVELS OF THE COLONIAL MAGHREB MAY 2011 WHITNEY LEIGH BEVILL, B.A., CLEMSON UNIVERSITY M.Ed., COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Assistant Professor Kathryn Lachman Much work exploring alterity and hybridity in the Maghreb ignores representations of education which confront seminal formative experiences, specifically education. French colonial education was problematic because it granted access to the colonizer’s culture, yet it also created a rupture in self-identity for Maghrebi students. In this thesis, I interrogate the literary representations of sites and sources of education by analyzing how these representations discuss the tension between formal French education and informal Maghrebi education. My thesis begins with a historical overview of colonial education in the Maghreb. I then discuss literary methods of negotiating identity, contrasting Arab and Western autobiography especially. Furthermore, I compare writing practices informed by a French education and a North African upbringing. Next, I compare formal and informal sites of education—the school, home and community—which articulate sources of alterity experienced during colonial childhood. Writers interrogate formal settings, including the school, classrooms, teachers, and examinations, and gaze upon the normative space and dominant culture which contradict that of the home. Conversely, informal settings provide subversive sources of education that resist the power structures of colonial France. These sites, including iv parents, the home, and community, provide an oppositional education and a means of resistance to rejected systems of power. Both settings represent spaces of cultural confrontation that serve as both a means of betrayal as well as benefit to students. The texts I consider discuss the dynamic end of the French colonial period yet were written over a period of time that allowed for personal reflection by the authors as well as for contributions by literary critics and historians that affected the perception and comprehension of the volatile period at the end of French colonialism and the fall of the Fourth Republic. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT..................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT ...........................................................................1 Introduction............................................................................................1 A Short History of the Colonization of the Maghreb ............................4 Race, Religion, and Curriculum.............................................................5 Stages of French Educational Policy .....................................................8 World War II and Beyond....................................................................13 End of an Empire .................................................................................15 Conclusion ...........................................................................................18 2. NEGOTIATING IDENTITY......................................................................19 Introduction..........................................................................................19 Literary Resistance...............................................................................21 Jewish Double Alterity: Cixous and Memmi...........................22 Female Alterity: Djebar and Sebbar ........................................29 Colonial Alterity: Chraïbi ........................................................33 Autobiography .....................................................................................36 Conclusion ...........................................................................................45 3. FORMAL SITES OF EDUCATION..........................................................47 Introduction..........................................................................................47 Schools.................................................................................................49 Classrooms...........................................................................................53 Examinations........................................................................................56 vi Teachers ...............................................................................................60 Conclusion ...........................................................................................62 4. INFORMAL SITES OF EDUCATION......................................................64 Introduction..........................................................................................64 Parents as Subversive Teachers ...........................................................65 The Father ................................................................................66 The Mother...............................................................................71 Community as Subversive School .......................................................76 Conclusion ...........................................................................................81 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................82 vii CHAPTER 1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT “Nous, Français, sommes en train de vous civiliser, vous, Arabes. Mal, de mauvaise foi et sans plaisir aucun. Car, si par hasard vous parvenez à être nos égaux, je te demande: par rapport à qui ou à quoi serons-nous civilisés, nous? (Chraïbi Le passé simple) Ils avaient peur de nous, de nous, de nous!...Mais les fourmis, les fourmis rouges. Les fourmis rouges venaient à la rescousse. ( Kateb Nedjma) Introduction Education is the making of citizens and, in the case of French colonial education, it was a double-edged sword. Imperial France employed education as an instrument of assimilation throughout its colonies, and its centralized control over education policy provided a direct means of contact with and control over peoples subject to la mission civilisatrice . On one hand, it gave colonized peoples access to the dominant, colonizer’s culture; on the other hand, it also created a rupture in self- identity and the perception of a Third Space in which hybrid, plural identities countered dichotomous identities. While much has been written regarding the Third 1 Space and the problematic of identity in colonial and postcolonial texts, representations of education have received sparse attention. What literature exists fills a mainly ethnographic role. My intention is to interrogate these depictions further by analyzing representations of different models of education in North African Francophone fiction that testify to the ways in which colonized peoples countered formal, French-sanctioned, colonial education. How do authors resist the language and culture of the colonizer through their creative inscriptions of scenes of education? What strategies of linguistic and textual resistance do they deploy to create a pluralistic Maghrebi culture and challenge European dominance? In the following discussion, I explore how representations of education play into the negotiation of Maghrebi identity. I privilege works of autofiction: Leila Sebbar’s L’arabe comme un chant secret (2007), Assia Djebar’s Nulle part dans la maison de mon père (2007) and L’amour, la fantasia (1985), Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma (1956), Driss Chraïbi’s Le passé simple (1954), Hélène Cixous’s “My Algeriance” (1998), and Albert Memmi’s La statue de sel (1953). These texts interrogate French and Maghrebi power structures in part through their representations of formal and informal education. Colonial Maghrebi writers problematized education by resisting prescriptive French grammar and Western narrative techniques. Writers implemented procedures that challenged the syntax and lexicon of the French language in order to better reflect a culture that was a hybrid of Arab, Berber, and French cultures. This writing transformed the page into a “combat zone” 1 that reflected the struggle to gain 1 Siassi, Guilan. “Itineraries of Desire and the Excesses of Home: Assia Djebar’s Cohabitation with ‘la langue adverse.’” L’Esprit Créateur . 48.4 (2008): 56-68. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. 2 independence, create a national myth less burdened by the colonizer’s influence, and gain greater freedoms for women. My thesis begins with an introduction that historically situates the problematic of a French education in a colonial setting. Two main sites of education—formal and informal settings—act as the major spaces in which formation takes place. Parents as educators, homes in schools, and mixed Algerian/European/ pied noir peer groups function

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