“YESTERDAY’S COLONIZATION AND TODAY’S IMMIGRATION”: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF ABDELMALEK SAYAD, 1957-1998 by MILES JAMES REDING A THESIS Presented to the Department of History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June 2017 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Miles James Reding Title: “Yesterday’s Colonization and Today’s Immigration”: an Intellectual Biography of Abdelmalek Sayad, 1957-1998 This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History by: George Sheridan Chairperson Julie Hessler Member John McCole Member and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2017 ii © 2017 Miles James Reding iii THESIS ABSTRACT Miles James Reding Master of Arts Department of History June 2017 Title: “Yesterday’s Colonization and Today’s Immigration”: an Intellectual Biography of Abdelmalek Sayad, 1957-1998 This thesis traces the development of Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad’s ideas pertaining to Algerian immigration in France in the postcolonial period. I show that Sayad must be understood as more than simply an accomplished scholar; he must also be seen as a scientific intellectual operating within a particular historical moment. Sayad’s writings on the migrant condition are, I argue, a sociological analysis of Algerian immigrants’ existential dilemma that is rooted in a loss of sense of belonging and a feeling of being oppressed by state power and dominant members of French society. In addition, Sayad’s radical critique of the nation-state operated both as an explanation of Algerians’ sense of liminality as well as his attempt to recast the narrative of Algerian immigration in France as a form of neocolonialism. Sayad’s sociological work was not purely academic; it was impassioned and, at times, imbued with the language of a moral voice. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Miles James Reding GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Texas, Austin DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts, History, 2017, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History, 2014, University of Texas AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Modern France Immigration PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2015-2017 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Cum Laude, University of Texas, 2014 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 II. THE THIRD REPUBLIC, THE “REPUBLICAN EMPIRE,” AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION .................................... 10 A Brief Introduction to the Republican Idea of the Nation ................................... 10 The Birth of the Intellectual during the Third Republic ........................................ 13 The Development of French Sociology during the Third Republic ...................... 16 The “Republican Empire”: Experimenting with Ideas and Social Thought in the Colonies ....................................................................................................................... 21 Decolonization and the Tiers-Mondistes ............................................................... 25 “Uprooting”: Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad in Algeria ......................... 35 Sayad’s Path to a Sociology of Migration ............................................................. 43 III. A SOCIOLOGY OF MIGRATION....................................................................... 54 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 54 Sayad Develops a Sociology of Migration ............................................................ 57 Sayad’s Engagement with the Academy ................................................................ 74 The Suffering of “Double Absence” ...................................................................... 80 An Engaged Intellectual? ....................................................................................... 87 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 91 IV. SOCIOLOGIES OF THE NATION-STATE ........................................................ 95 vi Chapter Page Introduction ......................................................................................................... 95 The Immigration Problematic in Context ..................................................... 97 Sayad’s “Call to Action” ..................................................................................... 102 Sayad’s Neocolonial Critique of the Nation-State .............................................. 106 The Revival of Republican Thought ................................................................... 124 Sayad’s Intellectual Engagements in the Final Years ......................................... 140 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 143 V. GENERAL CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 147 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 150 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION …I'm going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I'm going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language. – Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-enquête1 Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, in his recently published spiritual successor to Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, expressed colonialism’s deep legacy in his country – particularly French rule’s effect on the mind and soul of the colonized. Decolonization marked the beginning of a long process of reshaping identity, with the expectation that Algerians could one day leave behind the colonizers and carve out their own image as an autonomous community. The pursuit of a new conception of themselves was far from easy, and the fact that Daoud continues to write in French, and not in Arabic, makes this apparent. Daoud and his compatriots have faced, and still face, a variety of dilemmas as they strive to reinvent themselves. A question that lies at the heart of this thesis is how Algerians pursued true self-autonomy after decolonization. I explore this question by examining the writings of Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad. His life embodied the transition from colonialism, to decolonization, and then into the murky territories of the postcolonial period. Born in Kabylia in 1933, Sayad spent his childhood as a colonial subject. He witnessed members of his village work as fieldworkers for French landowners. He passed through the education system 1 Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-enquête: Roman, (Arles: Actes sud, 2014). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 1 with a curriculum designed to teach young Algerians to love the idea of France. The Algerian War, which Sayad experienced during his schooling in Algiers, laid bare to him the extent of the impact of French domination over the body and soul of himself and his compatriots. During the war he, a young universitaire, learned how to use a field of knowledge bestowed upon him by the colonizers – social science – to understand the nature of the condition of being colonized. He took the knowledge that the colonists left behind, dismantled it, and built his own way of seeing the social world – his own sociology, in short. This thesis, broadly defined, is an intellectual biography of Abdelmalek Sayad. I emphasize his writings rather than his life activities. His activities are introduced insofar as they facilitate understanding the purpose of his sociology. Through a close analysis of his texts, along with relevant historical context and issues pertaining to his personal biography, I show that Sayad’s sociology of migration and sociology of the nation-state served two interrelated functions. The former unveiled what Sayad believed to be fundamental truths about the migrant condition, while the latter revealed the extent and manner of the continuing domination of the global South by the global North into the postcolonial period. Through the lens of his sociology, Sayad showed the effects of neocolonialism on Algerians, in order to critique relations of domination in a more general sense. While guiding readers through a reading of the corpus of Sayad’s work, I also make a case about how he should be defined as an intellectual. My knowledge of his writings and awareness of his life activities lead me to believe firmly that any one definition of his intellectual type is bound to be too limiting. In the French context, the 2 dominant understanding of the intellectual is the publicly engaged moral voice typified first by Emile Zola and, later, Jean-Paul Sartre. Social scientists, often referred to as social thinkers and more recently as “specific intellectuals,” stand as an alternative to the engaged intellectual. Sayad would almost certainly need to be understood as the latter type of intellectual rather than the former. Yet as helpful as it may be to try to box him in as either a critical sociologist, a social thinker, or a specific intellectual, doing so cannot account for the fluidity of his intellectual style. His writings