74 Jackie 1930–1962
of the examiners’ jury, Ferdinand Alquié, had been more direct,
recommending Derrida to ‘get more of a proper education’, in other
words to attend the Sorbonne more assiduously, and to have a more
diversifi ed approach on the philosophical level: ‘Your three essays
are really one essay, you suff er from “monoideism”,’ he informed
Derrida.^34
The summer vacations in El Biar were overshadowed by this failure,
but even more by the worsening of the situation in Algeria. In
January 1955, just before his government fell, Pierre Mendès France
appointed Jacques Soustelle as Governor of Algeria. Soustelle, an
esteemed ethnologist, was deemed to be an open-minded, quite
liberal man. Shortly after taking offi ce, he promised that Muslims
would be integrated, and planned several important reforms. But
it was probably already too late. On 20 August 1955, the FLN
organized violent demonstrations in the Constantine area. Armed
with axes and cudgels, the insurgents killed 123 victims, including
Europeans and Algerians of moderate beliefs. The crackdown was
terrible, and caused twelve thousand deaths. The Algerian confl ict
now intensifi ed into a real war: many Muslims who had so far been
reluctant to embrace the idea of independence switched to the side
of the separatists, while Soustelle joined the ‘ultras’.
In October 1955, Albert Camus started to publish in L’Express a
series of articles on ‘Divided Algeria’, in an attempt to defi ne ‘a posi-
tion that would be equitable for all’. Two big divides were opening
up, said Camus: one between the European and Muslim Algerians
in Algeria itself, and another between metropolitan France and the
French of Algeria. ‘It is as if the fair trial of the policy of coloniza-
tion that is at last being held among us had been extended to all
the French who live there. If you read a certain sector of the press,
it really seems that Algeria is populated by a million settlers with
whips and cigars, driving around in Cadillacs.’ As for the Jewish
population, he pointed out how much they had for years been
trapped ‘between French anti-Semitism and Arab mistrust’.^35 On 22
January 1956, in Algiers, Camus launched an ‘appeal for a civilian
truce in Algeria’, at a time when he was an object of death threats.
His attitude was misunderstood: ‘Personally, I have lost interest in
any actions except those which can, here and now, spare pointless
bloodshed. [.. .] This is a position which satisfi es nobody at present,
and I already know the reception it will get on both sides.’^36
Derrida was quite close to Camus’s position. But in Algiers, any
discussion on the subject was diffi cult, especially in his family. And
in Paris, he was able to talk about it with few people apart from
Lucien Bianco, who shared his anti-colonial convictions, while
being, as Derrida was, alarmed at the FLN’s terrorist actions.^37
In the academic year 1955–6, the last Derrida was to spend at