The Negus 1930–1942 11
as Derrida acknowledges, they are belated reconstructions, both
fragile and uncertain: ‘I try to recall, through documented facts and
subjective pointers, what I might have thought or felt at that time,
but, more often than not, these attempts fail.’^5
The material traces that can be added to, and compared with, this
wealth of autobiographical material are, unfortunately, few and far
between. Many of the family papers seem to have disappeared in
1962, when Derrida’s parents left El Biar in some haste. I have not
found a single letter from the Algerian period. And, in spite of my
eff orts, I have not been able to locate even the least document from
the schools that Derrida attended. But I have been lucky enough
to have access to four valuable witnesses from those distant years:
René and Janine Derrida – Jackie’s older brother and his sister –
and his cousin Micheline Lévy, as well as Fernand Acharrok, one of
his closest friends from that period.
In 1930, the year of Derrida’s birth, Algeria celebrated in great
pomp the centenary of its conquest by the French. During his visit
there, French President Gaston Doumergue made a point of lauding
‘the admirable work of colonization and civilization’ that had been
carried out over the previous century. This was seen, by many
people, as the high point of French Algeria. The following year, in
the Bois de Vincennes, the Colonial Exhibition received thirty-three
million visitors, whereas the anti-colonial exhibition organized by
the Surrealists met with the most modest of successes.
With its 300,000 inhabitants, its cathedral, its museum, and its
broad avenues, Algiers, the ‘white city’ (‘Alger la Blanche’), was a
kind of display window for France in Africa. Everything in it was
deliberately reminiscent of the cities of metropolitan France, starting
with the street names: there was the avenue Georges-Clemenceau,
the boulevard Gallieni, the rue Michelet, the place Jean-Mermoz,
and so on. The ‘Muslims’ or ‘natives’ – as the Arabs were generally
called – were slightly outnumbered by the ‘Europeans’. The Algeria
in which Jackie would grow up was a profoundly unequal society, as
regards both political rights and standards of living. Communities
coexisted but barely mingled – in particular, there were few mixed
marriages.
Like many Jewish families, the Derridas had come over from
Spain long before the French conquest of Algeria. Right from the
start of colonization, the Jews had been considered by the French
forces of occupation as useful people, potential allies – and this
distanced them from the Muslims with whom they had hitherto
lived. Another event separated them even more markedly: on 24
October 1870, French minister Adolphe Crémieux gave his name to
the decree granting French citizenship, en bloc, to the 35,000 Jews
living in Algeria. This did not stop anti-Semitism from breaking