116 Jackie 1930–1962
with ‘a desire to humiliate’. ‘When you say that you have “never
heard a French Algerian replying with a proper argument”, I can
only conclude that you haven’t met enough of them.’
Derrida assures him that he had long since ‘within himself, in
silence, put the French Algerians on trial’, but he is striving to
remain even-handed, now that the wind is turning and there is an
increasing chorus of criticism from right and left alike. And, as if
to avenge himself for his over-long silence, he wants to give Nora
the thoughts he has long been accumulating on this subject so close
to his heart. It seems to him that his former fellow pupil has, in his
book, concealed several elements of a hopelessly tangled situation:
Isn’t it diffi cult to lay the blame for all of France’s policies in
Algeria over the past 130 years on something like the French
Algerians (in spite of their massive and unremitting guilt,
which should neither be overlooked nor diluted on the pretext
of sharing it round)? If, as you say, the French Algerians have
indeed been the ‘makers’ of their own history and misfortune,
this is true only if, at the same time, one points out that all gov-
ernments and the whole army (in other words the whole French
people in whose name they act) have always been the masters.Derrida is particularly angry with the Left, ‘which has never
managed to bring about socialism in France, or decolonization any-
where else’. Another point annoys him: like most French people in
France, Nora has minimized the diversity of the French Algerians
and their capacity for change, treating them instead as a homoge-
neous, eternal entity. In particular, he has produced a caricature
of those ‘liberal’ French of whom, without saying it in so many
words, Derrida feels part. Yet in his view, this is a group which
deserves something other than a dismissive condemnation, since it
is torn between belonging to France and its support of the principle
of decolonization. Of course, this often forces those ‘liberals’ into
ambiguous positions, even a kind of impotence. Nonetheless:
[They are the ones] who, whether Communist or not, kept
political and trade-union life going before the war, and it was
in their midst that people such as Alleg, Audin, and Camus
thought and acted. They were the ones who, after ’45, made
it possible in Algiers to elect a progressive-Communist city
council in Algiers (Yes!.. .) and who subsequently did good
work by collaborating with Algerian delegates, the avowed
militants of the nationalist parties. They were the ones who,
up until ’57, kept touch with nationalists, at a time when war,
repression, and terrorist attacks were starting to make many
things impossible.