The second chapter deals with political and personal commitments to being a “good son” from the perspective of three liminal identities: a poor pied-noir (Albert Camus), an Arab Jew (Jacques Derrida), and a French-educated Kabyle peasant (Mouloud Feraoun). Throughout the chapter I trace political, social, religious, and literary movements concerned with colonial and anti-colonial forms of national unity paying particular attention to articulations of family language such as brotherhood, illegitimate children, and good sons. The first chapter lays out the political and cultural development of Algeria over the period of French rule from roughly 1830-1962.

I argue that turning to representations of the family can account for some of the silences inherent within the binarized political rhetoric. Specifically, it examines ways that family relationships are represented by a variety of semi-autobiographical novels and journals in comparison to legal, political, and cultural idealizations of it. My dissertation investigates connections between the family sphere and politics during the rise of Algerian nationalism through the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). A Family Affair: Representations of the Family Through the French-Algerian War

Act of war mods