Writing The Pieds-Noirs

The Construction of Pied-Noir Identity in Algerian and French Literature

Abstract

This article examines representations of pied-noir identity in contemporary French and Algerian literature by situating them at the intersection of memory studies, postcolonial studies and literary criticism. Engaging with the theoretical frameworks of Homi K. Bhabha and Pierre Nora, it interrogates the ways in which nostalgia, displacement and cultural hybridity are mobilised in Yasmina Khadra’s novel Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (2008) and Patrick Jusseaume’s Non-Retour (2021). Through a comparative close reading of these texts, this article reflects on the contested construction of memory and the divergent narrative strategies used to portray postcolonial subjectivity.

By foregrounding the notion of the third space, the analysis traces how both texts destabilise traditional binary models of coloniser and colonised by placing their protagonists in ambivalent positions of cultural liminality. Khadra’s novel advances a reflexive and often critical portrayal of the French pied-noir settler population, while simultaneously acknowledging the emotional complexity of their attachment to Algeria. Jusseaume’s bande dessinée, by contrast, uses the immediacy of visual storytelling to emphasise the trauma of repatriation, but prefers a depoliticised narrative that omits colonial complicity.

This article contributes to ongoing debates within Francophone postcolonial studies regarding the narrativisation and contestation of settler memory, and the afterlives of empire in both metropolitan and diasporic contexts.