Onur Erdur

SCHOOL
OF THE SOUTH
The colonial roots of French theory
"To become a stranger to oneself, to one's language and
one's nation: isn't that the peculiarity of the philosopher
and of philosophy, their 'style', what one calls
philosopher's gibberish?"
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?

"Reporting things differently means reporting

other things."
Pierre Bourdieu, Algerian Sketches
Contents

Introduction: In the south of theory 7

1. An Algerian Bildungsroman 19
Pierre Bourdieu
2. Hopeless inconsistency 55
Jean-François Lyotard
3. Moroccan enlightenment 77
Roland Barthes
4. Enjoy and be silent 101
Michel Foucault
5. Discomfort with identity 131
Jacques Derrida
6. Hellish paradise 159
Hélène Cixous
7. Lessons in anti-racism 191
Étienne Balibar
8. Disidentify yourselves! 223
Jacques Rancière
9. Who is afraid of theory? 251
Conclusion: The strangers 271

Thanks to 282
Appendix
Notes 285
Bibliography and film list 317
Picture credits 335
Introduction: In the south of the
theory

Algiers, 1955: He have simply done his military service somewhere in

the French province. Instead, the young philosopher Pierre Bourdieu
boards a ship that takes him to Algeria. What he sees in the war-torn
country shocks him: an Algerian society locked up in camps by the
French and uprooted. He perceives his own situation and presence
there as a moral problem, as the "original sin of the intellectual from the
land of the colonial masters".1 He decides to stay in the country after his
military service, wants to do something useful in the midst of the
Algerian war and begins sociological research in order to bear
witness to the injustice surrounding him. Bourdieu's Algerian
experiences would shape his entire academic work. His famous theory
of habitus was born in Algeria.
Paris, 1957: In contrast to most left-wing intellectuals of his
generation, who supported the Algerian struggle for independence,
Algerian-born Albert Camus was no longer willing to take sides.
His mediating advocacy of peaceful coexistence between the French
and Algerians had previously been denigrated as liberal. Caught
between the colonialism of the right, the anti-colonialism of the left
and the terror of the FLN, he deliberately opted for silence. In
silence, two days after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature,
Camus is confronted about this silence at a meeting with students.
In the heat of the moment, he replies: "I have always condemned
terrorism. I must also condemn terrorism that rages blindly in the
streets of Algiers, for example, and could one day affect my mother
or my family. I believe in justice, but before I defend justice, I will

Introduction: In the south of 7

theory
I defend my mother."2 Camus, the moralist, will not be forgiven for
these sentences for a long time.
Tunis, 1968: Michel Foucault has been living in the picturesque
coastal village of Sidi Bou Saïd for two years now. It is a magical
place for him. On one of his walks along the beach, he comes up
with the long-awaited definition of the concept of discourse, and
later the idea of
"the other rooms". Tunisia generally seems to an inspiring backdrop:
During one of his earlier stays, Foucault came across the famous
sentence from The Order of Things on the beach of Djerba (at the
Club Méditerranée), "that man disappears like a face in the on the
seashore."3 Foucault teaches philosophy at the University of Tunis,
but is mainly preoccupied with himself. He resolved to become a little
more athletic and tanned every day. He told the Presse de Tunisie: "I
came here because of the mythical image that all Europeans have of
Tunisia: sun, sea, the great aridity of Africa."4 Foucault would never
once comment on the neo-colonial living conditions in the country,
which had been independent for around ten years, or on the bloody
French colonial rule in North Africa in general.

The three scenes could not be more different. They are about three
intellectuals who gathered their own experiences and made their
own decisions in three different places and in three different life
situations. Despite all the differences, however, the scenes have
certain things in common, which are the focus of my interest below.
The focus is on the personal confrontation of French intellectuals
with colonial spaces and situations. What applies to Bourdieu,
Camus and Foucault also applies to many other leading French
philosophers and intellectuals of the second half of the 20th : they all
have a "colonial background". Many of them came directly from
French colonies: alongside Camus, for example, Louis Althusser,

8 Introduction: In the south of

theory
Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Rancière were born in
Algeria, while Marguerite Duras was born in French Indochina and
Alain Badiou in Morocco. Others, in turn, spent long periods of their
lives in the colonies or their successor states for a variety of reasons -
including Roland Barthes in Morocco, Bruno Latour in the Ivory
Coast and Étienne Balibar, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-François
Lyotard in Algeria. One could easily more prominent names and
places to this list. The basic tenor would remain the same:
colonialism was an undeniable biographical reality for all of them.
The only question is why this astonishing colonial setting of French
thought remained unnoticed for so long.

This book is an exploratory journey to the south of theory. Almost

all the protagonists associated their sojourns in the colonies and
post-colonies with key events, both liberating and tragic, which had a
decisive influence on their personal lives, their political attitudes and
their theoretical works. In order to gauge the extent of these
influences, it is necessary to follow them to the specific sites of
history - to the colonial period, to the Algerian War, to the former
protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia, to independent Algeria, but
also back again and again to Paris, the metropolis of empire and
intellectuals.5 A search for traces is required: How did the intellectuals
end up in these colonial situations? What them? How did they behave
there? And above all: How were the spatial experiences of the colonial
in their academic works and theoretical concepts? I am interested in
the question of the connection between experience and theory: How
can the human experience be brought so close to the intellectual-
theoretical that one can see the one sliding into the other? How is
theory created? More than any other movement of the 20th , French
theory in particular developed a style of thought that went against
the identity and

Introduction: In the south of 9

theory
for difference, against the center and for the periphery, against the
hegemonic and for the minoritarian. This book traces how this style
of thought emerged not in Parisian libraries, but on the beach in
Tunis and in the streets of Algiers.
I am also concerned with the questions of morality and justice
that are raised in the three scenes, with the responsibility of
intellectuals in times of colonialism. We are dealing with classic
experiments in intellectual self-profiling and moral scrutiny. At
least since Émile Zola, intellectuals have always been exponents of
morality, even in quiet times. But what happens to their public
convictions when they are confronted with colonial reality? of
whether the intellectuals sought out the encounters or not, whether
they in the colonies or in the metropolis, whether they a stand
immediately or only thirty years later, whether they belonged to the
"Sartre" generation or the "Foucault" generation - they were all
confronted with the moral question in one way or another, how
they should relate to the political and cultural injustice of
colonialism when they were also representatives of the French state,
the military, the education system or the European colonial
population. This motif of the colonial dilemma runs like a red
thread through the intellectuals' debates. Some took action, some
wrestled with themselves, others preferred to remain silent, but they
all tried to find a stance. If you like, their specific ways of dealing
with the colonial question are nothing more than variations on this
one leitmotif of guilt and atonement. How they dealt with it in
detail and what followed from it - that is also the subject of this
book. One could speak of a virtue theory of the spirit in the face of
colonial injustice.

To clearly state the basic assumptions and theses of this book: I am

convinced that the emergence of theories (and

10 Introduction: In the south of

theory
generally the adventure of thinking) is inextricably linked to the
lived experience of its . This is not to say that theory and thought can
be reduced to biographical life stories or that thinkers are
mechanically determined by social and political circumstances. But it
is also clear that theory does not emerge in an abstract and airless
space, but always in local, historical and individually recorded social
contexts. As witnesses and actors of their time, intellectuals capture
and shape the world around them, but they are just as strongly
involved in the history of their societies and are permeated by it. What
is special about them (what makes them interesting objects in my
eyes) has less to do with the supposed uniqueness of their life stories
and experiences, but more with the way in which they take up these
lived experiences, how they interpret their past and their social
environment, and how they ultimately incorporate these
interpretations into their theoretical and political projects.6
For French intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century, a not
inconsiderable part of their historical reality was the experience of
decolonization. Decolonization is generally to mean the global
decoupling and formal independence of European colonies since the
end of the Second World War. For France, decolonization was the
longest conflict of the 20th century: a tough and bloody historical
process in the course of which the country lost the majority of its
colonies (four-fifths of its territories), became embroiled in gruelling
and ultimately unsuccessful wars (Indochina, Algeria) and fell into a
deep state crisis that sealed the end of the Fourth Republic in 1958
and with it civil war-like conditions until Algerian independence in
1962.7 With the decline of the colonial empire, the centuries-old
universalist cultural model of the "civilizing mission" also collapsed:
the "civilizing mission" of the French

Introduction: In the south of 11

theory
Republicanism since the French Revolution, the very powerful
political idea that France was charged with educating and civilizing
the subjugated indigenous populations by exporting Western
institutions, values and culture to the wider world and thus
advancing the progress of humanity - an ideology that was also
shaped and supported by large sections of the political and intellectual
left until 1962(8).
The beginnings of French theory fall precisely in this era of
decolonization. It flourished immediately after the end of the
Algerian War. In philosophy - for example with Foucault, Derrida,
Deleuze and Lyotard - this was a moment in which the certainties of
traditional (some would say Western) reason were shaken and their
internal contradictions (some would say differences) came to light.
They questioned traditional notions of identity, power, knowledge and
language, as well as rejecting the cultural hegemony of the Grande
Nation. The gesture of this critical thinking was always anti-
hegemonic, whether in the form of post-structuralism, which
attacked long-established self-evident truths such as the idea of the
stable meaningfulness of the world and instead emphasized the
complexity, contingency and subversion of meaning, or in the form
of postmodernism, which diagnosed the decline of grand narratives,
political ideologies of progress and generally binding values and
wanted to say goodbye to modernity.
I argue that some of these theoretical innovations were related to
the attempt to reflect on and understand the collapse of a certain
political and cultural order in French society. In order to shed light
on this connection and to examine it historically, it is necessary to
look back to the beginnings of French theory - to where
biographical destinies, political consciousness and theoretical
questions converged in the 1950s and 1960s, in the midst of the
Algerian War and the phase of decolonization.

12 Introduction: In the south of

theory
formed each other. In this collective space of experience, a colonial
formatting of thought emerged that was effective across theories and
generations. It shaped post-structuralists and postmodernists as well
as deconstructivists and Marxists right down to the formation of
concepts and theories. In its simplest form, my argument is that
central keywords and works of French theory cannot be understood
without the colonial border and difference experiences of its
protagonists.

The chapters of this book aim to substantiate this thesis: The

colonial roots of French theory are explored through individual
essays, each of which focuses on a person, a place and a theoretical
crystallization moment of the colonial situation. I have selected and
emphasized in the presentation those actors who paradigmatically
stand for a certain intellectual attitude and emblematically cover a
specific thematic field. The geographical focus is on Algeria due to
the historical circumstances and the biographical references (with a
few exceptions). The chapters not only offer portraits of intellectuals
in colonial contexts, but also provide insights into the history of
French colonial rule through contextualization. The main reason
why the chapters stand on their own and can be read independently
of each other is the conviction that the differences between the
colonial and postcolonial settings, between the individual theories,
between the places and between the times are far too great to be
absorbed into a homogenizing narrative. I think it makes a
difference if some are confronted with a colonial situation and
others with a barely postcolonial one - or if the Algerian setting is
completely different for the Jewish-German émigré daughter
Hélène Cixous than it is for, , Jacques Rancière, who as a child was
confronted with a colonial situation.

Introduction: In the south of 13

theory
of Algerian Frenchmen (pieds-noirs) was born in Algiers but grew up
in Paris. The biographies and theories of the protagonists have
their own shape and their own momentum - this must be
appreciated.

Nevertheless, there are also commonalities and similarities in this

broad field of intellectual life paths, which I do not want to conceal
because they can provide a loose orientation when reading. The
chapters can be divided into four pairs with particular
characteristics and emphases: The first two chapters focus on Pierre
Bourdieu (1930-2002) and Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), two
figures who were both already in Algeria in the 1950s. They had
experiences there early in their lives that directly shaped their later
careers, political attitudes and theories. In chapters three and four,
we follow Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Michel Foucault (1926-
1984) to Morocco and Tunisia respectively. The former French
protectorates offered the two close friends a setting for hedonistic
life plans, erotic adventures and new creative ideas. Chapters five
and six are dedicated to Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Hélène
Cixous (1937-), the Algerian-born stars of deconstruction with
Jewish roots. Both grew up in colonial Algeria and had ambivalent
and even traumatic experiences that left their on their identity, but
also on their way of philosophizing and writing. Chapters seven and
eight are dedicated to two younger representatives of French theory,
Étienne Balibar (1942-) and Jacques Rancière (1940-). Both found
their political awakening as Parisian students in protest against the
Algerian War (Balibar subsequently for independent Algeria).
Although their respective political philosophies did not take shape
until much later, they were both fed by the events during and after
the Algerian War.

14 Introduction: In the south of

theory
 These eight main protagonists - seven men and one woman - are
among the leading figures in French theory. Even though they
pursued very different and conflicting approaches (structuralism,
post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-modernism) and worked in
different disciplines (sociology, philosophy, history, literary studies),
they all shared a basic education in philosophy and a passionate
inclination towards theoretical thinking. Their intransigence in
theoretical questions and their membership of the French Theory
generation make them preferred objects of study. However, the focus
on this generation of theorists also results in a limitation in other
respects: other thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de
Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Germaine Tillion or
Raymond Aron also have their say or from time to time, but no
separate chapter is dedicated to them.

The heyday of French theory seems to over today. Having been able
to claim world renown in the second half of the 20th century in the
form of structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and
postmodernism, it is now increasingly falling out of favor. One of
the main criticisms, primarily from a post-colonial perspective, is
that it never really overcame the problem of Eurocentrism, which it
itself originally raised, and that questions of colonialism played little
or no role at all. Although French philosophers spoke theoretically
of identity, difference and alterity, they simply overlooked the real
injustice or conveniently ignored the anti-racist movements.9 This
criticism contains to some extent the accusation of the white,
ignorant colonial French. This may be partly true, but partly not at
all. I do not share many of these positions because they are too
simplistic and do not stand up to historical scrutiny, but I will

Introduction: In the south of 15

theory
discuss at selected points - where the criticism arises and is
directed at the respective person.
French theo- ry, on the other hand, is experiencing a completely
different form of criticism in the feuilletons and political debates of
the present day. For some time now, both right and the left have
been accusing it of being ideologically responsible for current
phenomena such as "cancel culture", "wokeness" and "identity
politics". The main representatives of French theory, such as Derrida
and Foucault, are said to be responsible for the dogmatism of
identity politics because they launched ideas and concepts that were
later
"woken" activists from the fields of post-colonialism, gender studies,
queer theory and critical race studies are used to enforce bans on
speech and thought.10 In my view, this criticism is misguided and
distorting, but politically very powerful. A separate chapter at the
end of the book is devoted to it.

One last comment on topicality: the chapters of this book deal with
topics on a general scale that are (once again) of concern to us
today: Questions of national, cultural and linguistic identity (and
their appropriation) as well as questions colonialism, racism,
exoticism and sexism. In this respect, they offer both positive and
critical historical illustrative material, but also orientation
knowledge for today's problem constellations, for example when
one realizes that some of the structures and events that occurred
during the colonial era or during the Algerian War have by no
means been settled, but have been repressed for decades in a kind of
colonial amnesia and continue to shape large areas of French society
and politics - from the colonial revisionism of the extreme right to
ignorance of the grievances in the banlieues and police violence
against the descendants of immigrants from the colonies.11

16 Introduction: In the south of

theory
 But topicality is not only gained by uncovering genes and
latencies. It is precisely the above-mentioned doctrine of the virtues
of the spirit that poses the more decisive question for the dialog with
the present: What can be learned, for better or worse, from the
colonial experiences of French intellectuals? They traveled and wrote
a great deal, constantly examining their own role as intellectuals in
colonial society, on the corrupting effects of colonialism, the
disintegration of values, the loss of political legitimacy and the limits
of Eurocentrism. Even if some did this more strongly than others, a
moral claim is perceptible in the dynamics of their confrontations
with the colonial: not to be blind to existing injustice, to the
suffering and sacrifices that colonialism has cost, and at the same
time to find a sober course on which this historical experience can be
channeled into theoretical and political channels. I don't think that
this automatically makes them role models for the present and that
they can offer a moral compass - some of their reactions, blind
spots, entanglements and male fantasies are too problematic for that,
and I won't be sparing with criticism in the following pages (where it
seems necessary to me). Nonetheless, I take the view that in their
confrontations with colonialism, French intellectuals arrived at
theoretical insights and political positions that worth documenting
and recounting. Today, they give us an understanding of what it
means to philosophize in times of colonial injustice.

Introduction: In the south of 17

theory
PIERRE
BOURⴷIEU
 1. An Algerian Bildungsroman
Pierre Bourdieu

There are those special, never-ending summers in a young person's

life that shape and accompany them for a lifetime. One of these
summers, that of 1958, is recorded by the French writer and Nobel
Prize winner Annie Ernaux in her book A Girl's Memory: "It was a
summer without meteorological peculiarities, the summer of
Charles de Gaulle's return, of the new franc and the new republic,
Pelé became world champion, Charly Gaul won the Tour de France
and Dalida sang Mon histoire, c'est l'histoire d'un amour."1 Ernaux
tells of her stay in a vacation colony and of the girl she was back
then. Of her first sexual encounter, of freedom and desire, of
powerlessness and shame, and in the same breath of her perception
of political events. She also weaves the Algerian War into her
memories of 1958: "In the summer, thousands of recruits were also
sent to Algeria to restore state order, often away from home for the
first time. They wrote dozens of letters about the heat, the Djebel,
the Douars and the illiteracy of the Arabs, who still didn't speak
French after a hundred years of occupation. They sent photos of
themselves in , laughing, with friends, in a dry, rocky landscape.
They looked like scouts on an expedition, you would have thought
they were on vacation."2
For many French soldiers, their stay in Algeria may indeed have
felt like an exotic vacation in shorts. Former French President
Jacques Chirac, for example, described his years as a sub-lieutenant
in Algeria as "the

An Algerian Bildungsroman 19
the most exciting time in my life".3 It was certainly an exciting time,
but Chirac's statement from 1978 was a broad description of the
circumstances of his stay. One of the bloodiest decolonization wars of
the 20th took place in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. It is estimated that
more than a million people died in the process. For France, the
North African country was more than just a colony. With around one
million European settlers, Algeria was the continuation of the
republic on the other side of the Mediterranean. "L'Algérie, c'est la
France" was the motto of François Mitterrand, then Minister of the
Interior. The Algerian independence movement, led by the Front de
libération nationale (FLN), was therefore to suppressed by any
means necessary: Forced relocations, torture, rape and mass
executions were the order of the day. However, little was known in
France about the FLN's terrorist attacks and the excesses of violence
committed by the French army. This was also due to the euphemistic
language of the state, which described the use of the army as
"measure to maintain public order". Thus, even many years after its
end, the armed conflict was remembered as a "war without a name".
Between 1954 and 1962, more than two million young Frenchmen
did their military service in Algeria. Half a million soldiers were
mobilized, tens of thousands of whom died in battle(4).
The young Pierre Bourdieu was also one of those who did
military service in Algeria. When he was called up in 1955, he was 25
years old and had only just finished his philosophy degree. His
deployment in Algeria left deep scars on him. What Bourdieu saw in
the war-torn country shook him so much that he decided to stay in
the country after his military service. He wanted to understand
what was going on here; to find out what effects colonialism and war
had on Algerian society; to try out what it meant to get involved
politically and make oneself useful. Bourdieu was no doubt also
looking for ways to make himself useful in one way or another.

20 Pierre Bourdieu