Chapter 2: A Silence that Never Was? Appropriating the Algerian War of Independence

Abstract

In 1991, the historian Benjamin Stora embarked on a mission to confront the French with their Algerian history. In a period when introspection concerning the role of France and the French during the years of Nazi occupation was turning into a defining feature of French discourse, Stora turned his gaze towards the Algerian War of Independence. Notably, he identified a specific kind of malaise—a particular silence about the war—that was eating into the flesh of French society. Confronting it, he claimed, would heal the nation’s wounds and put it on the road to recovery. In so doing, Stora presented himself as the first and foremost memory activist, a public figure who sought to break the silence on Algeria. Convinced by the power of images to shape people’s consciousness, Stora used documentaries to reach larger audiences, a countermeasure against the forgetfulness about Algeria. His first television production, Les années algériennes, included an interview with Jean-Pierre Farkas, a veteran of Algeria, who tried to find a way to speak of the silence he had encountered since returning from the war: