Resistance at the Margins

Post-colonial literature is widely perceived to have entered a new phase during the last twenty years. Dominated in earlier decades by anti-colonial imperatives closely allied with the struggle for national independence, post-colonial writing is today more commonly associated with conditions of exile, migration, and nomadism (cf. Lionnet and Scharfman 1993). The exemplary figures of both waves spent their formative years in (ex-)colonial territories, often traveling to the (ex-)metropolis for the first time as young adults, in many cases as students. ¹ Second-generation Maghrebis in contemporary France, commonly referred to as “Beurs,” ² do not fit neatly into either of these categories. Raised and in most cases born in France when formal decolonization was already largely complete, they are generally far removed from the nationalist climate in which early post-colonial writing was forged. Neither can they be described in any literal sense as exiles, migrants, or nomads. Far from being expatriates, they live and write primarily within the country where they were born and brought up. As the children of international migrants (mainly Algerians), they are, of course, heavily marked by the legacy of migration. Their marginalization by powerful forces within French society sometimes induces feelings of exile, and their textual explorations of personal and collective identities often display strategies of displacement which in some ways resemble nomadism. Yet at root, as Mehrez (1993) has argued, most of these writers feel an intuitive sense of belonging in France – though not, it should be said, of belonging with hegemonic notions of Frenchness – which sets them apart from expatriate authors. Unlike exiled or nomadic writers, for whom France is a second or sometimes a third home, most second-generation Maghrebi authors see France as their primary territorial attachment, even when – as is often the case – exclusionary obstacles rooted in memories and attitudes inherited from the colonial period are placed in their way.