A New Geography of Remembering: Unveiling the Harki Silences in Dalila Kerchouche’s Mon père, ce harki

Abstract

This article analyses Mon père, ce harki (2003), by Dalila Kerchouche, to shed light on the exile experienced by those harkis who left Algeria for France in the aftermath of the Franco-Algerian war (1954-1962), locating this episode in the context of the complex postcolonial relationship between France and Algeria in recent decades. As it is used today, ‘harki’ refers to those Algerian subjects (and their families) who somehow found themselves on the French side during the conflict. In her book, a literary testimony, Kerchouche revisits the story of her father, a former harki, to conduct her own search for identity within the harki universe. She borrows from familial and collective memories and dialogues with an array of texts that have helped her make sense of and write over the historical silences, which the harkis – constructed as traitors – have had imposed on them by both the French and the Algerian administrations. Throughout her “harkeological quest”, Kerchouche retraces her father’s steps and visits first the camp where she was born and then Algeria itself, the homeland that her family abandoned and from which she was also symbolically exiled. This return draws an alternative map of her family history and, at the same time, equips her with the historical accounts and family memories that she uses to write a counter-narrative to the French hegemonic account of its relationship with Algeria. Read against the backdrop of the work of historians and literary critics, Mon père, ce harki allows for a nuanced understanding of the position of the harkis in post-imperial France.