To remember in order to be able to forget: Rachid Bouchareb's Outside the Law and the construction of a new, inclusive French national identity

TY - JOUR

T1 - To remember in order to be able to forget

T2 - Rachid Bouchareb's Outside the Law and the construction of a new, inclusive French national identity

AU - Jørholt, Eva

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - At its screening in Cannes, Rachid Bouchareb's film on the Algerian war of independence, Hors la loi (Outside the Law, 2010), was met with vehement protests from veterans and French right-wing politicians who accused it of presenting an ‘anti-French’ account of this traumatic war which is still affecting many Frenchmen's attitude towards North African immigrants and their descendants. Rather than addressing the war along Manichean national allegiance lines, however, the film emphasises similarities between the Algerian fight for freedom and the French Resistance during the Second World War. Its setting in Paris among Algerian immigrants highlights the war as a shared national heritage, and through its mainstream format it invites all Frenchmen, regardless of their backgrounds, to remember this largely occulted war, in order to be able to move on ... and forget. In a postcolonial understanding of Ernest Renan's claim that the establishment and consolidation of a nation requires its individual members to forget past controversies, Outside the Law can thus be said to contribute to the construction of a new and more inclusive understanding of the French nation.

AB - At its screening in Cannes, Rachid Bouchareb's film on the Algerian war of independence, Hors la loi (Outside the Law, 2010), was met with vehement protests from veterans and French right-wing politicians who accused it of presenting an ‘anti-French’ account of this traumatic war which is still affecting many Frenchmen's attitude towards North African immigrants and their descendants. Rather than addressing the war along Manichean national allegiance lines, however, the film emphasises similarities between the Algerian fight for freedom and the French Resistance during the Second World War. Its setting in Paris among Algerian immigrants highlights the war as a shared national heritage, and through its mainstream format it invites all Frenchmen, regardless of their backgrounds, to remember this largely occulted war, in order to be able to move on ... and forget. In a postcolonial understanding of Ernest Renan's claim that the establishment and consolidation of a nation requires its individual members to forget past controversies, Outside the Law can thus be said to contribute to the construction of a new and more inclusive understanding of the French nation.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Algerian war of independence

KW - Rachid Bouchareb

KW - Hors la loi

KW - immigration

KW - national identity

KW - French cinema

U2 - 10.1080/17411548.2016.1147140

DO - 10.1080/17411548.2016.1147140

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1741-1548

VL - 13

SP - 50

EP - 63

JO - Studies in European Cinema

JF - Studies in European Cinema

IS - 1

ER -