"[I]ntersects with very active areas of research in history and                  anthropology, and links these domains of inquiry spanning Europe and North Africa in                  a creative and innovative fashion." -- Douglas Holmes, Binghamton                  UniversityMaltese settlers in colonial Algeria had never lived in                  France, but as French citizens were abruptly "repatriated" there after                  Algerian independence in 1962. In France today, these pieds-noirs are often                  associated with "Mediterranean" qualities, the persisting tensions                  surrounding the French-Algerian War, and far-right, anti-immigrant politics. Through                  their social clubs, they have forged an identity in which Malta, not Algeria, is the                  unifying ancestral homeland. Andrea L. Smith uses history and ethnography to argue                  that scholars have failed to account for the effect of colonialism on Europe itself.                  She explores nostalgia and collective memory; the settlers' liminal position in the                  colony as subalterns and colonists; and selective forgetting, in which Malta                  replaces Algeria, the "true" homeland, which is now inaccessible, fraught                  with guilt and contradiction. The study provides insight into race, ethnicity, and                  nationalism in Europe as well as cultural context for understanding political trends                  in contemporary France.

Colonial Memory And Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria And France (New Anthropologies of Europe) PDF

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