On the menu of the Prime Minister’s visit, Elisabeth Borne, in Algeria [October 9 and 10]: many subjects with very concrete consequences whose challenges go by far those of the writing of history. However, and even at the end of the list, the project of a commission of French and Algerian historians working on “reconciliation” seems to remain topical, although it has not succeeded since its announcement in August. Would it encounter difficulties? Probably, for a simple reason: he has everything of the false good idea, even if he is common sense, apparently. Why?
First of all because we, historians and historians, did not wait for the States to work. Not only have we, very long, consulted the accessible archives – they abound – but we interviewed the witnesses, collected their documents, used images, films and all imaginable sources. We have drawn from it from it articles and books in such large numbers that colonial Algeria, today, dominates in libraries when the other colonies of the ex-French empire are largely less. We have even documented all the subjects, including the most sensitive. He remains and will always remain to be done, but it is indisputable: who wants to know this story has something to learn.
False good idea, especially, because nationality does not make the historian. Admittedly, everyone inherits a vision of the past dependent on the teaching he receives, the family in which he grows, the society in which he lives … university formations also diverge from one nation to another, giving Birth in ways of doing and thinking different history. However, it is impossible to attach the work and their authors to a nationality.
Internationalization of research
There are binationals that it is indecent to refer publicly to one nationality rather than another – except to adhere to a reactionary conception of identities, quite in tune with the times, ignoring flexibility and complexity of affiliations. The project would assume – how to dare it? – to ask a dual nationality historian to say if he is French or Algerian when he writes history. There are also professional trajectories defying borders. Thus, for example, Algerians come to do their thesis or research stays in France because – it is the essential – the writing of history is internationalized. Historical debates do not comply with national affiliations. They transcend them.
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