Albert Memmi

Originally published: 1st American ed. New York: Orion Press, 1965. With new afterword.

The Colonizer and the Colonized

Originally published in 1955, The Pillar of Salt the semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy growing up in French colonized Tunisia. To gain access to privileged French society, he must reject his many identities – Jew, Arab, and African. But, on the eve of World War II, he is forced to come to terms with his loyalties and his past

The Pillar of Salt

Albert Camus

Description précise et émue de la condition déchirée d'un jeune juif s'élevant par l'intelligence et la volonté à la conscience de ce qu'il est, ou n'est pas (cf. la préface de Camus, p. 9-10).

La statue de sel

Agar, une histoire singulière entre un Tunisien et une Française, nous parle tout à la fois, avec humour et gravité, de religion, de politique, de mixité et d’amour : Qu’est-ce aimer ? Peut-on s’aimer ? Qui et quoi aimer ? Agar, devenu aujourd’hui un ouvrage emblématique de la littérature maghrébine d’expression française, et dont l’histoire se déroule entre Tunis et sa banlieue, est ici pour la première fois édité en Tunisie, pays d’origine d’Albert Memmi.

Agar

Colonizer and the Colonized

The liberation of the Jew (Viking Compass edition)

Portrait of a Jew (A Viking compass book)

Jean-Paul Sartre

Sömürgecinin Portresi Ve Sömürgelestirilenin Portresi

Memmi examines the manifold causes of the failure of decolonization efforts throughout the world. As outspoken and controversial as ever, he initiates a much-needed discussion of the ex-colonized and refuses to idealize those who are too often painted as hapless victims.

Decolonization and the Decolonized

Albert Memmi's controversial statements about racism and his call to each of us to devote ourselves to its eradication--futile though this effort will be--are straightforward and lucid, yet also powerful and universal. In this remarkable meditation on a subject at the troubled center of contemporary life, Memmi investigates racism as social pathology--a cultural disease that prevails because it allows one segment of society to empower itself at the expense of another. By turns historical, sociological, and autobiographical, Racism moves beyond individual prejudice to engage the broader questions of collective behavior and social responsibility. Book jacket.

Racism

In this book, written after The Colonizer and the Colonized and Portrait of a Jew, Albert Memmi writes, “It is true that all oppression has a strong tendency to become a total oppression, but it is a question of degree and nuance, of generalities and accent. The specific conditions of each oppression consists precisely of such degrees and particular intonations. The Jew is not oppressed as a member of a class, which distinguishes him from the proletariat, for example. Nor is he oppressed as a member of a biological group, which distinguishes him from Negroes or women. He is affected as a member of a total, social, cultural, political and historical group. In other words, the Jew is oppressed as a member of a people, a minor people, a dispersed people, a people always and everywhere in the minority (which distinguished him from the colonized, also oppressed as a people, but a people in the majority). [...] The Jew must be liberated from oppression, and Jewish culture must be liberated from religion. This double liberation can be found in the same course of action — the fight for [the State of] Israel.” Portrait of a Jew and The Liberation of the Jew “form a whole: the beginning and the outcome of a passionate quest. The first offers a diagnosis, the second a remedy. [...] Both are written with moving sincerity [...] As a personal document, Memmi’s introspective study is valuable. Thought-provoking and disturbing in the best sense of the word, it allows us to look into the tormented mind and soul of a distinguished Jewish writer who aspires to live honestly while belonging simultaneously to two worlds. His doubts and affirmations carry the weight of testimony.” — Elie Wiesel, The New York Times “Portrait of a Jew and The Liberation of the Jew [are] filled with a Jewish existentialism marked by quest for identity and self-affirmation far more psychological and sociological than traditionally religious.” — Richard Locke, The New York Times “[The Liberation of the Jew] is in large measure a personal record. It is a moving record [...] The poignancy of this unique work stems from its being a courageous self-analysis by a highly sensitive artist. Its confessional honesty is complete.” — Louis Schwartzman, Journal of Jewish Education

The Liberation of the Jew

This anthology presents Albert Memmi’s insights on the legacies of the colonial era, critical theories of race, and his own story as a French writer of Tunisian and Jewish descent, allowing readers to appreciate the full arc of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.

The Albert Memmi Reader

﻿Racisme, mélanges et tensions entre cultures, question de l’identité et des racines : ces grands thèmes qui traversent les écrits d’Albert Memmi, depuis La Statue de sel, préfacé par Albert Camus, restent au cœur de notre réflexion et de nos débats. Conscience critique, cet écrivain au croisement de trois cultures, juive, arabe et française, revient sur son parcours, relit son œuvre pour en donner les clés, s’interroge sur ce qu’elle nous donne à penser aujourd’hui. Une leçon de « mieux vivre » par un « homme de plume » qui fut aussi militant. Né à Tunis en 1920 d’une famille juive de langue arabe, Albert Memmi a été longtemps professeur, notamment à l’École pratique des hautes études et à l’université de Nanterre. Son Portrait du colonisé, préfacé par Sartre, a fait date dans la dénonciation du système colonial ; il en a écrit en 2004 le pendant : Portrait du décolonisé. Naturalisé français en 1973, figure de la littérature tunisienne d’expression française, il a reçu en 2004 le Grand Prix de la francophonie pour l’ensemble de son œuvre.

Testament insolent

entretiens avec Victor Malka

La terre intérieure

Gerhard M. Neumann

Die Salzsäule (La statue de sel, dt.) Roman

Edouard D'Israeli RODITI

La Statue de Sel. The Pillar of Salt. (Translated by Edouard Roditi.) A Novel.

This classic study explores the psychological effects of colonialism on colonized and colonizers alike. A new foreword by renowned postcolonial scholar Homi K. Bhabha puts Memmi's work into context for contemporary readers. "Confiscated by colonial police throughout the world since its 1957 publication, The Colonizer and the Colonized is an important document of our times, an invaluable warning for all future generations." --Los Angeles Times "Widely influential." --The New Yorker

Colonizer and Colonized

Born in 1920 on the edge of Tunis’s Jewish quarter, the French-Jewish-Tunisian sociologist, philosopher, and novelist Albert Memmi has been a central figure in colonial and postcolonial studies. Often associated with the anticolonial struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, Memmi’s career has spanned fifty years, more than twenty book-length publications, and hundreds of articles that are distilled in this collection. The Albert Memmi Reader presents Memmi’s insights on the legacies of the colonial era, critical theories of race, and his distinctive story. Memmi’s novels and essays feature not only decolonial struggles but also commentary on race, the psychology of dependence, and what it means to be Jewish. This reader includes selections from his classic works, such as The Pillar of Salt and The Colonizer and the Colonized, as well as previously untranslated pieces that punctuate Memmi’s literary life and career, and illuminate the full arc of the life of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. Selections from his later works speak directly to contemporary issues in European, African, and Middle Eastern studies, such as racism, immigration and European identity, and the struggles of postcolonial states, including Israel/Palestine.

Albert Memmi

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