Pied-Noir Trauma and Identity in Postcolonial France, 1962-2010

The chapter is about the European settlers and their "memory work" in France after leaving the colony of Algeria in 1962. The Algerian War of Independence displaced 1 million settlers who would "return" to France, a country they had never experienced and their homeland in name only, as Algeria was once fully integrated into the French nation. Having acquired the status of "repatriates," they would begin to create new narratives about their trauma to construct a new collective memory about the trauma of decolonization. The chapter demonstrates how social memory is generated via appropriation rather than first hand experiences, and shows how such memories have become integral to French national memories about decolonization.