A Few Caledonian Clowns; Burns, and The Proclaimers

Scotland's Story
The Proclaimers

Michael McGrory from west Donegal
You came to Glasgow with nothing at all
You fought the landlord then the Africa Korps
When you came to Glasgow with nothing at all

Abraham Caplan from Vilnius you came
You were heading for New York but Leith's where you've stayed
You built a great business which benefits all
Since you came to this land with nothing at all

In Scotland's story I read that they came
The Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane
But so did the Irishman, Jew and Ukraine
They're all Scotland's Story and they're all worth the same

Joseph D'Angelo dreams of the days
When Italian kids in the Grassmarket played
We burned out his shop when the boys went to war
But auld Joe's a big man and he forgave all

In Scotland's story I’m told that they came
The Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane
But where's all the Chinese and Indian names?
They're in my lands story and they're all worth the same

Christina McKay, I learned of your name
How you travelled south from Delny one day
You raised a whole family in one room they say
And the X on the line stands in place of your name

So in the old story I'll bet that I came
From Gael and Pict and Angle and Dane
And a poor migrant girl who could not write her name
It's a common old story but it's mine just the same

All through the story the immigrants came
The Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane
From Pakistan, England and from the Ukraine
We're all Scotland's story and we're all worth the same
Your Scotland's story is worth just the same

Throw the 'R' Away Lyrics
The Proclaimers

I've been so sad
Since you said my accent was bad
He's wearin' a frown
This Caledonian clown

I'm just going to have to learn to hesitate
To make sure my words
On your Saxon ears don't grate
But I wouldn't know a single word to say
If I flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away

Some days I stand
On your green and pleasant land
How dare I show face
When my diction is such a disgrace

I'm just going to have to learn to hesitate
To make sure my words
On your Saxon ears don't grate
But I wouldn't know a single word to say
If I flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away

You say that if I want to get ahead
The language I use should be left for dead
It doesn't please your ear
And though you tell it like a leg-pull
It seems you're still full of John Bull
You just refuse to hear

Oh what can I do
To be understood by you
Perhaps for some money
I could talk like a bee dripping honey.

I'm just going to have to learn to hesitate
To make sure my words
On your Saxon ears don't grate
But I wouldn't know a single word to say
If I flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away

You say that if I want to get ahead
The language I use should be left for dead
It doesn't please your ear
And though you tell it like a leg-pull
I think you're still full of John Bull
You just refuse to hear

He's been so sad
Since you said his accent was bad
He's wearin' a frown
This Caledonian clown

I'm just going to have to learn to hesitate
To make sure my words
On your Saxon ears don't grate
But I wouldn't know a single word to say
If I flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away
Flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away
If I flattened all the vowels
And threw the 'R' away



“This Caledonian clown”, “Wha Hae wi’ Wallace bled” This short paper will discuss using three sources the nationalistic and essentially anti-British feelings of Scottish pop-culture in the time of Robert Burns, and in the time of The Proclaimers. Caledonia was the Roman name for Scotland and generally refers to anything Scottish, but specifically Highland Scottish. Burns wrote in Lowland Scot, but this does not make them separate stories, because “They’re all Scotland’s Story and they’re all worth the same”.1 The Three texts work together though in different times, and through different means to create a narrative of the oppressed in an attempt to make a dialogue with there oppressor and the people simultaneously.

The first dialogue of discourse against the oppressor begins with referring to the land as “your” in “Throwing the “R” away.2 This opens as line of estrangement from the land that it is no longer “ours”, but now is your. In “Scots Wha Hae” we hear the line “Lay the Proud Usurpers Low”3, in the term usurper there is again this them of alienation from the land and exile. The motif of exile is big in any narrative of rebellion. In “Scotland’s Story” we get a strange sense of discontinuity in the line “You fought the landlord then the Afrika Korps”4 the ‘landlord’ is a vague reference to fighting the men in power at home, but then the ‘Afrika Korps’ is undoubtedly Germany specifically Erwin Rommel’s Deutsches Afrika Korps this line could refer to the fighting in World War Two, this is a direct Nazi Reference common in punk rock language and style. The line could also be interpreted as a way of making the plight more practical since the English notion of the barbarian Scot would be one any aspiring nationalist would have to conquer.

The Afrika Corps Line and “Wa Hae wi’ Wallace bled”5 are the same in this next light. We fought the landlords, then we fought the Germans, We fought with each other. This pragmatism dispels the barbarian that though the landlord “the proud usurper”6, is the first fight that even the rebels understood the evil of National Socialism, but this could read even deeper that maybe by fighting Nazi New Imperialism the ‘real’ enemy could see that one imperialism was the same as every imperialism. The rhetoric used in “Throw the R Away” that says “I think your still full of John Bull”7 is very important. John Bull was sort of like a English Uncle Sam, but he was supposed to be more everyman, but it became the notion of almost blind national pride, most in Scotland, Whales, and Ireland rejected the figure of John Bull, because just that it was English not Scottish, not Irish. So The Proclaimers are thinking that the British are still full of the foolish national pride and sense of superiority even in an era of lost empire, and crumbling notions of identity.

A big motif behind the rejection of John Bull besides his Englishness was his class position. The structure of class in industrial British society was many parts different than agricultural Scotland. Historian Linda Colley provides excellent illustrations of this.8 So we see not only the relationship of the Scots as a subject people, but also the Scots as a people who are being subject by a group that lives in a totally different society.

The theme of exile plays the loudest note in this orchestra of resistance. A return to the line “your land”9 is important, whilst Burns says we can still stop this we can still halt the “Usurper”, in fact Burns calls to arms and says “Tyrants fall in every foe”, and “Liberty’s in every blow” he says we can still do this we can still be free, his narrative is not done the exile is not complete yet, Burns still sees a Scotland10, whilst the Proclaimers talk of the exile that has taken place the absolute worst kind of exile, to be exiled in your own home, to feel that you are a stranger in your own home. In “Scotland’s Story” The Proclaimers not only speak to the Scots as in exile, but to all exiles, and at the same time arguing what it is to be a Scot.

For Burns it seems a Scot is anyone who has died like Wallace, for Scotland, or who like Bruce has fought for Scotland, and lead her, or any man who fights for “Scotland’s King and Law”11. A Scot is anyone who draws “Freedom’s Sword”. A Scot is in this case anyone who fights tyranny. The Proclaimers define a Scot is anyone in exile. “The Gael and Pict, the Angle and Dane”, and also “But so did Irishman, Jew, and Ukraine. “12 This is both figurative and at the same time it is also real there is no genetic realism to what a Scot really is. Being a Scot is much more than race. This entire song is about everyone’s struggles, and that they are one in the same, a camaraderie anthem that we (everyone) are in this together.

The next line is extraordinary, “They’re in my lands story and they’re all worth the same”, and It’s a common old story but its mine just the same” and Your Scotland’s story is worth just the same.”13 It is a glorious march. These lines return back to Burns were they had departed when they said “your green pleasant land”14. It is my land now, an anthem of taking it all back is cried we here the echoes of Burns’ “Let us do or dee! (….) But they shall be free!” The Proclaimers say now it’s not just our Scotland, it’s your Scotland too; in fact it’s every ones, and any ones Scotland.

These two texts from two different times show a few continuities and even a progression. One cries for outright rebellion, and another cries for unity of the dammed to dispel the structure of there damnation. One line in Scotland’s story was odd though and brilliant too. “From Pakistan, England and from the Ukraine”, England, this is were they have evolved past Burns’ nationalist call to arms. Burns Wanted to take Scotland back and keep it for the Scots or who he accepted to be Scots “wham Bruce has aften led”15, his Scots are more specific than they’re Scots. For The Proclaimers a Scot is anyone who has ever felt slighted not just by Britain but by the entire complex world. The Proclaimers call for a worldwide revolution in this a new world were everyone is a Scot, this is a beautiful subtle anarchy that only a talented group such as them could put together to create a narrative that in my opinion surpasses “Scot’s Wha Hae”. So are the Reids or Burns the real Scots? The answer is marvelously simple “They’re all Scotland’s story and they’re all worth the same!”16

Islam as Revolt

Sayyid Qutb, the author of Milestones makes three arguments concerning his interpretation of Islam. The first argument is that the world today is living in a new age of Jahiliyyah, or ignorance to the divine will. The age of ignorance has been championed by the achievements of the western world, as the Arab world has lagged behind. Western penetration is the first symptom of this age. Qutb’s second argument revolves around the attempt to make a model, by which Islam could revive, and separate itself from Jahili society. For Qutb, if a non-Jahili society has existed before, than it could in fact be revived, and the second age of Jahiliyyah could be brought to an end. The third argument made by Qutb is that Islam is revolt. For Qutb the most obvious articulation of real Islam is revolt against everything and everyone who would take away in any part the sovereignty of God.
According to Qutb Jahiliyyah is even more devious today than it was before the prophet, because it masquerades under banners of Arab Nationalism, and “Islamic culture, Islamic sources, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic thought.”1 Qutb thinks that the beginning of the work to revive Islam is the de-jahilization of the Arab mind. (This is much like Frantz Fanon’s desire for the de-colonization of the mind in the post-colonial era.) Qutb believes Jahiliyyah is not just ignorance, but it is also tyranny. It would be not better if “Persian and Roman tyranny” were replaced by “Arab tyranny”.2 “All tyranny is wicked”, and thus according to Qutb, all tyranny is Jahiliyyah.3 For Qutb the only way to save Islam from this renewed Jahili society is to separate it from the Jahili and to revolt against Jahiliyyah where ever it is found.
Qutb says that today, “humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress.”4 In order to prove that a society can exist that is not Jahili, Qutb sets up a model of what the one non-Jahili society looked like. Qutb begins his model by making it clear that “Islam cannot fulfill its role except by taking concrete form in society.”5 The reason Islam can not be reduced to abstract thought is because man will not listen to anything accept what he can see “materialized in a living society”.6 Qutb then adds to his model, that in a society truly free of Jahiliyyah, no man can rule over another man, sovereignty can belong to “God alone”.7 According to Qutb a non-Jahili society can exist since one has existed before. The non-Jahili society that had existed before was “the generation of the Companions of the Prophet”.8 This generation was said to be “pure in heart, pure in mind, and pure in understanding.”9 So for Qutb, a non-Jahili society can exist, because it has existed before.
Qutb feels that the current expression of Islamic culture is not only insufficient, but it is an apostasy. Qutb believes the only real Islamic culture can be one in constant revolt against all things Jahili. For Qutb, Islam is revolt. Qutb believes that there is a step before revolt in Islam, and that is to “change ourselves so that we may later change society.”10 Qutb has a strong disdain for intellectuals, because they treat Islam, and the Qur’an as some sort of literary work. Qutb resounds with a strong condemnation that “instruction is for action.”11 Qutb’s revolt is against all systems that allow “authority of one man over another.”12 The reason is because as far as Qutb is concerned; if one man rules over another he is taking sovereignty away from God. In Qutb’s Islam there would be a “proper division of wealth”.13 This would not mean a class war, but a unity, and fairness. Qutb “challenges the legality of any law which is not based on this belief”.14 It is pretty obvious why the Egyptians hung him for sedition. Qutb’s Islam is resistance to the Jahili world.
Qutb is a very modern writer. He writes with a vocabulary markedly similar to Frantz Fanon, the great articulator of African revolution. He critiques Arab nationalism, and Nasser’s Egypt. Qutb wants an Arab mind free of Jahili concepts. This de-jahilization of the Arab mind is the real legacy of Qutb’s work. He agitates for revolt against every authority in the name of God. Qutb believes firmly in struggle, and his Islam is the space in which the struggle begins.

The Representation of Trauma during a War of Decolonization

“If there is no precipice of inhumanity over which nations and men will not throw themselves, then, why in fact do we go to so much trouble to become, or remain men?”2
On March 18th 1962 the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria was formed. The struggle for national independence was fought over the span of eight years. Algeria’s national consciousness was born out of struggle, and has a very unique place in the history of violent nation building. Algeria fought its colonial ruler France, who had conquered Algeria and made it a French territory in 1848. The decolonization of Algeria was particularly a problem for the French Consciousness, because when Algeria was made into a French territory in 1848 it was not a protectorate like Morocco of Tunisia, it became an integral part of France, as much a part as Normandy or Maine.
The liberal usage of torture destroyed the prestige of the supposedly ‘liberal’ French government. The Intelligentsia was almost completely alienated from the army as the left rose in total condemnation around the question of torture. It was particularly appalling, the use of torture in a France just recently recovering from the Second World War. The French had been victims of the brutal tortures, summary executions, and other traumatic experiences of the Nazi regime. How could they engage in such remarkably similar things? Sartre asks in his preface to Henri Alleg’s The Question, “Is fifteen years long enough to turn victims into executioners?”3 In the French case it would seem true, the fifteen years since France fought the Third Reich was enough time for them to give up the liberal causes they had fought for. The victims of the horrific acts of inhumanity during the Second World War became the new torturers. For the Algerians this struggle for independence would find its way against an enemy who would liberally, and without greater thought engage in acts of torture as a more expedient solution.
The way torture is represented in the struggle for national consciousness in the post-colonial period is the launching point of defining the post-colonial identities of both peoples. The fact is that both sides broke all conventional military codes of conduct in a war of preservation (or independence). In chapter seventeen of Alistair Horne’s book on the Algerian war, A Savage War of Peace he quotes Pierre Nora a French Historian saying that “Fascism, (…) and torture, (...) are France in Algeria.”4 In Algeria, France abandoned any liberal trappings of the mainland and became a violent manifestation of both colonial prejudices and a greatly emasculated culture that was itself struggling for identity in the post-Second World War Word. The strangest point of this fact was that both sides saw it as a war with everything to lose. The Algerians if they lost would lose loose their one chance at self-determination. French reprisals for the insurrection would be unimaginably harsh. The French have a long history of brutally putting down colonial insurrections. In 1945 the citizens of a small town in Algeria called Setif rose up against the French occupation, and the French army responded with the indiscriminate execution, bombing and shelling of small villages all around in total killing between 600-1000 Muslim citizens.5 Any Algerian uprising if failed would mean a great cost in blood. French settlers would not be appeased very easily.
The poor Algerians would be decimated in a campaign of indiscriminate extermination like Frances entrance into Algeria 130 years earlier. Algeria was invaded by France in 1830; the Turkish military suzerainty was toppled and replaced by a French military occupation force.6 One particular story of the brutality of France’s entrance into Algeria is described in chapter two of A Savage War of Peace, “fires had been lit at the mouth of a cave where 500 men, women, and children had taken refuge, asphyxiating all but ten of them.”7 If the French had been that brutal in their entrance into Algeria it would be hard to imagine how viciously they would hold on to the country. So the Algerians fought the war as if it would be victory or extermination. There is an interesting allegory in Henri Alleg’s The Question, a word with a particularly different meaning in France than in America. In France when one speaks of putting the question it is synonymous with torture, as the expression goes once the question is put forth it is impossible to take it back. The insurrection was in its own way a question, but it was a very different one, once it began it was impossible to go back, the only question then could be, how far could it really go?
The French soldiers who fought had less to lose, at least it would seem, yet the stakes were still very high. In mainland France there had always been a stark division between the intelligentsia and the military. The French intellectuals always saw the military as a corrupting force that was damaging to the prestige of French thought. The wars of decolonization, like the war in Indochina had already damaged the French army’s prestige. There had been an insurrection in Indochina lead by the guerillas know as the Vietminh. It had upset the delicate balance of the imperial prestige of France that had been declining since the Vichy. The famous defeat of the Indochina war was known as Dien Bien Phu. The French strategy in 1953 was simple, “the plan was to lure the Vietminh forces into a pitched battle and destroy them.”8 This of course didn’t work at all because the forces of the guerillas so vastly outnumbered the French even the best strategy couldn’t hope to succeed. The French lost 13,000 men defending Dien Bien Phu.9 According to Alistair Horne the defeat was to have the deepest reaching psychological effects on the French troops, “there was no more devastating a defeat ever inflicted on a Western regular army by a colonial resistance movement.”10
The scenes of the Algerian war are dramatized in the American film, “Lost Command” the French had just been emasculated in Indochina and now were being shipped off to Algeria to stop the colonial insurrection.11 The film begins as the French forces, lead by Lt. Col. Raspeguy (Anthony Quinn) are captured and taken to a POW camp of the Vietminh. There is a very important sequence when the Vietminh soldier addresses the Arab soldier; he tells him “Dien Bien Phu is also a victory for Arabs under the heels of the French”.12 The Arab soldier addressed later in the film joins the FLN and leads a band of rebels that Raspeguy has to deal with. The plot of the film follows Raspeguy as he goes to Algeria to try to recover his lost pride that he feels robbed of leaving Indochina. The irony of one scene in the movie is that Raspeguy complains to a historian for the army that they lost Indochina because the military wouldn’t listen. Raspeguy is made the scapegoat of the failure in Indochina and told that the only way he can recover his honor is to go to Algeria and fight for France. Raspeguy is a character much like the General Mathieu of Gillo Pontecorvo’s work. Raspeguy is a comic representation of generals during this war. The comedic tone of the film is strange when juxtaposed to the story. Reciprocal horrors are perpetrated on each side. As revenge for the desecration of dead French soldiers the French burn a town to the ground and indiscriminately kill civilians. The whole film functions in a way to explain a war that if it had a meaning it was not easy to find. The men in Raspeguy’s unit are volunteers and some of which are drunks. For the French the very real consequence of the war is the loss of French manhood. It would mean a second defeat. That meant if the men could not go home as heroes then they felt like they could not really go home. The film does a good job representing the dimensions of the struggle. A radical war represented in radical ways. Each side had their own stakes and their own way of giving meaning to the causes that they fight for. Some fought for personal glory, others for the right of a nation to self determination. The particular cruelty of the war becomes evident when discussed in the context of the very real horror of a negative outcome.
13
The Algerian side of the struggle for national independence was lead by the organization Front de Liberation Nationale, or the FLN. The FLN was the voice of the people and the actual revolutionary government when Algeria declared it purposed independence from France. The organization spanned all over the Algerian nation lead by the famous “chefs historiques”, the groups original nine leaders; Ait Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Belkacem Krim, Rabah Bitat, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, Mourad Didouch, Moustafa Ben Boulaid, Mohamed Khider, and Ben Bella. The men who were part of this group were integral parts of the overall war. Each man brought his own strategy to the struggle. Ben Bella kept the French occupied with victories in the countryside, and Yacef was the mastermind behind the urban warfare.
Saadi Yacef under Ben M’Hidi was the military chief of Zone Autonome d'Alger. Yacef as a reprisal of the French’s guillotining FLN members began a campaign of terror which gripped the city of Algiers. The great innovation was the use of women bombers to place bombs around the French section of Algiers. The bombings occurred September 30th 1956. They included the bombings of Air France, a dance hall, and the Milk Bar, depicted in Gillo Pontecorvo’ film “The Battle of Algiers”. This became the defining moment of the FLN Algiers branch; they took the Casbah by storm. Because of the success of the FLN’s terror campaign the attention of the French military was drawn in. The French Paratroopers were sent in to handle the city. They rounded up, ruthlessly, anyone the suspected of any involvement with the FLN. The strategy worked the French were able to wipe out the FLN in Algiers. In Pontecorvo’s film the end of the FLN is symbolized as the hero of the story Ali le Pointe is found by the French. Ali le Pointe was Yacef’s right hand man, and the film ends as the French take his life with a bomb. The Algiers branch was eventually hunted down and routed out by the French government, but Yacef escaped with his life. The resort to torture of the Algerians by the French authority is explained as the only way to quickly and efficiently shut down the FLN in Algiers. Depicted in “The Battle of Algiers”, M’hidi was captured by accident and in his pajamas by the French paratroopers during a routine search. He was executed by the French soldiers; who claimed it was suicide. Ben Bella was able to continue his great guerilla campaigns in the country with great success, and his victories continued to strain French resources. Seen in the picture below from the French Media Library of Defense, a government archive containing many photographs from the conflict, General Massu, the same man responsible for leading the French machine of torture is shaking some pied noirs hands. They are members of a basketball team, and evidence of the lack of seriousness the French really gave the war. The Algerians understood that the French thought very lightly of the prospective of an Algerian victory, and they used it to their advantage.
14
The liberation was a contradiction. The Algerians had emancipated themselves from colonial tyranny but they now were faced with ruling elites. Specifically one of the largest groups of these new elites was the Armée de Libération Nationale which became the National and Popular Army. The ALN had been the rebels that fought with Ben Bella in the countryside against the French. These former guerillas became the new standing army of the Algerian state. Ben Bella the leader of the rebel army became Algeria’s first president. The FLN are still the current occupiers of the seat of power in the Algerian administration. They have lost democratic approval. After deciding to try and hold elections in the 90s the FLN was not the winning party. The winning party the Front Islamique du Salut, or the FIS on December 27th 1991 was banned from holding political office on the grounds of their participation in certain terroristic activities. After the suspension of elections a bloody ten year civil war crippled Algeria. The victory of the FIS shows a radical change in the way things in Algeria work. The FLN’s loss of popular approval is a scene that illustrates the same inability the French had to recognize the separate aspirations of the ruling elite and the people. The FLN’s failure to recognize political trends, especially the Kabyle nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist movements proves an ignorance of the current political times, and may spell the end of the FLN. For the Kabyles it had always been sort of a slap in the face, that having fought so hard during the revolution they were not given much in the outcome. Their language was banned, their culture was looked upon with disdain as a whole, it seemed like they defeated French colonialism, but now the Kabyles would be subjects under Arab or FLN colonialism.
Albert Camus, a French existentialist author famous for such works as The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus was also a pied noir, he was half Spanish and half French, and born in Algeria in Oran, November 7th 1917. Camus was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1957. He never could really conquer his colonial mind. Camus could never imagine an Algeria that was not a part of France, because as far as he knew France and Algeria were once and the same. He felt more at home in the Algerian sun than the cold metropolitan cities of France. In his works you begin to get the feeling that to Camus, in Algeria there were two peoples, the “lump Arabs” always relegated to backdrop, and the French, who are the real subjects of his works, he never seems to make mention of the Arabs except as props in his stories, never a long consideration, but only as something of a scenery that a tourist might see. Arabs in some of his stories are totally vacant. In his novel The Plague the entire town of Oran seems vacant of any Arabs at all. In fact the entire book makes no reference to them. The problem was that Camus could never see beyond this union between Algeria and France. Camus’s Algeria was not a union of Arabs and French, but Camus’s Algeria was inseparable from France, because the Algerian he would refer to were essentially French, “pied noirs”. Alistair Horne quotes Jules Roy, another pied noir, and close friend of Albert Camus, Roy talks about how a pied noir boy is raised, they were told that “Arabs belonged to a different race” and it was an inferior one to the French. Roy then goes on to say that after being told these things for so long “their condition could not disturb me” and he finishes with a chilling statement, “who suffers seeing an oxen sleep on straw or eat grass.”15 The pied noir mind had been trained not to recognize the Arabs of Algeria as people, but as something else. Even the great moral crusader Albert Camus could not decolonize his mind, and come to terms with the injustice of colonialism.
The term “pied noir” means literally “black feet” in French, because there feet had been burned by the North African sun. The term was used to describe a difference between mainland French and colonial French. These “pied noirs” are also known as “colons”. They are the settlers which France after its military successes sent to exploit the native Arab-Berber populations. These settlers are briefly romanticized in Camus’s the first man as brave pioneers, with nothing to build a civilization on but sand. French Historian de Tocqueville has a little different interpretation. He said “the Muslim society in North Africa was not uncivilized” and he believed that the French presence in Algeria has “rendered Muslim society much more miserable and much more barbaric than it was before it became acquainted with us.”16 The Pied Noirs became rabid defenders of French interests in Algeria. One practice of the “pied noirs” was something called the “ratonnades” these were usually lynching, acts of terror perpetrated by “normal” French. The rat hunts would sometimes include the illegal breaking into Muslim’s houses, the stealing of property, general acts of cruelty, and in many occasions it would end in death for the poor victims. Sometimes the colons would even set bombs in civilian places killing many woman, and children indiscriminately.
In “The Battle of Algiers”, the pied noirs bomb the “rue de Thebes” a district of the Arab section of Algiers, the Casbah. The bombing of the “rue de Thebes” was cited as the reason for Yacef’s famous bombings. The pied noirs responsible for the Rue de Thebes bombing were never arrested; this further strained the administrative power of an already unaccredited and popularly disdained martial government. These pied noirs are different from Camus in their liberal use of violence and belief in the supremacy of coercive behavior as intent to solve the crisis at hand. In his writings Camus portrays his pied noirs as an unruly bunch of partisans, but they were still open to reason. In his novel the first man, Jacques, Camus’s representation of himself saves a young Arab’s life. There is a bombing down the road. A group of young pied noirs see a young Arab boy walking down the street, so they begin to chase him. Jacques helps the boy escape into a dinner where an old childhood friend works. Jacques is a great representation of Camus’s feelings on the entire issue; he honestly does not know where he stands. On the one hand there is his childhood, where the only Arab he could remember was the pastry vendor and the dog catcher. On the other hand, Camus is faced with a question he never can come up with a real answer for. So Camus falls short of ever looking into the question at all. Camus becomes morally paralyzed when the question is put fourth.
The French authority and the perpetrators of torture were the Paratroopers lead by General Jacques Massu. In 1956 General Massu took his 10th parachute division into Algiers with the task of maintaining order. He led the French military’s terror campaign, the secret round ups, and the torture interrogations. Pontecorvo pokes fun at Massu with his character Mathieu, this representation of Massu reaches its depths of irony during his famous line, “We aren't madmen or sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us Fascists today, forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis, don't know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers and our only duty is to win.”17 The irony is really apparent when one thinks back to the trials of former Nazis at Nuremburg. The most famous pleas were always, that they were just doing there job, or always someone was a bigger Nazi than them. The creation of the other as something less than human is the unfortunate legacy of colonialism. Another interpretation of why Mathieu feels he hasn’t stepped over any boundaries is to return to what Jules Roy said earlier in this paper. The way they were raised was not to see these colonial subjects as people, “who suffers seeing oxen sleep on straw or eat grass.”18 The fact that they were people is not even acknowledged as a possibility by Mathieu he is only a true capitalist machine. He was sent their and told to do things with a bureaucratic efficiency. Whether he was becoming as he was accused of, a Nazi doesn’t seem to matter. Mathieu is much like Raspeguy in the sense that his own quest for personal victory and glory will swallow up everything in its way. The reality seems to escape Mathieu.
Another film concerning the Algerian war is Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. This French film describes the dark behind the scenes aspect of this war. Bruno Forestier is a deserter of the regular French army. He fled to Geneva to escape prison or worse, being sent to Algeria. The film begins with him in Geneva; he seems like a very ordinary sort of man. Forestier poses as a photographer, but his real job is much more sinister. Bruno Forestier works for the French Right Wing Terrorist Organization known as the OAS. He recalls with some irony that “our anti-terrorist group was financed by an ex-parliamentarian who had been pro-Vichy.”19 It really adds to the question of how many degrees of separation really do separate the French right, and the fascists. In reality the OAS was a fascist organization that contained “bankers, parachutists, car salesmen, (and) prodigal sons”.20 They were waging a secret war against all pro-FLN organizations, and even those who would speak out on behalf of the FLN. The coldness of the antihero Bruno Forestier is really felt when he describes the death of a comrade, “They found him in a bathtub Tuesday at Bristol Hotel. They’d cut his tongue out.”21 He repeats it with a cool indifference that haunts you as the words role off his tongue. They ask Forestier to kill a FLN sympathizer, a radio host who had been broadcasting some anti-French messages on his show. Bruno refuses, and the game is on. He tries to kill the man. He leaves his house with his pistol which he describes as “black, mysterious, and incorruptible.”22 As he fails with every attempt to kill this man he comes to a realization that, “no one can force a soldier to kill” and “maybe freedom begins with remorse.”23 Bruno realizes he can not kill the man. He is not the hero of any story. Not the hero of the OAS or the FLN he just doesn’t care. Bruno is apathetic to the point he even describes the difficulty he has killing the man like “fouling up a suicide.”24 Bruno is everything you need to hate. He has no respect for anything, and no desire, but to please himself. The character symbolizes the easily corruptible youth. It was said that the prisons in Algeria became vast machines of corruption, where young soldiers would go in sane, and come out sadists.
Bruno’s apathy coupled with self-interest lead him to flee for a safer haven. This is when he is picked up by the FLN. He is kidnapped, and drug up a flight of stairs as he recounts the aspect of being tortured he opens with an absurdity, “I forgot to count the stairs to know where we were.”25 They placed him on the floor and began to ask him a few questions. The initial stages of the torture were amazingly mundane. Something you would see a normal police officer in the United States engaged in. Then they show him a few pictures of some of the OAS members they had killed. He remarks callously after seeing one of them, “Poor Etienne. He’d lowered his head to protect his throat resulting in his catching the razor full on the chin.”26 At this point it is still easy to hate this apathetic antihero who cares for nothing at all. The torture scene begins with Bruno cuffed to the bathroom fixture. Bruno narrates as the scenes of the torture are shown. They begin by burning his hand, and then they spray him with hot water. He remarks concerning the torture Bruno’s only desire is to escape it. He tries to focus on anything but the torture going on at hand. Bruno declared, “think of anything to avoid the pain. The sea, the beach, the sun.” For Bruno torture was only something to be escaped. He eventually is brought back out to the main room of the apartment after passing out. They try to interrogate him again, but as far as he is concerned he will do anything to escape. The scene that follows shows Bruno jumping thru the window, not knowing which floor he is on and not caring. The torture of Bruno, an OAS operative, a deserter of a real army, and a secret one, seems to represent only the pointlessness felt at times when the war was thought about. The way Godard chooses to represent Bruno is very important when the players of the conflict are thought of. Bruno lives a pointless life, he has no reason to be involved, but he is forced. Bruno’s apathy represents a major flaw in the will of the colonizers. They fought because they were told to, is Godard’s argument. They fought a monotonous and pointless war imbued with pain. Godard accuses the entire conflict of meaninglessness, as his character Bruno represents.
Alleg, a survivor of the Paras’s devices of torture feels a stronger meaning after being personally tortured. Alleg was a European Jew who during the Second World War had fled the dangerous mainland to Algeria to escape Vichy collaboration, and Nazi persecution. Alleg was arrested by the Paratroopers in 1957. Alleg was accused of being an Algerian sympathizer. He was a communist, and was in support of the movement of independence, but he didn’t play a very important role in the actual conflict. He was held for a month of interrogation. After on reads his account of a month in the hands of the paras the immediacy of the line, “Who can tell of all the other atrocities that I have not seen?” Alleg wrote of the events that happened to him. His account cannot hope to really analyze the depths of the French machine of terror during this conflict. We are left to think of the fate of the poor Arabs who didn’t have the privilege of being Europeans and receiving “special treatment”, as opposed to the “Wogs” who the French would brutally and savagely beat, and torture. 27 For Alleg, the Paras openly proclaim “this is the Gestapo here!”28His Paras are in direct dialogue of argument with the image Massu tries to paint of his men. Referring to the image of Massu above where Massu is portrayed as a figure of kindness, shaking the hands of a basketball team. For Henri the paras are a secret police, a band of fanatical tormentors bent on extracting a confession from the victim “amid its screams and its vomiting up of blood”. The meaning of the torture escapes Alleg, but he doesn’t want a meaning Alleg has gone beyond meaning. Alleg desires action.
Pontecorvo’s Paras seem to deny as much as they can and for C. S. Brosmon, the author of “Torture and Terrorism: Jules Roy Answers General Massu” the war meant that Massu’s “misguided patriotism” further alienated the French intelligentsia, and drove a deep wedge between the French state and the army.29 The French military and intellectuals had never been close. The war gave rise to the left showing gigantic amounts of disdain for the conflict. Figures like Sartre openly denouncing the barbarous treatments of the poor Algerians. Sartre felt so strongly against the conflict he even wrote a preface to not only Henri Alleg’s work, but he wrote one to the young doctor, and nationalist writer Frantz Fanon. The growing separation between the desires of the people and the army began cemented the victory for the FLN.
The Algerian war was a stage for the Algerian people to turn back France’s domination and “cultural obliteration” that had been “made possible by the negation of national reality”.30 For Algeria the rebirth of a national consciousness predetermined victory. When France entered Algeria it destroyed hundreds of years of culture routed in a way of life that would never be the same. The French presence in Algeria was not only a colonial penetration, but it was an attempt to replace Berber, and Arab culture with French. As Ben M’hidi said in Pontecorvo’s film when asked what chance Algeria had of defeating France he responded, “The FLN has more of a chance of defeating the French army than the French have of changing the course of history.” 31 M’hidi in Pontecorvo’s film represents the belief that Algeria had since the fall of Hitler. The idea was proven by the victory of the Vietminh in Indochina. The age of colonialism was at an end. On every front the colonial powers of France and Britain were being beaten back. Pontecorvo speaks of a new era through M’hidi. Pontecorvo talks about the post-colonial world.
In Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth it is the national struggle that “leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history”32 national consciousness is the most elaborate form of culture. So the struggle then goes beyond the battlefields of the Kabyle countryside and the streets of Constantine and Algiers, but now the location of struggle is to liberate the minds of the people not just from the literal colonial power, but from the very concept of colonialism. The Algerians will no longer be identified as a subject people, but rather as people of the Algerian nation.
Mouloud Feraoun was a Kabyle school teacher during the war of liberation. Feraoun was a close personal friend of Albert Camus, and was assassinated in 1962 by the French OAS, the Organisation Armée Secrète a right wing terrorist group of pied noirs. He wrote down a journal which was published in 1962 after the official peace was signed. His journal, Journal 1955-1962: Reflections on the French Algerian War is remarkable in its stark honest discussion of the ordinary life of a Kabyle school teacher during the chaotic events of a national war for independence. Feraoun opens his work with a claim that before the war started everyone had “settled into a truly orderly and peaceful existence” it was “a tolerable life” that had been “structured by necessities, needs and daily tasks”.33 These ordinary lives to Feraoun were “so miserable” that he believes it was shockingly evident that they had suffered enough.”34 Feraoun observes the day to day goings of both sides, with loyalty to his people’s cause but fear of what could become of it. He never averts the critical eye. The rebels of the countryside are called Fellagha. This term is Arabic for outlaw. Feraoun talks about the flight of Algerian teachers from the countryside to the capital because they “believe their lives are seriously in danger” in Algiers there is a “reasonable withdrawal indemnity awaiting them”.35 As the war rages on Feraoun’s thoughts become more radical. He comments that “the reign of brutality and barbarism has replaced the reign of submission, hypocrisy, and hatred”36 Feraoun comes to the conclusion that “there is no room for anything except force.” Feraoun believes that it has become impossible due to the French definition of rebel, for any Kabyle to not be a rebel. The completely unarmed revolutionaries cover the entire Kabyle population. It is no doubt in his mind that every Kabyle is beginning to awaken to a national consciousness.
Djebar’s Children of the New World, explains the ironic diminishing of strong gender positions during the war, the fluidity of identity which did not live long passed the actual war. Djebar illustrates good revolutionary woman, juxtaposed to good Islamic woman. Pontecorvo’s work was a documentary style film, which creatively and pretty true to the reality represents the struggles both sides experience during the “Battle of Algiers”. For Alleg it was terror, he was captured tortured and made into something less than human. For Alleg the torturer acts as if “it were not possible for both sides to belong to the human race”.37 For Assia Djebar the writer of Children of the New World, the entire war is fought in radical juxtaposition.
The entire war was in fact fought by radically juxtaposed sides, so close as to assume a comparison, but something essentially different. Illustrated in the photos from “La Collection ‘Algérie’” The French “normal” soldiers and the Algerian guerillas, un-gender confined freedom fighters, irregular soldiers fighting proper French military. Women began to occupy new space in the struggle for liberation.
Yacef knew this well as was illustrated by his choice to use female bombers in his terrorist activities in Algiers. In Pontecorvo’s film a reporter as Ben M’hidi if it is cowardly to use women’s baskets to hide bombs, M’hidi’s response, “Give us your bombers sir, and you can have our baskets.” The fact that women can play an active part in this revolution shows its totality. A woman as a revolutionary actor is only a part of the temporary reorganization of gender during the “War of Liberation”. For men the gender lines became more opaque as well. Pontecorvo humorously depicts Yacef’s plan for escape as the members all put the women’s robes on to attempt to sneak by the French forces. Of course in Pontecorvo’s film the men still wear the male shoe as opposed to the defined proper female shoe, and the notice of this vestige of male identity gives away there clever disguise. The choice to depict a vestige of masculinity even in a disguise is to bring home the idea that there can be no total emancipation from gender roles for the Algerian people. There will always be a return to the previous vestiges.
Djebar understands the mass of contradictions in the definition of “Algerian Womanhood”. Djebar’s characters all illustrate the cross-purposed roles of the Algerian women during the war of liberation. Lila, the abandoned lover of a member of the resistance, carves out an identity beyond the proper, Arab Middle classed up bringing she was raised with. She meets with a European hotel owner, and “passes” as a European herself. She stays alone in a beaten down half abandoned hotel.
3839
The hotel Lila chooses to stay in lied with “a southern exposure” and “sun all day long” on one side and on the other, something that was expected that you would avert your eyes “from the plot of wasteland and the wretched shacks.”40
The entire war is fought amidst a mass of contradictions. Algeria’s national conscience is born out of struggle, as Frantz Fanon the great articulator of resistance said, “Culture is not put into cold storage during conflict”41.
Sartre found an easier voice owing to his proxemic separation from the reality of the war. Sartre claims to know the truth on the grounds of the victims “calm courage” and “modesty and lucidity”. Through this he claims we discover the strength of the victim and discover the victim’s truth.42 Sartre was a needed voice, for both the French condemners and the Algerian people. Like Alleg, Sartre wanted to reach the “Good French” who the Algerians do not confuse with their torturers. Sartre merely asks that the French people consider “what is done in their name.”43 His words became reality as the victims rose up against their torturers and eventually through bloodshed won independence.
The Algerian war is a narrative infused with suffering, and the way it is represented suggests more than just juxtaposition. Representation suggests inter-relatedness with the reality of conflict. The reality of Algeria’s current state of affairs should bring home these questions to everybody. The Algerian revolution needs to be seen as an essential part in the wars of decolonization. It was a watershed in colonial history, a subject people had risen up and dethroned the colonial occupiers, and established through struggle and violence a new nation that was completely separate from the chains of colonialism. “At the moment when the executioner went to the condemned, as in the absolute solemn silence, which followed it, the soul of Algeria vibrated. Its tears, shining in the darkness, fell across the bars of my cell.”44 The Algerian War of Liberation established a new independent Algerian nation separate in all ways from France. It not only collapsed the Fourth French Republic, but the Algerian War of Liberation set into motion the death of colonialism.
In a war of representation there is never really a clear victory or defeat. The Algerian war never really ended. It only changed faces. The French never really left, the FLN merely became a doppelganger version of the old colonialist regime. The FIS fought against this for their own views and lost. In France the legacy of this brutal war is still hard to get their minds around. The legacy of a way of this magnitude is long and continues. Algeria one its independence from France but sold it to the FLN. The measures both sides sunk to in their unique attempts to win this war were horrifying. The way these measures have been depicted by film and literature following the conflict are equally arousing to the mind. The conflict was definitely a new dimension of warfare, and a great warning for what wars of the 20th century would really look like. France would never regain her lost colonial legacy, and Algeria would never really heal their wounds. The current nation is not the utopia the revolutionaries gave their blood for. The reason all great utopian projects fail is made pretty obvious in all the texts. Each piece that represents the war represents it in its very own way. Each way is radically different from each other. When one switches from each account sometimes it becomes hard to believe they are even accounts of the same struggle. The Algerian war was fought in many unconventional ways and in many unconventional places. Each person experience of the war was profoundly different from the last. No two people really remember the same war. For Algeria the war is still not over. There is still infighting, and civil wars. The war will never end. In France the attempt to come to terms with its vicious colonial past is hard, but attempts are made. The entire war is still partially a mystery as people begin to question, are the lengths that each part went to for their hope of victory really worth the cost? The only answer can be found in the wealth of representations were each individual experience of the war tells part of the story.


Works Cited
Alleg, Henri. The Question; Preface, “A Victory” by Satre, Jean-Paul, Forward by LeSueur, James D., Bison Books; Bison Books Ed edition (September 1, 2006) John Calder Translation

Brosman, Catherine Savage. “Torture and Terrorism: Jules Roy Answers General Massu”
The French Review, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Apr., 1986), pp. 723-729

Camus, Albert. The First Man, Translated from the French by David Hapgood; Vintage International A Division of Random House, Inc. New York

Central Intelligence Agency. “The World Fact Book” available on https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ag.html

Djebar, Assia. Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War
Translated by Marjolijin de Jager, Afterword by Clarisse Zimra Feminist Press (December 30, 2005)

Fanon, Frantz. A Dying Colinialism. Translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier with an introduction by Adolfo Gilly. Grove Press New York 1965.

Fanon, Frantz. “Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom” The Wretched of the Earth Pelican Publication 1959 Accessed online at http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/national-culture.htm

Feraoun, Mouloud. Journal 1955-1962: Reflections on the French Algerian War Edited and with an introduction by James D. Le Sueur. Translated by Marry Ellen Wolf and Claude Fouillade. University of Nebraska Press 2000

Godard, Jean-Luc. Le Petit Soldat, 1963

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, New York Review Books
Classics, 1977, 1987, 1996, 2006

The Media library of Defense. “La collection Algérie”. Available From http://www.ecpad.fr/ecpa/PagesDyn/collect.asp?collectionid=5&photo=1

Pontecorvo, Gillo. The Battle of Algiers: Criterion Edition, 1967

Robson, Mark. Lost Command, 1966

The Boys on the Docks; Robert Emmet, and John O’Hagan; the Revolutionary Body as a Site of Radical Discourse

Sections taken from “The Speech from the Dock
Robert Emmet's speech on the eve of his execution.”
“I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. (….) Was I only to suffer death after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur (….)I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High-which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest-which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government standard--a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made.(….) the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed. (….) A man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated. (….) to bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold. (….) You, my lord are a judge. I am the supposed culprit; I am a man, you are a man also; by a revolution of power, we might change places, though we never could change characters; if I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice? (….) Does the sentence of death which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach? (….) Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but while I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions. (….) to those I honor and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. (….) I submit; but I insist on the whole of the forms. (….) Old tyrants: implacable (…) enemies (sic) already in the bosom of my country. (….) your bloodstained hand. (….) If it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your Lordship might swim in it. (….) I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor: in the dignity of freedom. (….) See if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer up my life! (….)I am going to my cold and silent grave: my lamp of life is nearly extinguished: my race is run: the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! (….) Let no man write my epitaph: for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character; when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”
Very important to the concept of revolution is the poetic symbolism of the body. With Emmet and O’Hagan, the body is a text of radical openness, and a launching point to open up a discourse between oppressors, and oppressed. “Does this sentence of death which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach?1” For Emmet the offering up of his body as a sacrifice gives him an open forum to discuss his grievances. His sacrifice is “for those I honor and love, and for whom I am about to perish.2” His body I a textual discourse that even bowed “to the ignominy of the scaffold3” can not be silenced. He is a martyr. For O’Hagan too much sacrifice is going on, too many martyrs swallowed up by avarice. The bodies are piling up “we’re in every ditch (…) strewn in spring with famished corpses.4” The site of the body once more becomes a mode of discourse. He warns his readers that want is the worst council, by heck it’s all they have left, and once called upon it can not be held back. For both authors the sacrifice of the body opens up a space of radical openness, for Emmet, his body is the price for this free discourse, and for O’Hagan the wretches starving and the dead swallowed up by black starvation is the essential launching point of their discourses.
Emmet submits his body as the price to pay for his dialogue against the oppressor who is “steeled to barbarity by the cries of orphans and the tears of widows which it has made.5” He will insist on having his voice heard. He sacrifices his body for “the dignity of freedom6,” a sacrifice so pure, and young that it is beyond reproach even by the “foul breath of prejudice7.” O’Hagan’s sacrifice is less pure it speaks more of desperation than honor. His people suffer, starve, and are “cramped by alien selfishness8.” The bodies whither the minds drift. Camus once said in his essay the rebel, “what the mind loses in lucidity, it gains in intensity.9” Behold our philosopher in chains. For O’Hagan hope springs from the savage and purafactory nature of violence as a revolution becomes a symbolic cleansing of the mind and body through the text of violence. He even declares that this wasn’t an ad hoc decision that they tried vainly to turn to those who rule them, but not one true heart exists among them all10. For O’Hagan the sacrifices are becoming too much, unlike Emmet he will not willfully submit, all those words are not worth all these lives caught up in the duel of avarice. For O’Hagan the sacrifices have become pointless the English don’t hear their cries of agony, they are like “adder deaf and icy cold.11”
Emmet declares he is going “to his silent grave,12” O’Hagan does not except that they are “powerless in our worst distress13” For O’Hagan, the silent ignominis death is impossible there is far too much blood on England’s hands, like Emmet said, “if it were possible to collect all the blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship may swim in it.14” For O’Hagan “like a trumpet blast,” this heinous crime against the dignity of humanity shall “rouse us all at last.15” The silent quiet honorable death is not an option for O’Hagan; the only choice is revolt or to be negated by the endless abuses of avarice.
For O’Hagan, if they were free, “not one grain for England’s golden store.16” Emmet speaks of hope, for “the dignity of freedom.17” O’Hagan cries out in anger, his poem is an accusation. For O’Hagan, “they or none shall have it now,18” If “we” can not have it O’Hagan thinks they surely should not either. “Burning thoughts shall rise within,19” this is a clear and powerful articulation of the call to arms, the cry out for (Fanon’s) purificatory violence.
Emmet dares to vindicate his character even though, “your executioner may abridge the period of my existence,20”against their “farce of justice.21” He stands there, and with the sacrifice of his body, he accuses that “perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy Most High-which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest which- sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government standard.22” Emmet cries out against their “farce of justice,” and “supposed freedom of their court.” In the name of his father he cries out, “See if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality, and patriotism which it was your care to instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer my life.23” His body is the sacrificial lamb. “Let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them, let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character, when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not til then, let my epitaph be written.24”
O’Hagan says these “cold and silent graves” graves are pointless. O’Hagan is not happy to be sacrificed to the “ignominy of the scaffold,” for him enough is enough. He evokes the “heaven that tempers ill with good,25” and he asks us what we will do “when our rotting roots shall fail?26” This is the opening of a clear dialogue, we revolt or we starve. If they remain silent, and apathetic than we condemn not just ourselves, but our sons, daughters, wives, and friends to the scaffold.
The trial is easy. The predetermination of the sentence England cast against Emmet, O’Hagan sails back at them. Blast their scaffolds. Where Emmet turns his judgment on Lord Norbury, “You my lord are a judge. I am the supposed culprit, I am a man, you are a man also; by a revolution of power we could change places, though we never could change characters.27” O’Hagan cries out more clearly, “Ye who cling to England’s side, here and now you see her tried.28” For the two men the invented space of the body as a text of radical openness becomes the opening band in the concert of revolutionary dialogue between the oppressed, and the oppressors. Emmet, the poor sacrificial goat opens his shirt and says take my blood, he sacrifices himself for his honored loves. O’Hagan on the other hand says enough of our blood has been spilled. The beautiful sacrifice of Emmet is one thing, but the grotesque spectacle of the famine is too much. All that is left is for the “burning thoughts that shall rise within,29” to overflow and pour out into revolutionary fervor. “The Rebel is dead, long live the martyr.30”

The body in the British Military Culture before the Outbreak of the Second World War

My grandmother was born, and raised in Liverpool, England, and she always cites her hero to be her father, NCO Ernst William Harrison, her father. He was a non-commissioned officer in the Second World War. In the old photo albums there are pictures of his “tour of duty” in India. By looking at a few of these pictures one can attempt to understand how the military culture he was engulfed in viewed certain aspects of the body, and even discern a few of their ideals of masculinity. The first picture is one of the NCO relaxing in a lawn chair of sorts, he has a mongoose by his feet, and he is reading. The second image is of NCO and one of his comrades with two Indians, they are at a train station, and the two men are posed under a sign. These two images will be the vanguard in an assessment of the view of Masculinity in the British military before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The NCO relaxed in a chair with a mongoose by his foot gives a very usual picture of pre-conflict military culture. Before the outbreak of war and before the initiation of conflict a certain mythology of military life is brought up. People believe joining the ranks of the army will allow them to see foreign, new, and exciting places, the prospect of actual conflict is treated with the man laying down relaxing with a mongoose on his shoe. The picture here would make a great poster for propaganda, “Join the King’s Army, and See the World”. The idea that military life was relaxed and easy was what that picture seemed to get across, whether it was the photographer, or the photographed’s intent to show it that way, that picture portrayed the rich explorer mentality. The appeal was to a gentleman’s club of men who got to see new world, and exotic animals.

The Second photo, depicting the four men at the railroad is one that shall be the focus here. Two of the men are British soldiers, and two are native men of India. The one soldier (not NCO) is leaning on the railing of the sign they are standing under. The two Indians are standing around, but not under the sign. NCO is standing next to his fellow soldier under the sign. The first soldier, leaning in a very comfortable and relaxed pose is giving off a well maintained and confident aura. The uniform he wears is clean and well taken care of. He has no hat, and his sleeves are rolled up. NCO is holding his hat, and he seems a little less relaxed than his comrade. His uniform is well maintained, and his sleeves are down. The two men appear very upbeat, with the soldier seeming more confident than his NCO friend. The two natives appear to be in good spirits as well. The symbolism of the railroad might be well to be taken into account, since even as aviation was taking dominance the rails were one of the most important means of conveyance for the men. The rails were also a symbol of commercial and military power. Men and merchandise could be run from one end of the colony to the other through these rails. It can not be inferred if the men understood the symbolism of these rails, but it can be assumed that the rails were a symbol for the modernity of the empire.

The dominant idea in this military culture before the war was one of a club, and a sporting military life. The men in the pictures were never vastly uncomfortable, and the usual photograph showed them enjoying the few remaining moments of imperial prosperity, before the world plummeted into crisis, and their lives would be put on the line for crown, colony, and country. A pragmatic masculinity is what they had made for themselves. My great-grandmother would never go to India to live with the NCO, because during the night “The Mountain Men”, as her, and my grandmother called them; would come down to raid the camps, and villages. The men like this got to be soldiers when necessary, but at this time could still relax, and have a good time.

Maybe this pragmatic aggression is what allowed them to win when war finally came. It is known that the Germans in particular emphasized hyper-masculine ideas, the German Soldier was supposed to be a new man, emphasizing the role of aggression in their ideals. I see this pragmatic masculinity of the British as a great balance to this recklessness of their opponents. The British held their line so to speak, much like Agincourt, were the haughty French hurled their cavalry to ruin against the British during the Hundred Years’ War. This ability to be aggressive when needed seems to be a predominant idea in the British view of masculinity, and has lead to the preservation of their culture since the fall of Rome through today.

Raison d’etat

Raison d’etat is the concept that the interests of the country justify political and diplomatic acts that would otherwise be reprehensible.1 Nicolo Machiavelli was a champion of this concept his political treatise “The Prince” was one such example. He expounded princely virtue as the willingness to overcome certain acceptable rules to perpetuate through either force or kindness the state. The French monarch Louis XI embodied a lot of qualities Machiavelli may have respected. Louis is an enigmatic figure, he is both praised and blamed; Louis XI has a new portrait for every new writer who discusses him. “Le roi araignée” or at least some portraits of him may show us a prince Machiavelli could like.

Louis ruled a France which was a “quivering mass of feudal principalities caught in a royal net; some of them restive, and eager to break their bonds.”2 The France of his father Charles had become even more feudal as the lords each acted as almost independent powers. The status quo of France during this period of peace between her and England was very precarious. Like Machiavelli Louis “not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”3 Louis embarked on a mission to “overcome all his rivals.”4 Slowly, but surely our araignée succeeded in freeing France from fealty, but embarked her into the age of absolutism. That is the central debate most Historians still argue over, whether to judge him in the light of raison d’etat or to criticize the man who lead the vanguard of absolutism.

Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare, a maxim that was well taken by Louis he knew that a prince “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.”5Louis had to do what was best for not only the monarchy, but to accomplish his dream, a real France, a united France. De Commynes is said to be the architect of the plan at that saved the monarchs life from the maddened Charles the Bold. The plan was a horrendous humiliation, and it involved the breaking with the friends and allies he had supported in the Liege revolt, but in order to preserve his life, and to later finish with Charles, the monarch had to escape. Charles forced Louis to aid him in the razing of the city, and the ensuing massacre.

They often accuse Louis of being oppressive, and “though he oppressed his subjects himself, he would never see them injured by anybody else.”6During his reign the Nobles lead a revolt called “The League of the Public Wheel”, this revolt was lead by Charles the Bold, but the notables masked it under Louis’ brother the Duke of Berry. The nobles said it was a war for the people, though “the people were often the pretext, and always the victim.7The war ended poorly for Louis he had to sign an outrageous treaty, and pay a massive indemnity to the lords. Some of his most crucial lands were also seized. The War had been a farce by the nobles at the expense of the people, when it was over the nobles all took private gains and none cared for the plight of the people they had so claimed to be the righteous defenders of.

For Louis though the injury was not “so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”8He gave each lord what they had coming to them, many died in chains several fled. Machiavelli said that “Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot”9. Louis did both he “raised paupers out of filth into wealth”10, and struck lords into nothing. Louis was a bit of a pragmatic egalitarian, anyone who could be of service to him, and his monarchy would be. He spun a web of shrewdness and sagacity.11 In this web he caught all of France which then entered into a new age. Some refer to this absolutism as the edifice of despotism12, where others love him for his raison d’etat and the pragmatism in his politics.
Machiavelli wrote that it love and fear can hardly coexist so if you must chose between the tow fear is the far safer alternative. Louis knew this maxim, and he knew that in order to have the France of his dream he may have to do things that many did not approve of, but whether history looks at him as hero or villain is inconsequential to Louis. He lived in a France we will never know so any praise or blame falls on the deafest of ears. Like all leaders he was loved and hated. The only reason he is remembered for the hate rather than the love is most likely very simple, “Villains make better copy.”13

Mass Murder in the Context of the Absurd

The Second World War was not fought on any conventional level. The war itself was the very redefinition of the aims and rules of warfare in the 20th Century. Torture, Slavery, Mutilation, and other words that invoke almost a medieval feeling became the norms of this very dark and unconventional war. The Nazi project was a war against the mind. When Camus writes his reaction to Nazi aggression in his four “Letters to a German Friend”, he decides resolutely “there are means that cannot be excused.”1 Camus resolutely stands against the Nazi belief in their superior destiny. For Delbo the absurd reality of the war is felt in her body unlike Camus she was not outside of the absurd machine of horror, but she was engulfed within it. The pain of her experience is felt in the line “and now I am sitting in a café, writing this text.”2 She is plagued with survivor’s guilt in this line after recounting a few of the horrors of her camp experience. The two resisters one on the outside (Camus), one on the in (Delbo) both articulate their pain and suffering in a war of disproportionate murder and horror that changed the very concept of humanity.
When Delbo says “no one ever thought of not conforming to the absurd”3 she is talking about the insanity of the suffering these people have gone through. It becomes impossible to believe that other humans are going through all of this. Delbo’s suffering is her honesty; the calm clarity of the victim assures us of their strength. During her account she clearly understands what has really happened here; she is living in a new world. The Nazi project was a reorganization of the boundaries of reality. Those caught up in its machine were left to suffer unspeakable atrocities. When she talks of struggle she says “defeated, yet there conscious minds still refuse, keep on denying, steeling themselves, wishing to protest, to keep on struggling.”4 The painful absolutism of her reality is still steeled in a implacable will to resist. For the people in the camp where there lives no longer meant anything. Resistance was living. In the camp where you were part of the very machinery of your own death, to go on living was a victory against your murderers. She describes the change of reality very calmly, “Only an outsider would detect insanity, since we had gotten used to the fantastic, forgetting the reflexes of the normal human being face to face with the preposterous.”5 In this new irrational warfare the preposterous, the very boundaries of human existence were stretched so far that humanity became the articulation of suffering.
In Camus’s “Letters to a German Friend” we here a systematic rejection of a certain way of thinking. First he sets out to address how France in all her majesty could fall to the barbarians to the east. He explicates the German way of thinking about the nation with “You said to me: “The greatness of my country is beyond price.”6 When he talks of France he says “I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive”7 Camus cannot agree that those Germans, “lucky enough to find meaning in the destiny of (there) nation must sacrifice everything else.”8 His letters then set out to articulate the resisters will and through this there assurance of victory. For Camus the assurance of his victory is that “man is that force which ultimately cancels all tyrants and gods.”9 For France’s loss Camus feels its victory will be all the greater, and “mankind, despite its worst errors, may have its justification and its proof of innocence.”10 France took her time to articulate its resolution to fight, in Camus’s second letter his German states, “In all her intelligences, France repudiates herself. Some of your intellectuals prefer despair to their country-others, the pursuit of an improbable truth. We put Germany before despair.”11 He laughs at this nonsense claim by the band of murderous thugs who accuse French intellectuals of not loving their nation. Camus responds “this is because we simply wanted to love our country in justice, as we wanted to love her in truth and in hope.”12 In Germany where politics of the irrational have take taken over it is sufficient for Camus to define truth in radical opposition to what the Nazis are, “at least we know what falsehood is; that is just what you have taught us.”13 Nazis have murdered the spirit, and if the world really had no meaning at all that would be enough they would be right. Yet, there is something of justice left in the world of the absurd, and “it took only a dead child for us to add wrath to intelligence, and now it is two against one.”14 The Nazis cannot stop this two against one because they are merely “a single impulse” fighting with nothing but “the resources of blind anger.”15 He acknowledges the “bitter joy of fighting with agreement with ourselves, but Camus cannot believe Nazi Tyranny can be the end.
Delbo wrote that “The thought of running away did not cross anyone’s mind. You must be strong to wish to escape. You must be able to count on all of you muscles, all of your senses.”16 Escape was only possible through death and death betrayed resistance. (If living was the strongest articulation of revolt) For Camus, and those resisters on the outside of the camps it is “that hopeless hope is what sustains us in difficult moments; our comrades will be more patient than the executioners and more numerous than the bullets.”17 Camus’s resistance rests on the fact that all of his resisters are neatly balanced between “sacrifice, and our longing for happiness.”18 If there was no more hope in the world, if there was no more ways to resist it than the Nazi truth could have won. The multiple routes of resisting the Nazi atrocity proved its destiny to fail. When an ideology of that scale exists, and when its final articulation can only be the total negation of humanity, then it cannot be victorious. As long as the will to resist continued than the Nazi abhorrent reliance on a new world meaning could not be victorious. For Delbo it was living which became resistance every day that her body continued to live proved the impossibility of the Nazi project. Life, hope, and reason became the inescapable horde that crushed National Socialism. Camus had merely to hope for happiness to unravel Nazism, Delbo merely to draw breath.