Hubbry Logo
Albert MemmiAlbert MemmiMain
Open search
Albert Memmi
Community hub
Albert Memmi
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Albert Memmi
Albert Memmi
Albert Memmi
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

Albert Memmi (Arabic: ألبير ممّي; 15 December 1920 – 22 May 2020) was a French-Tunisian writer and essayist of Tunisian Jewish origins. A prominent intellectual, his nonfiction books and novels explored his complex identity as an anti-imperialist, deeply related to his ardent Zionism.[1][2]

Key Information

Biography

[edit]

Memmi was born in Tunis, French Tunisia in December 1920, one of 13 children of Tunisian Jewish Berber Maïra (or Marguerite) Sarfati and Tunisian-Italian Jewish Fradji (or Fraji, or François) Memmi, a saddle maker.[2] He grew up speaking French and Tunisian-Judeo-Arabic.[3][4] During the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, Memmi was imprisoned in a forced labor camp from which he later escaped.[5]

Memmi started Hebrew school when he was 4. He was educated in French primary schools, and continued his secondary studies at the prestigious Lycée Carnot de Tunis in Tunis, where he graduated in 1939. During World War II, he was studying philosophy at the University of Algiers when France's collaborationist Vichy regime implemented anti-Semitic laws. As a result, he was expelled from the university and subsequently sent to a labor camp in eastern Tunisia. After the war, Memmi resumed his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and married Marie-Germaine Dubach, a French Catholic, with whom he had three children. The family returned to Tunis in 1951, where Memmi taught high school.[2]

Memmi became a professor at the Sorbonne and earned his doctorate there in 1970. In 1975, he was appointed as a director of the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences.[2] He also held positions at the École des hautes études commerciales[6] and at the University of Nanterre.

Despite his support for Tunisian independence, once Tunisia achieved independence in 1956, Memmi moved to France. Memmi wrote about his conflicted sense of identity in The Pillar of Salt (1953):

I am a Tunisian, but of French culture. I am Tunisian, but Jewish, which means that I am politically and socially an outcast. I speak the language of the country with a particular accent and emotionally I have nothing in common with Muslims. I am a Jew who has broken with the Jewish religion and the ghetto, is ignorant of Jewish culture and detests the middle class.[2]

He died in May 2020, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, at the age of 99.[7]

Writings

[edit]

Memmi found himself at the crossroads of three cultures, and based his work on the difficulty of finding a balance between the East and the West.[8]

Memmi's well-regarded first novel, La statue de sel (translated as The Pillar of Salt), was published in 1953 with a preface by Albert Camus and was awarded the Fénéon Prize in 1954.[9] His other novels include Agar (translated as Strangers), Le Scorpion (The Scorpion), and Le Desert (The Desert).

His best-known non-fiction work is The Colonizer and the Colonized, about the interdependent relationship of the two groups. It was published in 1957, a time when many national liberation movements were active. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the preface. The work is often read in conjunction with Frantz Fanon's Les damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth) and Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) and Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism. In October 2006, Memmi's follow-up to this work, entitled Decolonization and the Decolonized, was published. In this book, Memmi suggests that in the wake of global decolonization, the suffering of former colonies cannot be attributed to the former colonizers, but to the corrupt leaders and governments that control these states.

Memmi's related sociological works include Dominated Man, Dependence, and Racism.

Sean P. Hier, in a review of Memmi's Racism, calls it "well-written and autobiographically informed." He writes that Memmi's main claim is that racism is a "'lived experience' arising within human situations which only secondarily become 'social experiences.' According to Hier, Memmi writes that racism is "endemic to collective human existence."[10]

Memmi wrote extensively on Jewish identity and the place of the Jew in Muslim North African states after independence, including Portrait of a Jew, Liberation of the Jew and Jews and Arabs.

He was also known for the Anthology of Maghrebian literature (written in collaboration) published in 1965 (vol. 1) and 1969 (vol. 2).

Reviewing Memmi's fiction, scholar Judith Roumani asserts that the Tunisian writer's work "reveals the same philosophical evolution over time from his original viewpoints to less radical but perhaps more realistic positions." She concludes that "his latest fiction is certainly more innovative and different than his earlier work."[11]

In his review for The New York Times, essayist and critic Richard Locke described Albert Memmi's earlier novels as memoirs "recorded with a cleareyed sensitivity, a modest candor, and remarkable strength." He likened Memmi to "a Tunisian Balzac graced with Hemingway's radical simplicity and sadness." Locke further wrote, "But ultimately, it is Memmi's heart, not his skill, that moves you: the sights and sounds of Tunis, the childhood memories, the brothers' sympathetic and contrasting voices, their all-too-human feelings, have a resonance that reawakens for a while the ghost of European humanism."[12]

In a 2018 article for The Jewish Review of Books, Daniel Gordon wrote that Memmi “has combined, perhaps more than any other writer since World War II, the compassion needed to articulate the suffering of oppressed groups with the forthrightness needed to censure them for their own acts of oppression.”[13]

In 1995, Memmi said of his own work: "All of my work has been in sum an inventory of my attachments; all of my work has been, it should be understood, a constant revolt against my attachments; all of my work, for certain, has been an attempt at...reconciliation between the different parts of myself."[14]

Refuting scientific racism

[edit]

In Racisme, Memmi defined racism as a social construction assigning values to biological differences (both real and imagined) “to the advantage of the one defining and deploying them, and to the detriment of the one subjected to that act of definition”.[15] In doing so, he countered three major arguments of scientific racism— a pseudoscientific belief in the existence of empirical evidence in support of racist beliefs. First, that pure and distinct races exist; second, that biologically ‘pure’ races were superior to others; and finally, that superior races had legitimate dominance over others. Memmi opposed this belief, asserting biological differences across human beings correlated with changes in geography, and that biological purity was a particular human fantasy. Memmi also pointed out that no evidence existed in support of the idea of racial purity, and merit, rather than biology, was the only basis of superiority. In this way, Memmi's arguments for racism as a social construct were important in refuting the notion of science as a basis for racist thought.

Bibliography

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Albert Memmi

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia

Albert Memmi (15 December 1920 – 22 May 2020) was a Tunisian-born Jewish , essayist, philosopher, and whose works dissected the dynamics of domination, from to postcolonial .
Born into a poor Jewish family in the hara of under French colonial rule, Memmi navigated the hierarchies of a society divided among , , , and Europeans, shaping his analyses of alienation and identity.
His breakthrough novel, The Pillar of Salt (1953), an autobiographical account of a young Jew's struggles in colonial , won the Prix and established him as a voice on cultural estrangement.
In The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957), Memmi outlined the psychological and structural harms of colonial relations to both dominator and dominated, advocating revolt while foreseeing 's pitfalls.
After 's prompted his departure to France in 1956, where he taught , Memmi grew critical of Arab nationalist regimes for replicating , marginalizing , and fostering , as detailed in Decolonization and the Decolonized (2006).
A secular thinker on , he framed as an anti-colonial liberation movement essential for Jewish survival, while condemning Arab myths of pre-Israel harmony and supporting a two-state resolution, positions that isolated him from both leftist anti-Zionists and uncritical postcolonial narratives.

Early Life

Birth and Family Background

Albert Memmi was born on December 15, 1920, in , the capital of the , to a family of modest Jewish origins. His birthplace was the Hara, the historic Jewish quarter within the old , a densely populated area reflecting the socioeconomic constraints faced by many in the Jewish community under colonial rule. Memmi's father, known as Fraji or François Memmi, worked as a saddler, crafting leather goods in a trade typical of artisanal Jewish families with roots tracing to Italian Jewish communities, possibly Livorno. His mother, Marguerite or Maïra Sarfati, came from a rural Tunisian Berber-Jewish background and remained illiterate, underscoring the limited formal education available to women in such households. The family's circumstances positioned them as working-class Jews navigating the cultural and economic divides between indigenous Tunisians, European settlers, and the colonial administration, with Memmi later describing his upbringing on the edge of the Hara adjacent to a Muslim neighborhood, which exposed him to intercommunal tensions from an early age.

Education in Tunisia

Memmi commenced his formal education at age four in a in , where he received initial religious instruction amid a family environment shaped by poverty and Judeo-Arabic dialect. He subsequently attended the (AIU) school, a French-Jewish institution that emphasized and rapid mastery of the , marking his first significant exposure to and facilitating for Jewish children in colonial . At age thirteen, Memmi secured a full scholarship to the prestigious in , a state-run French secondary school reserved primarily for European and elite colonized students, attending from 1932 to 1939. At , Memmi excelled academically, immersing himself in , , and classical studies under influential teachers who bridged his indigenous roots with European intellectual traditions. He completed his in 1939, earning the prix d'honneur in for outstanding performance, which underscored his aptitude despite his non-European background in a system designed to assimilate select colonial subjects. This , conducted entirely in French within the framework of the French protectorate's —separating indigenous and European tracks—instilled in Memmi a profound sense of cultural duality, later reflected in his writings on identity and alienation.

Exile and Career in France

Departure from Tunisia

Following Tunisia's achievement of independence from on March 20, 1956, Albert Memmi, who had actively supported the anti-colonial movement as a teacher and writer, encountered rapid marginalization of the Jewish community in the new nation-state. The regime under President implemented policies that excluded from bureaucratic positions and public roles previously held under colonial rule, while began broadcasting anti-Semitic content and exerting pressure on Jewish leaders to publicly disavow support for . These developments underscored the failure of assimilationist hopes for Tunisian , who had deep historical roots in the region dating back millennia, rendering Memmi's position increasingly untenable despite his native ties. In his personal writings, including a diary from the period, Memmi articulated the dissonance between his prior solidarity with Tunisian nationalists against French domination and the post-independence reality, stating, “I have to aid the Tunisians [against the French] because their cause is just. And I have to leave Tunisia because their cause is not mine.” This realization stemmed from the emergent Islamic-oriented nationalism that prioritized Arab-Muslim identity, alienating non-Muslim minorities like Jews, who comprised about 100,000 in Tunisia at independence but faced incentives to emigrate. Memmi's experiences mirrored those of many Jews who departed amid economic restrictions, cultural exclusion, and fears of further instability linked to regional conflicts, such as the 1956 Suez Crisis. Memmi departed Tunisia for France in late August 1956, accompanied by his wife, Germaine Taïeb, marking the beginning of his self-imposed exile. This move aligned with a broader exodus, as over half of Tunisia's Jewish population left within a decade, often resettling in France or Israel due to the untenable position of Jews in the independent state. In France, Memmi secured academic positions, but his departure reflected a profound break from his birthplace, driven not by colonial loyalty but by the post-colonial order's rejection of pluralistic integration.

Academic and Literary Positions

Upon settling in Paris in 1957 after , Albert Memmi began his academic career in as an educational researcher. He subsequently advanced to a at the , commonly known as the Sorbonne. In 1970, Memmi obtained his doctorate from the Sorbonne and was appointed of at the . Memmi held teaching positions at multiple French universities throughout his career, continuing until retirement. In 1975, he was appointed as one of the directors of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France's leading graduate-level institution for social sciences research. In parallel with his academic roles, Memmi maintained a prominent position in French-language as an essayist and novelist, authoring over 20 books and numerous articles on themes of , identity, and after his arrival in . His works, including Portrait du colonisé (1957) and subsequent sociological analyses, established him as a key intellectual voice critiquing and dynamics.

Major Works

Fiction and Autobiographical Writings

Memmi's debut novel, La Statue du sel (The Pillar of Salt), published in 1953, serves as a semi-autobiographical depiction of a Jewish youth's maturation in the Jewish quarter of under French colonial rule. The narrative follows protagonist Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche as he grapples with familial poverty, traditional religious constraints, linguistic barriers between Judeo-Arabic and French, and the pursuit of secular education that propels him toward alienation from his community. The work received a preface from and earned the Fénéon Prize in 1954. In his second novel, Agar, released in 1955, Memmi examines the fraught dynamics of between a Jewish and a Muslim woman from rural , highlighting cultural incompatibilities, social , and the erosion of in a colonial context. The story underscores Memmi's recurring motif of existential estrangement, drawing on observed tensions within Tunisian society without direct autobiographical projection. Subsequent fiction shifted toward more introspective and allegorical structures. Le Scorpion ou l'anamorphose (1969) employs a fragmented with four voices representing aspects of a single psyche, probing themes of self-division, guilt, and the illusions of liberation post-independence. Le Désert (1977) recounts the exile of al-Mammi, a fourteenth-century Jewish from a Moroccan kingdom, blending with reflections on loss, nomadism, and cultural erasure. Memmi's final novel, Le Pharaon (1988), reimagines ancient to interrogate destiny, tyranny, and the burdens of leadership. Across these works, autobiographical traces persist—particularly in early portrayals of Tunisian Jewish life—but Memmi increasingly favored theoretical abstraction over personal revelation, resisting reductive interpretations of his fiction as veiled memoir.

Non-Fiction on Oppression and Identity

Memmi's seminal non-fiction work on oppression, Portrait du colonisé, précédé de Portrait du colonisateur (1957), later translated as The Colonizer and the Colonized, provides a phenomenological analysis of colonial domination, portraying it as a symbiotic yet corrosive relationship that dehumanizes both parties. The colonizer, Memmi argues, sustains their superiority through the subjugation of the colonized, who internalize feelings of inferiority and estrangement from history, leading to a distorted self-perception that perpetuates dependence even after formal liberation. This framework extends beyond Algeria and Tunisia to generalize mechanisms of oppression, emphasizing how the dominated adopt the oppressor's gaze, resulting in psychological mutilation. In L'Homme dominé (1968), Memmi broadens this inquiry into a typology of domination applicable to various contexts, including and class exploitation, collecting essays that sketch the universal traits of the oppressed: alienation, , and a hindered capacity for authentic self-assertion. He critiques the notion of inevitable victimhood, insisting that true requires the dominated to reclaim agency rather than perpetuate cycles of blame, a view informed by his observation that fosters not just external chains but internal pathologies like and conformism. Memmi's Le Racisme: Description, définition, traitement (1982) dissects as a cultural intertwined with identity crises, affecting the racist through justification of privilege and the victim through enforced otherness that erodes personal . He posits that persists because the oppressed, in internalizing inferiority, fail to affirm a positive self-identity, advocating instead for mutual recognition where liberation ends only when domination ceases and identities are freely asserted. This work rejects reductive biological explanations, focusing on socio-psychological dynamics observable across societies. Addressing Jewish oppression specifically, Portrait d'un Juif (1962, revised 1966) examines the Jew as a perennial dominated figure, caught between assimilation's erasure of heritage and exclusion's reinforcement of otherness, drawing from Memmi's Tunisian experiences of amid Arab-Muslim dominance. He describes as forged in adversity, where historical persecutions instill resilience but also survival strategies like that mask deeper alienation, urging to embrace their distinctiveness without romanticizing victimhood. These texts collectively underscore Memmi's causal view that 's antidote lies in rigorous self-examination and identity reconstruction, rather than ideological panaceas.

Analysis of Colonialism

Initial Anti-Colonial Critiques

In his 1957 work Portrait du colonisé, précédé du Portrait du colonisateur (translated as The Colonizer and the Colonized), Albert Memmi delivered his earliest systematic critique of , drawing from his experiences as a Tunisian Jew amid the push for North African independence. Published just after Tunisia's independence from , the essay dissects the psychological and structural dynamics of colonial domination, portraying it as an inherently unstable relationship predicated on mutual dependency and . Memmi contends that the colonizer sustains privilege through fabricated myths of racial and cultural superiority, which necessitate the perpetual subjugation of the colonized to affirm the former's identity. Memmi emphasizes the colonized's exclusion from history, civic participation, and , arguing that systematically erodes their agency and imposes an alienating . This deprivation, he asserts, breeds resentment and inevitable , rendering colonial rule unsustainable without constant coercion. Unlike purely ideological tracts, Memmi's analysis avoids romanticizing the colonized, acknowledging their potential for adopting the oppressor's tactics post-liberation, yet he frames as an ethical imperative to dismantle the system's moral corruption. His support for anti-colonial revolt targeted European liberals' in decrying while benefiting from the status quo. The essay's publication in France during the Algerian War of Independence amplified its impact, influencing intellectuals by humanizing the colonial dialectic without endorsing binary victim-perpetrator narratives. Memmi, writing as both beneficiary and victim of French assimilation policies, rejected in racial hierarchies, instead attributing colonial ills to relational power imbalances that distort human relations universally. This nuanced indictment positioned not merely as economic exploitation but as a profound existential affecting oppressor and oppressed alike.

Post-Decolonization Assessments

In his 2004 book Decolonization and the Decolonized (published in English in 2006), Memmi offered a stark reassessment of 's outcomes, arguing that newly independent nations in and elsewhere had largely failed to achieve genuine liberation, instead replicating patterns of oppression and dependency under local elites. He attributed this to the decolonized's inability to transcend a , which fostered , , and economic on former colonizers, as evidenced by ongoing demands despite rhetorical claims. Memmi contended that postcolonial leaders often prioritized power consolidation over development, leading to "great disappointment" through stifled civil societies and unfulfilled promises of equality. Memmi's views were shaped by Tunisia's post-1956 independence trajectory, where he observed rising marginalizing minorities like , prompting his own departure to France that year amid predictions of communal exodus. He criticized the emergent regimes for substituting colonial hierarchies with indigenous ones, where former nationalists became new "colonizers" of their populace, marked by and suppression of dissent rather than merit-based progress. This disillusionment extended to broader North African and sub-Saharan contexts, where he highlighted persistent and failures as empirical refutations of decolonization's utopian ideals. Critics have interpreted Memmi's analysis as a conservative pivot, faulting its generalizations about cultural inertia in decolonized societies while acknowledging his prescient warnings against uncritical anticolonial fervor. Nonetheless, he maintained that true required rigorous self-examination and rejection of dependency, rather than blame-shifting to historical colonizers, a stance informed by his sociological lens on power dynamics. His assessments underscored causal links between unaddressed internal pathologies—such as and —and stalled development, urging over perpetual grievance.

Perspectives on Racism

Conceptualization of Racism

In his 1982 book Le Racisme (translated as Racism in 2000), Albert Memmi defined as "the generalized and final assigning of values to real or imaginary differences, to the accuser’s benefit and at his victim’s expense, in order to justify the former’s own privileges or aggression." This conceptualization frames not as mere dislike or but as a deliberate ideological process that mythologizes differences—whether biological, cultural, or fabricated—to rationalize domination and hierarchy. Memmi emphasized that the act of valuation is central: the racist insists on a difference, amplifies it into an absolute trait, and assigns it inherent inferiority to the victim while claiming superiority for the self, thereby creating a structural dyad of oppressor and oppressed. Memmi distinguished racism from other forms of by its aggressive functionality and systemic intent, arguing that it requires not just recognition of difference but its exploitation for privilege or hostility, often mediated through group ideologies rather than individual whim. Unlike , which may prefer one's own group without targeting others for subjugation, generalizes and absolutizes traits to dehumanize victims, portraying them as monolithic inferiors unfit for equality. This process perpetuates itself through a cycle of , , and self-justification, where the racist externalizes societal ills onto the "other" to consolidate power, as seen in colonial contexts where legitimated exploitation by deeming the colonized inherently unprepared or subhuman. Structurally, Memmi viewed racism as a social pathology embedded in institutions and history, evolving from ancient xenophobias but systematized in modern eras through pseudoscientific racial theories, such as those popularized by de Gobineau in –1855. It functions as both and practice, providing an alibi for economic oppression or aggression while reinforcing group cohesion among dominants; for instance, it holds victims accountable for their own subjugation, blaming traits supposedly caused by prior domination. Memmi stressed that racism's persistence lies in its adaptability across contexts, from and to contemporary hierarchies, always serving to naturalize inequality under the guise of immutable differences.

Rejection of Biological Determinism

In his 1982 work Le Racisme (translated as Racism in 1999), Albert Memmi defined in its narrow sense as the valuation of biological differences—real or imaginary—to rationalize hostility, aggression, or privilege, explicitly refuting the deterministic claim that such differences inherently dictate social inferiority or superiority. He argued that biological , which posits innate traits as fated and hereditary, contaminates the victim's entire being but lacks empirical grounding, serving instead as a pretext for domination rather than a causal explanation. Memmi emphasized that human groups exhibit no pure races or even homogeneous biological clusters due to historical intermixing, undermining any notion of fixed, hierarchical essences derived from alone. Memmi further rejected biological determinism by asserting that observed differences, while existent, carry no intrinsic value implying psychological or cultural inadequacy; any negative attribution arises from social imposition, not inherent destiny. He critiqued the pseudoscientific elevation of as a for inescapable fate—" is a for the destiny imposed on the other"—contending that no supports the idea that homogeneity or specific traits confer evolutionary favor, as claimed by racists. This stance aligned with his broader view that Enlightenment-era biological sciences, despite later co-optation, originated in pursuits of freedom and justice, not racial hierarchies, highlighting racism's ideological distortion of neutral data. By framing biological racism as a pathway to broader psychological and cultural forms—rarely isolated in practice—Memmi portrayed it as a social pathology exploiting minimal variances for , rather than a reflection of causal biological realities. He maintained that inferiority complexes or behaviors attributed to biology are inscribed socially, as in colonial contexts where the colonized's "inferiority... is inscribed in their flesh" only through oppressive structures, not . This rejection positioned as mutable and human-derived, amenable to critique through reason, rather than an immutable product of .

Jewish Identity and Zionism

Experiences of Antisemitism

Albert Memmi, born in 1920 in the Jewish hara () of , experienced systemic discrimination as a Tunisian Jew under French colonial rule, where Jews occupied an ambiguous intermediary status between colonizers and the Muslim majority. From childhood, he endured routine antisemitic insults at school and in daily interactions, including from both and European peers, which reinforced his sense of alienation. In his semi-autobiographical novel La Statue de sel (1953), Memmi recounts a targeting and the pervasive hostility that marked Jewish life in , portraying it as an inescapable "noxious haze" in which were born, lived, and often died. During , under the regime's antisemitic statutes imposed in French from , Memmi was expelled from his teaching position and studies in , forcing his return to . The Nazi occupation of in late 1942 further intensified persecution; Memmi was imprisoned in a forced , from which he later escaped, an ordeal that underscored the betrayal by French "protectors" who abandoned to Axis forces. These events, detailed in La Statue de sel, highlighted the vulnerability of North African , who faced both discriminatory laws—such as exclusion from public roles and property seizures—and direct Nazi threats, including broadcasts urging against . Postwar, Memmi reflected on these experiences in Portrait d'un Juif (1962), expressing resentment toward his amid unrelenting : "I do not believe I have ever rejoiced in being a Jew." Arab , rooted in historical subordination and exacerbated by rising , prevented Jewish assimilation into Tunisian society, as he argued were barred from becoming "" by Muslim contempt and exclusionary practices. This dual —from European settlers and Arab neighbors—shaped his self-perception as a perpetual outcast: "I am Tunisian, but Jewish, which means that I am politically and socially an outcast." Following Tunisia's in 1956, escalating hostility toward prompted Memmi's departure, mirroring the broader exodus of North African Jewish communities amid state-sanctioned .

Support for Israel and Arab-Jewish Relations

Albert Memmi identified as an Arab Jew and a left-wing Zionist, viewing as a legitimate national liberation movement for akin to , rooted in centuries of rather than European colonialism. He argued that 's establishment addressed the existential threats faced by worldwide, including in countries, where they endured domination, humiliation, and periodic massacres by Muslim long before emerged. In his 1975 essay "Who is an Arab Jew?", Memmi rejected romanticized notions of harmonious Jewish- coexistence, emphasizing instead systemic contempt, economic restrictions, and violence that intensified after independence, prompting of nearly all from lands—such as Tunisia's Jewish population dropping from 65,000 in the 1940s to a fraction by 1967. Memmi's seminal work Jews and Arabs (1975), a collection of essays spanning two decades, critiqued Arab as predating and independent of , positioning not as its cause but as its rejoinder, particularly for oppressed who saw European colonization as a temporary safeguard against local perils. He described in Arab societies as culturally intertwined—sharing languages, music, and cuisine—yet perpetually marginalized, with post-colonial often manifesting as intolerance that strangled Jewish rights and communities. Memmi supported 's democratic character and justice relative to its neighbors, while acknowledging its internal flaws like religious favoritism, but rejected applying unique moral standards to it amid Arab rejectionism. On the Arab-Israeli conflict, Memmi advocated pragmatic compromise over apocalyptic visions, recognizing ' right to national existence alongside 's, and framing the mutual displacements— from Arab states to , to Arab nations—as a population exchange necessitating mutual sacrifices and land bargaining. He criticized Palestinian leadership's fixation on reconquering rather than building viable statehood, viewing their plight as secondary to broader Arab failures, yet insisted both peoples were victims of history requiring courageous . Memmi warned against Arab proposals for Jewish as traps to undermine , affirming the Jewish state's permanence as integral to global Jewish destiny.

Criticisms and Debates

Responses to Postcolonial Theory

In his 2008 book Decolonization and the Decolonized, Albert Memmi shifted from his earlier anti-colonial stance to critiquing the outcomes of , arguing that newly decolonized societies had largely failed to achieve promised due to internal , , and a persistent victimhood mentality that absolved leaders of responsibility. He contended that postcolonial elites often replicated colonial hierarchies, replacing foreign domination with domestic tyranny, and emphasized that decades post-, former colonies must confront their own agency rather than eternally attributing socioeconomic woes to past exploitation. Memmi rejected the notion of perpetual colonial trauma as an excuse, insisting that decolonized peoples exhibited traits like intellectual laziness and economic mismanagement predating or exacerbated by . Memmi's analysis diverged sharply from mainstream postcolonial theorists such as and , whom he viewed as perpetuating an illusory "solidarity of the oppressed" that ignored intra-group conflicts and the universal human propensity for domination. In his essay The Impossible Life of (1996), Memmi portrayed Fanon's advocacy for violent revolution in (1961) as naive, arguing it overlooked how unleashed new oppressions by local rulers rather than fostering liberation. Similarly, he implicitly challenged Said's (1978) by framing not as a uniquely Western-colonial invention but as "heterophobia"—a broader of the Other inherent to all societies, including postcolonial ones—thus undermining narratives that exceptionalize European imperialism. This perspective positioned Memmi as an outlier in postcolonial discourse, prioritizing empirical observation of post-independence realities—such as widespread , poverty, and failed in and beyond—over ideological celebrations of anti-colonial resistance. He extended his critique to immigrants in the West, decrying their refusal to integrate as a self-defeating extension of decolonized victimism, which he saw as fostering dependency rather than adaptation. Memmi's insistence on mutual between dominators and dominated challenged the field's tendency toward moral binarism, advocating instead for a realism that recognizes domination's recurrence across cultures absent vigilant self-critique.

Accusations of Cultural Essentialism

Critics, particularly from left-leaning and pro-Palestinian perspectives, have accused Albert Memmi of cultural essentialism in his later writings on Arab-Muslim societies and postcolonial outcomes, viewing his analyses as reducing complex dynamics to fixed, inherent cultural traits rather than contingent historical or structural factors. In Jews and Arabs (1975), Memmi rejected the concept of "Arab Jews" as a viable identity, arguing that Jews in Arab lands faced systemic contempt and exclusion from Muslim majorities, with relations marked by cruelty and an inability to assimilate fully. He wrote that Muslims exhibited "contempt for the Jew" as a persistent attitude, which some interpreters, such as contributors to Mondoweiss, have framed as essentializing Arab or Islamic culture as innately discriminatory, overlooking colonial-era divisions that exacerbated tensions. These charges intensified with Decolonization and the Decolonized (French edition 2004; English 2006), where Memmi critiqued Arab-Muslim postcolonial states for reverting to despotism, corruption, and economic stagnation, attributing much of this to religious dominance—particularly Islam's resistance to secularism and democratic pluralism—and a cultural aversion to self-criticism or innovation. He observed that decolonization often replaced European colonizers with local "necrophiliacs" who perpetuated privilege without progress, drawing on empirical patterns like the 1970s oil boom's failure to foster development in Arab nations and widespread authoritarianism by the 1980s. Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books contended that such portrayals homogenize diverse Arab-Muslim experiences, stereotyping them as culturally predisposed to failure and ignoring continuities of colonial exploitation or global inequalities. Further accusations target Memmi's depictions of communities, such as his characterization of second-generation North African immigrants in as culturally rootless "zombies," alienated from both host societies and origins, prone to or delinquency. Critics argue this essentializes postcolonial identities as inherently conflicted and dysfunctional, bypassing socioeconomic factors like discrimination in 1970s-1980s French banlieues. Memmi's emphasis on "heterophobia"—a universal of the Other manifesting in rejection of or Jewish integration—has similarly been labeled reductive, as it prioritizes cultural-psychological explanations over geopolitical ones, such as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War's displacement of 850,000 from countries. Such critiques often emanate from sources exhibiting systemic left-wing biases, including academia-influenced outlets skeptical of or Western critiques of non-Western cultures, which may downplay Memmi's firsthand observations from Tunisia's independence onward, including pogroms against in 1967 and the exodus of over 90% of Tunisian by 1970. Memmi maintained that his assessments derived from causal analysis of observable failures—e.g., Arab states' educational curricula fostering hatred, as documented in reports from the 1970s—rather than biological or immutable essences, extending his framework of domination to all groups, including under historical .

Legacy

Intellectual Influence

Memmi's Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur (1957), translated as The Colonizer and the Colonized, established him as a foundational figure in early postcolonial theory by dissecting the psychological and sociological dynamics of colonial relationships, drawing on his experiences in Tunisia to argue that colonization dehumanizes both parties involved. This work paralleled and complemented analyses by contemporaries like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, contributing to the intellectual framework for understanding domination as a reciprocal process rooted in economic exploitation and mutual dependency, rather than solely victimhood. Its emphasis on the colonizer's inevitable complicity and the colonized's potential for self-liberation through awareness influenced subsequent scholarship on power asymmetries in imperial contexts, with citations persisting in studies of North African decolonization. In later writings, such as Le Racisme (1982) and Libération du Juif (1962), Memmi extended his framework of oppression to and , positing that all forms of domination—colonial, racial, or cultural—stem from a universal human propensity for and exclusion, informed by empirical observations of post-independence failures in states. This causal analysis critiqued overly romanticized views of , influencing dissident voices in postcolonial discourse who rejected deterministic narratives of perpetual victimhood, as seen in Memmi's warnings against the "myth of the " recycled in modern . His insistence on individual agency over collective provided an antidote to radical theories that excused in formerly colonized societies, though academic reception waned due to his pro-Israel stance and divergence from prevailing leftist orthodoxies. Memmi's ideas resonated in Jewish intellectual circles, shaping debates on assimilation, Zionism, and antisemitism by framing Jewish marginality as a paradigm for broader existential struggles against domination, as evidenced in his essays collected in La Statue de sel (1953) and later reflections. Thinkers engaging his corpus, such as those in French-Jewish philosophy, adopted his realist approach to identity, prioritizing historical causality over ideological abstraction, which contrasted with biased academic trends favoring narrative over evidence. Posthumously, his work continues to inform critiques of multiculturalism as a new form of soft domination, cited in analyses rejecting systemic bias attributions in favor of personal responsibility.

Posthumous Recognition

Following Memmi's death on May 22, 2020, the National Library of Tunisia published a dedicated booklet in homage to the author, recognizing his contributions as a Franco-Tunisian Jewish intellectual. This tribute, released in June 2020, underscored his enduring ties to his birthplace despite his exile after Tunisian independence. Obituaries in major outlets further amplified his legacy, portraying Memmi as a pivotal thinker on colonialism, identity, and domination. The New York Times described him as a "leading mid-20th century French intellectual" whose works unraveled his "anomalous identity" as a Jew in Muslim-majority Tunisia and Algeria. Tablet Magazine highlighted his "rich, important, and complicated legacy of colonial and postcolonial thinking," emphasizing his critiques of both colonizers and the postcolonial order. Similarly, Jadaliyya published an in memoriam piece framing him as a self-exiled Tunisian author and philosopher whose essays challenged dominant narratives in North African and Jewish intellectual history. Scholarly attention persisted beyond initial tributes, with his papers archived at , preserving manuscripts and correspondence for ongoing research into his sociological analyses. Post-2020 analyses, such as those revisiting his opposition to postcolonial orthodoxy, indicate sustained academic engagement with texts like Portrait du colonisé (1957), though without formal awards announced after his death.

References

  1. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41487
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/books/albert-memmi-a-jewish-arab-intellectual-dies-at-99.html
  3. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/albert-memmi-obituary
  4. https://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3044/telling-whole-truth-albert-memmi/
  5. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2016-12-15/ty-article/1920-a-man-who-decided-colonizers-werent-root-of-all-evil-is-born/0000017f-def0-d856-a37f-fff0a42b0000
  6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/albert-memmi-french-language-writer-from-tunisia-dies-at-99/2020/05/30/f655e658-a1be-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html
  7. https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11860
  8. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/12118
  9. https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EJHC/COM-0768.xml?language=en
  10. https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/50/377999/AlAhram-Weekly/FrancoTunisian-writer-Albert-Memmi-Last-of-a-gener.aspx
  11. https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3044/telling-whole-truth-albert-memmi/
  12. https://www.the-independent.com/news/obituaries/albert-memmi-dead-writer-tunisia-a9551066.html
  13. https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/albert-memmi-and-the-problem-with-postcolonialism/
  14. https://www.themodernnovel.org/africa/maghreb/tunisia/memmi/sel/
  15. https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/nokoko/article/download/2821/2490/6590
  16. https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol7/iss1/7/
  17. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/436/desert-the/
  18. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n16/adam-shatz/on-albert-memmi
  19. https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/albert-memmi-the-colonizer-and-the-colonized-1.pdf
  20. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/19/memmi-albert/
  21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1ddd1m8
  22. https://tocqueville21.com/books/albert-memmi-from-anti-colonialism-to-laicite-by-way-of-zionism/
  23. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496224439/the-albert-memmi-reader/
  24. https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/albert-memmi-racism-1.pdf
  25. https://www.jewthink.org/2021/02/23/albert-memmi/
  26. https://profilebooks.com/work/the-colonizer-and-the-colonized/
  27. https://histoirecoloniale.net/il-y-a-cinquante-ans-le-portrait-du-colonise-d-albert-memmi/
  28. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/230170/summary
  29. https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/albert-memmi-decolonization-and-the-decolonized.pdf
  30. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/53/article/231949
  31. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqr/act2080.0046.326/--albert-memmis-about-face?rgn=main%3Bview=fulltext
  32. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302933677_Review_of_Albert_Memmi_Decolonization_and_the_Decolonized
  33. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2013.800748
  34. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09579265080190040603
  35. https://kian.substack.com/p/albert-memmi-and-the-problem-with
  36. https://erenow.org/biographies/the-albert-memmi-reader/13.php
  37. https://h-france.net/Salon/SalonVol13no04.6.Judaken.pdf
  38. https://reflections.yale.edu/article/future-race/color-racism
  39. https://www.jewishideas.org/article/albert-memmi-anti-semitism-colonialism-racism
  40. https://mondoweiss.net/2020/06/an-anti-colonial-zionist-remembering-albert-memmi/
  41. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/21/archives/jews-and-arabs.html
  42. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-arab-israeli-conflict-in-the-words-of-albert-memmi/
  43. https://www.jimena.org/who-is-an-arab-jew/
  44. https://h-france.net/vol7reviews/derderian2.html
  45. https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/albert-memmi-the-impossible-life-of-frantz-fanon.pdf
  46. http://www.jffp.org/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/download/491/577
  47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42002165
  48. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-57627-0_2
  49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2294835
  50. https://h-france.net/Salon/SalonVol13no04.5.Gordon.pdf
  51. https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/remembering-albert-memmi-a-giant-of-intellectual-jewish-thought-in-france-7-4-2020
  52. https://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/the-dominant-and-the-dominated-a-short-tribute-to-albert-memmi/
  53. https://eurojewcong.org/news/communities-news/tunisia/national-library-of-tunisia-publishes-homage-to-albert-memmi/
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.