Defying the censor: Resistance to the Algerian War in French literature and cinema.

This dissertation is a study of French literature and cinema produced during the Algerian War (1954-62). First, I argue that French society's apathetic response to its Army's crimes in Algeria should be interpreted as a crisis of witnessing, or a pervasive denial. Then, I suggest anti-colonialist artists use tactics of self-censorship to condemn their public's lack of political commitment. To avoid provoking censorship restrictions and offending the depoliticized public they were trying to convert, French writers and directors secretly relayed war protests through allegories, historical analogies, and themes of complicity. I examine self-censorship as an art of subversion in four works: Albert Camus's La Chute, Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Sequestres d'Altona, Alain Resnais's Muriel, ou le temps d'un retour, andChris Marker's Le Joli Mai. By relegating their protests to a space in between the lines of their texts, these authors attempt to defy political authority. However, the silence that allows them to be subversive also presents a dilemma for self-censored artists: censoring their own work requires them to masquerade as the very political authority they seek to undermine. My analysis explores the implications of this artistic double bind in cases of French resistance to the Algerian War.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsEuropean historyFilm studiesLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsRomance literatureSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130058/2/9712029.pd