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My psychoanalytic practice takes place between different languages (French and Arabic) and locations (France and Algeria). This has probably sharpened my awareness of difference, and made me realize what difference reveals about the reach of politics in both places. It has also made me aware of the impact of this political reach on the formation of the subject. In Paris, the fact that a vast number of French patients who, caught in a generational confusion and stagnation, evoke at some point the signifier “Algeria” invites further reflection. These French patients, usually three generations removed from colonialism, express being weighed down by a colonial history experienced more often than not by their grandparents, who were involved in either colonization or the War of Liberation, but about which these patients know very little. It is surprising to see how they are grappling with questions of shame and responsibility due to this legacy. Expressing an acute sense of discomfort, they are caught in a history they never experienced, one that, more often than not, they inherited cloaked in silence. They are beset with a number of questions: how do you inherit a past you never bore witness to and which, for unknown reasons, you can’t even speak about? Where does this leave you? Where did their parents and grandparents really stand politically in relation to “coloniality,” a term that covers a long period (132 years) of domination and violence, whereas now their descendants are forbidden from thinking about it? How do you develop your own story when this parental silence is met with a political blank space?

One might argue that Algeria crops up repeatedly in the discourse of patients because the analyst’s familiarity with the matter invites it. But these patients initially came to her for a variety of symptoms that bore no inherent relation to this episode in History. And at some point over the course of several conversations they express the painful impression of being held hostage and left defenseless by an inaccessible past. Following the patterns traced by the signifier “Algeria” thus leads to a blank space in memory and politics. The work of historians can hardly help these patients come to terms with the ideological blind spots they inherited, for the formation of subjectivity is beyond the reach of the historical record. On the other hand, subjectivity needs and demands acknowledgment from the political order. Otherwise, the part of History refused by the political order continues to be transmitted from generation to generation and creates psychic mechanisms that entrap the subject in existential shame.

In Algeria today, the colonial question is so pervasive that we tend to think of it as a historical template. But its official history is frozen in time, one-dimensional and therefore lacking in nuance. It is a matter for politics, probably its lone and major preoccupation. Since the devastation wrought by colonialism is widely acknowledged, it is treated as though there is no point in exploring the matter any more deeply from an interdisciplinary perspective. There is no room for dispute: the matter of colonialism is, by unanimous decision, a closed affair.

The ideological blind spots shaping the current understanding of coloniality – both inside and outside of Algeria – provided the impetus for this book. The myth-filled grievances expressed by so many patients thus hide the orchestrated effort to ensure that these blind spots persist in Algeria and in France. In this way, each individual’s responsibility in shaping History goes unquestioned. History is seen as a set of facts and the interpretation of those facts. This straitjacketed history prohibits subjects from exploring their own layered, complex, and intricate family histories. As one cannot access the history of colonialism through official channels in either France or Algeria, one must find another way in. This entails ignoring the myths and legends attached to it and seeking what lurks behind the curtain of the historical record.

History doesn’t speak for itself. It speaks through subjects who, ideally, debate with historians and politicians over its interpretation. Psychoanalysis cannot do without History, and yet depending solely on it would neglect the private interpretations tirelessly made of it by individuals. Practicing psychoanalysis in Algiers has in this respect been instrumental in understanding how subjectivity stands both within and outside History. To be clear, every subject is formed within and by History. But the subject also hides behind History in order to elude questions concerning individual responsibility. Everyone is familiar with the common refrain from patients: “My past has made me who I am.” And who hasn’t heard healthcare practitioners claim: “They are like that because of their past”? The subject strives continually to move beyond History and yet, instead of breaking free from it, the subject hides behind it. How, then, can one read and draw on History without letting this reading drown out the subject’s own interpretation of history (both personal and collective)?

To address colonialism’s impact on subjectivities in Algeria today, I have drawn on the work of historians as well as on works of Algerian literature, principally those written in French. My aim is to bring together fictional enunciations [énonciations de fiction] and historical statements of facts [énoncés historiques de faits] as nothing comes closer to the texture of subjectivity than the literary text. The turn to literature is both fruitful and necessary, since the discussions I had with patients which drove me to write this book remain protected by confidentiality – a delicate matter in Algeria, where the act of revelation is negatively perceived in both its religious and secular iterations. Not to mention the fact that psychoanalytic treatment remains restricted to a small minority of people who are already concerned about preserving their ability to speak openly and who remain fearful that the presumed secrecy of this encounter may be betrayed. On top of all this, colonialism finds expression through the blank spaces of thought and speech – in other words, through non-discursive acts.

When I first began my research, I was surprised to note how little clinical work there was in Algeria and France on the psychological effects of colonization, apart from that of Frantz Fanon in the 1950s, which is itself a treasure trove of information and rigorous analyses on the psycho-physical harm caused by colonization.¹ His untimely death at 36 years old in 1961, and the dearth of subsequent clinical research in this field, has resulted in an absence of studies on the lasting and wide-ranging psychological effects of colonialism. This is thus a largely unexplored and unknown territory. On the other hand, the clinical effects of colonialism haven’t failed to garner attention from other fields: history, anthropology, sociology, literature. What explains this blind spot in the field of medicine and psychoanalysis? Does the impact of colonialism not merit its own analysis? Do existing notions, such as trauma, go far enough to explain colonial violence?

Probably not, if one considers that the blind spot in the psychological literature signals a larger problem: the longtime silence of leading public officials on colonial violence and its persistence today in a number of disciplines, especially in the clinical and social sciences. The logic of colonialism lives on in the thoughts, speech, and practices of former colonizers and those once deemed “indigènes.” This logic defies treatment, in the medical sense of this term: it doesn’t respond to care or examination. This holds true regardless of the subject’s place within colonialism (colonizer or colonized). The matter is clearly expressed through the blank spaces found in writing from both sides of the Mediterranean. This poses a serious challenge to clinical studies, which would like to establish a set of clear issues and carefully trace them back – following visible signs – to the matter of colonial violence. No such signs exist in this case. This blank space has risen to a deafening pitch in French and Algerian society, where it can be felt by all. For the clinical psychologist, the legacy of colonialism exposes an unusual psychic phenomenon, namely, the existence of a whole field of invisible traces that, in spite of their seeming absence, give shape to subjectivities and political discourse. The clinical psychologist is forced to deal with a history deprived of archives, literally and metaphorically. It is now no longer a question of deconstruction, but one of reconstructing traces that exist outside of memory.