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Notes
1 Cf. Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, ‘The Impossible Wedding: Nationalism, Languages, and the Mother Tongue in Postcolonial Algeria’, in Algeria in Others' Languages, ed. Anne-Emmanuelle Berger (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp.60–78.
2 Australia today is anything but white or Anglophone. In 1996, 15% of the Australian population spoke a language other than English at home. See Australian Bureau of Statistics < http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/d67b7c95e0e8a733ca2570ec001117a2!OpenDocument>[14/01/2011]. The most commonly spoken languages in Australia today are English, Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Arabic, Manadarin and Vietnamese. See Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, < http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/society.html>[14/01/2011].
The White Australia policy was specifically aimed to exclude people from Asia, Africa and the Pacific and was established in 1901 by the Immigration Restriction Act. See Margaret Allen, ‘Shadow Letters and the ‘Karnana’ Letter: Indians Negotiate the White Australia Policy 1901–21’, Life Writing, 8.2 (2011), pp.187–202. The White Australia Policy was officially abolished in 1973, but following the second world war, the definition of ‘white’ had been expanded to include Eastern Europeans and Greece and Italy. The seventies saw increased migration from Asian countries, temporarily causing panic among Eurocentric Australians and giving rise to such slogans as ‘Asian Invasion’. Today, anxiety over migration is aimed at asylum seekers, particularly the small number of people who attempt to arrive in Australia by boat and seek refugee status. Indigenous Australians weren't granted Australian citizenship until the passing of a referendum on the 27th of May, 1967. Their struggle for recognition, rights, and voice continues today.
3 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p.30.
4 Hafid Gafaïti, ‘The Monotheism of the Other’, in Algeria in Others' Languages, ed. Anne-Emmanuelle Berger (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp.19–43. Gafaïti puts the figure for illiteracy at more than 80% (p.23). Germaine Tillion, in 1954, gives levels of illiteracy in Algeria in 1954 at 94% for men and 98% for women (p.58). See Germaine Tillion, Algeria: The Realities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958).
5 In‘The Monotheism of the Other’ Hafid Gafaïti discusses this at greater length, as well as reminding his readers that Arabic is a language of culture, technology, philosophy and science, no less than French.
6 David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870 − 1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Prochaska discusses the various techniques employed by the French to make Algeria ‘French’, with particular reference to the city of Annaba, or Bône. He notes the preference to re-name streets with French military figures, rather than prominent civilians.
7
Le Monument, or Hubel, or 
, Maqam E'chahid, or Mémorial du Martyr. Built during the rule of Benjadid Chadli (1979–1992), Le Monument, came to be known colloquially as the ‘hubel’, or idol, because of its expense at a time when water and food rationing had been put in place and unemployment was skyrocketing. The concrete structure – loosely resembling three tapering palm fronds that come together at the apex – has bronze statues of martyrs to the struggle for Algerian independence at the base of each ‘frond’.
8 Farida Abu-Haidar, ‘Arabisation in Algeria’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 3:3 (2000), pp.151–63. Abu-Haidar discusses in detail the laws relating to Arabization passed by successive presidents from Ben Bella to Boutiflika. Haidar details the various articles of the Arabization law passed on the 16 January 1991, for example: all educational and administrative establishments must use only Arabic, all court cases to be heard in Arabic, importing keyboards, computers, typewriters etc., not fitted with the Arabic alphabet forbidden (pp.157–8). Observing imports of technological goods in Algeria today leads one to the conclusion that the passing of laws does not mean that they come into effect.
9 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, pp.23–4. For Derrida, the master's need to make language appear as their natural possession is caused by the fact that it isn't possible to ever possess a language naturally or exclusively. Derrida writes that it is only through using such apparati as schools, army and rhetoric that it becomes possible to create conditions that allow language to appear the natural possession of the master, and this is the first trick.
10 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, p.24.
11 The period during the rule of the HCS (High Security Council), when General Liamine Zéroual was president (1994–9), is the notable exception to the FLN lineage of Algerian leaders since independence.
12 Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence (New York: Routledge, 1994), p.150.
13 Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.18–20.
14 Fanny Colonna, ‘The Phantom of Dispossession’ in Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments, ed. J. E Goodman and P. A. Silverstein (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), pp.63–93; p.88.
15 Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence, p.153.
16 Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence. Lazreg relates a speech given on International Women's Day 1966 by Huoari Boumedienne (Algerian president 1965–78) where Boumedienne told his largely female audience that city women should count their blessings compared to their rural sisters. Women who made for the exit in response were ‘sent back to their seats by armed guards’, pp.150–1.
17 Algeria has been gripped by a brutal civil war since the democratic process initiated by Benjadid Chadli in 1992 was cut off by the military when it became evident that FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) was going to win the final round of up-coming elections. In the conflict that followed, tens of thousands of people have died at both the hands of insurgents and the army.
18 Jacques Derrida, ‘Taking a Stand for Algeria’, College Literature, 30.1 (2003), pp.115–123. Derrida describes the Algerian people who do not feel represented by the extremes of violence and discourse employed by both the state and the insurgents as the ‘third estate’. Derrida notably insists on taking a stand for the men and women of Algeria unable to speak because of the violence of the civil war, which Derrida terms a ‘virile’ war because of its politics of exclusion with regards to women. See, in particular, pp.120–1.
19 Ten years ago, my in-laws pirated French television through their satellite dish. Changes to French broadcasting practices have meant that they can no longer pirate French TV and instead watch Arabic programs from countries such as Saudi Arabia. I can't help but wonder if television will succeed where the Arabization program failed.
20 Benjamin Stora gives the figure precisely at 46.7%. See Benjamin Stora, Algeria, 1830–2000 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp.165–7.
21 Djamila Saadi-Mokrane, ‘The Algerian Linguicide’, in Algeria in Others' Languages, ed. Anne-Emmanuelle Berger (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), p.46.
22 Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, p.13. ‘The inhabitants of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land appear to stand at the lowest level of culture which man has yet reached anywhere on earth.’
23 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, p.65.
24 Abdulla Al-Dabbagh in his essay ‘Orientalism and Literary Translation’, uses the degree to which the English language has been shaped by the Bible, an ‘oriental text’ translated ad infinitum until it is considered an ‘English’ book, to conclude on the obstructive uselessness of concepts such as ‘remote languages’ and ‘radically alien cultures’. Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism and Universalism (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), pp.36–7.
25 Bill Ahcroft, Caliban's Voice (Routledge: Abingdon, 2009), p.3.
26 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, p.34.
27 Throughout Monolingualism of the Other, Derrida discusses the terror and the promise contained within language. See, in particular, pp.22–3; 26–7. He concludes with: ‘I finally know how not to have to distinguish any longer between promise and terror.’ (p.73)