How art assuages history: nostalgia in Judeo-Tunisian literature

ABSTRACT

One of the most prevalent themes within the body of postcolonial Judeo-Tunisian literature is that of nostalgia, created by displacement and exile. Nostalgia plays a prominent role in Michel Valensi's L'Empreinte and Claude Kayat's La Synagogue de Sfax, two Judeo-Tunisian novels that examine the effects of the Jewish migration from Tunisia decades after it occurred, calling into question the history surrounding this migration. Nostalgia marks each of these works with regret for a homeland and a way of life lost, as well as for a vanished social and cultural richness that could not exist anywhere else in the world, and that post-independence Tunisia could never reconstruct. Each work presents its nostalgia in a different framework, with Kayat's novel detailing the pain of watching a culture fall apart, while Valensi's characters face yet another diaspora and reminisce about Tunisia. Both works are marked by characters who cling stubbornly to the life they left behind, and whose sentimental ties to Tunisia are without question. From the perspective of Tunisia's cultural and political histories, this pervasive literary nostalgia fulfils a function that history cannot by establishing a space that exists between opposing narratives, Muslim and Jewish, and by transforming this space into one in which each of these narratives can coexist, without contradicting the other. This article explores the space nostalgia creates in each novel, and examines how literature serves to reconcile the two worlds that history separated.

KEYWORDS:

• Tunisia
• Jewish
• Valensi
• Kayat
• migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All translations are my own.

2. Term used to designate Jewish migration to Israel; Aliyah means ‘ascent' (Sebag 1991, 315).

3. Bensimon's use of the term bourgeoisie juive demarcates yet another aspect of marginality within Tunisia's Jewish community. Historic tensions between the two factions in this community –Grana and Touansa – and the difference in the treatment that each received under Muslim governments transformed the Grana or those Jews whose ancestors came from Italy, into a dominant, Europeanised, better-educated Jewish elite who could leave the Hara and live wherever they chose. On the other hand, the Touansa – those Jews whose ancestors were Tunisian – were by and large economically disadvantaged and, for the most part, under-educated, since the Alliance Isréalite schools gave only an elementary-level education. The Touansa lacked economic and social status, decent living conditions, and the means to break the cycle of poverty on a large scale, a possibility that the Alliance schools offered them (Memmi, Juifs et Arabes, 76).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Tennessee Technological University under a Faculty Non-Instructional Assignment.