Bring Things Home

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The Colonizer and the Colonized


The colonial system that emerged from the Imperialist expansions of the European powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed, to Europeans, to be a undeniable fact. The status quo could be maintained, and the hegemony of the white industrialized nations would be maintained. Yet by the twentieth century, the system began to crumble; an example of this collapse is presented in Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers. This film represents the final hours of the colonial system, being destroyed by the revolt of the colonized as predicted by Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized. But the end of the colonial system does not mitigate the damage done by the years of European rule. The Algerians, unable to assimilate, turn to revolution and violence which the French are only too willing to return. Thus the vicious cycle of mutual degradation and hate predicted by Memmi continues.

Memmi concludes that there are two options available for a colony: assimilation or rebellion. The former is impossible because of the colonizer will not allow the destruction the abject colonized population, so the situation that all too often occurs, as in Battle of Algiers, is the latter. Yet Pontecorvo presents the unattainable choice between assimilation and rebellion. As the three women are preparing to bomb civilian targets in the heart of European Algiers, they dye their hair, remove their veils, and create as far as possible the illusion of being ``white.'' Memmi claims that ``the first ambition of the colonized is to become equal to that splendid [European] and to resemble him to the point of disappearing in him'' (Memmi 120).

While the terrorists are successful in creating the illusions of being European, they are not assimilated. The French work against them to prevent integration into French culture - the checkpoints consciously remind them of their place, making their usurped identity more of a cr...