The French Cultural Colonization of the Algerian Mind: Writing ″The Self‶ in Mouloud Feraoun’s Le Fils du pauvre (1954), and Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia (1985)

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of French education as a tool of cultural conquest in Algeria. The French colonial educational system is marked by hasty experiments that gave rise to some irreconcilable contradictions. Schools served, simultaneously, as sites of acculturation and alienation. This research explores the policies, the institutional practices, and the ideological values that were enforced by French policy makers. The study focuses particularly on the effects of the exportation of the Jules Ferry laws from the metropolis to the Algerian colony. The comparative study of Mouloud Feraoun’s Le Fils du pauvre, and Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia aims at demonstrating the ways in which the authors subversively represent their experience within the French colonial educational system. The thesis also seeks to outline the processes by which both authors internalized, resisted, and ultimately navigated the imposed linguistic and cultural frameworks.