Theater, War, and Memory in Crisis: Vichy, Algeria, the Aftermath

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Theater, War, and Memory in Crisis: Vichy, Algeria, the Aftermath

by John Ireland

University of Michigan Press, 2025

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-0-472-07728-1

Paper: 978-0-472-05728-3

eISBN: 978-0-472-90489-1 (OA)

About the Book

Theater, War, and Memory in Crisis explores how French and Algerian dramatists have engaged with two traumatic events that continue to haunt France: the German occupation and Vichy government from 1940 to 1944 and the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962. John Ireland’s investigation is guided by one central question: can theater take on issues of violence, war trauma, and conflicted memory in a fundamentally different way from archival forms of culture such as memoirs, narrative fiction, and film? Throughout the twentieth century, French cultural anthropologists, classicists, and social scientists repeatedly revisited links between archaic religious ritual, the practice of sacrifice, and Greek tragedy as attempts to understand, regulate, and mitigate the violence of human conflict and war. Ireland argues that contemporary French playwrights dealing with war trauma and contested memory were influenced by aspects of this research that foregrounded the core virtues of oral culture: presence and the present, the “here and now” that also regulate theatrical performance. That connection to the present encouraged dramatists and performance artists to make “live” historiographical contributions to reverberating, unresolved history but also revived perennial therapeutic values of oral culture that evolved in ancient Greece. Theater, War, and Memory in Crisis brings original readings of canonical authors like Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Bernard-Marie Koltès, and Kateb Yacine into dialogue with non-canonical dramatists such as Armand Gatti, Liliane Atlan, and Noureddine Aba.

About the Author

John Ireland teaches French and Francophone Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Reviews

“John Ireland offers us a superb study of the French and Francophone theatrical representation of two major political traumas: the German occupation of France (1940–44) and Algeria’s war for independence (1954–62). Linking oral and written literature, classical and modern tragedy, as well as artistic avant-garde and political ideals, this book is a beautiful, memorable achievement.”— Thomas Pavel, University of Chicago

“Written with equal measures of passion and perspicacity, this book illustrates how, while wilful amnesia might contrive to erase the violence of two particularly shameful periods in French history—the Vichy years, and Algerian War of Independence—for decades playwrights have sought to expose this past on its main stages.”— Clare Finburgh Delijani, Goldsmiths, University of London

“John Ireland highlights how French memory in the 20th century, soiled by collaboration with the Nazis and the colonial war in Algeria, has been inscribed in the theater. Magnificently documented by literary and political history, his study reveals the gradual expression of traumas from Sartre to Kateb and Koltès.”— Francois Noudelmann, New York University

Drawing upon the contributions of anthropology and sociology, Ireland addresses concepts such as memory, whereby people analyze experiences after the actual events, thereby producing more realistic evaluations with the benefit of hindsight.

— Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library Journal

“In a complex and interesting book, John Ireland quite rightly points out the relative lack of academic works on French theatre dealing with the Holocaust and the Vichy years or the Algerian War of Independence . . . Ireland demonstrates that theatre may be uniquely situated to portray and heal war trauma.”

— Judith Samuel, French Studies

"In this wide-ranging study, John Ireland assembles a series of thought-provoking and admirably informed essays that capture resoundingly the contributions and paradoxes of several quite disparate twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and Francophone playwrights. . . . Highly recommended for practitioners and students of political theatre."

— Judith G. Miller, Modern Drama

“Ireland establishes a broad context for a long-overdue awareness of theater's potential in the process of healing. Ireland's detailed analyses of plays by Armand Gatti, Liliane Atlane, and Jean-Claude Grumberg examine strategies for acknowledging lingering wounds inflicted by the Vichy regime's anti-Semitic actions. Summing up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.”

— F. H. Londre, Choice

“…Ireland right guides the reader to an understanding that, especially as globalization and migration continue to change the gaps of mobility between the two countries, memory of French violence in Algeria and against Algerians is not something that can be thought of or understood in the absence of Algerian voices. As such this monograph makes a compelling reading choice for scholars not just of Algerian theater, but for those interested in the implications for oral and written languages on memory work.”

— Erin Twohig, H-France

“In these cogent analyses, Ireland invites his readers to look at the theater that emerged in response to these conflicts in new ways, and this is certainly useful. What breaks new ground, though, is the way he situates these plays and his readings of them within a theoretical framework that invites readers to look beyond theatrical form towards what he sees as the theater's deeply rooted, universal cultural function.”

— Susan McCready, H-France