Albert Memmi (1920–2020) was a French-language Tunisian novelist and essayist of Tunisian-Jewish origins. He is noted for his numerous sociological studies on colonialism and human oppression.
Born of Berber descent in Tunis, Tunisia, Memmi studied philosophy at the University of Algiers and Sorbonne. He found himself at the intersections of different cultural mores (he was a Jew among Muslims, an Arab among Europeans, and an impoverished person among the bourgeoisie) and based his work on the difficulty of finding a balance between the East and the West. This tension was at the center of Memmi’s autobiographical first novel, La Statue de sel (1953; “The Pillar of Salt.”)
Memmi’s next books included Agar (1955,) which deals with the problem of mixed marriage, Le Scorpion (1969,) a well-thought-out tale of psychological self-analysis, and Le Désert (1977,) in which violence and inequality are longstanding responses to the pain and uncertainty of the human condition.
Memmi’s most crucial sociological work was Portrait du colonisé (1957; “Portrait of the Colonized,”) examining the elements of colonizers and the colonized. Memmi also wrote a two-part Portrait d’un Juif (1962, 1966; “Portrait of a Jew”) and L’Homme dominé (1968; “Dominated Man,”) a collection of essays examining the situations of women, blacks, and other minority groups.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Albert Memmi
Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim.
—Albert Memmi
Topics: Racism
There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.
—Albert Memmi
Topics: Racism
Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.
—Albert Memmi
Topics: Racism
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