1. Assignation to a paradoxical condition
The progressive integration of Algeria into France, on the administrative
and juridical level, automatically entails for the colonized, a state of
appertaining to the French whole. However, that condition makes the
colonized appear, as in relief, like a figure of elementary forces, that is to
say, of a collection of dark forces, unintelligible, not having received the
shape that would have made of them a differentiated reality, thereby apt
to be foreseen and mastered.
The qualitative "native" sends us back, first, to the image of those forces.
The essential characteristic of the latter lies in the fact that they are
supposed to be resistant to the mechanism of normalization, and
therefore to the usual control established toward a population willing to
adhere to the institutions.
The introduction of the colonized
