Identifying Identity: Xavier Le Clerc’s A Man with No Title

Abstract

“We were no longer living in France or Algeria,” writes Xavier Le Clerc in his 2024 memoir A Man with No Title, “[v]iolence was the only country we knew.” Caught in the quagmire of history and memory, Le Clerc traces the remnants of his father's life, originally from Algeria and later working in France, while grappling with the complexities of identity politics. Drawing inspiration from Albert Camus’ 1939 journalistic writings on Kabylia, Le Clerc parallels his father's experience with the conditions Camus once described, illuminating the silent suffering of men like his father. Throughout the memoir, Le Clerc sheds light on the struggles of Algerian workers who migrated to France and played a pivotal role in its post-World War II reconstruction. In doing so, he exposes the hypocrisy of ‘enlightened’ France and its systemic neglect, racism, and exploitation of voiceless Algerian labourers. Through the lens of his father's life, Le Clerc reflects on his own identity as a French-born man of Algerian descent, and as someone navigating the politics of sexual identity. This paper aims to examine French-Algerian relations through the perspective of a son seeking to uncover and reclaim his father's silenced legacy in a nation that historically denied them legal and cultural recognition. It will read Le Clerc’s memoir as a vital text that reclaims erased Algerian histories and explores the intersections of colonial legacy, national belonging, and queer identity.