In preparation for this occasion, I have taken the opportunity to read a number of the addresses by my distinguished predecessors as presidents of MESA. I am aware therefore that it may be a somewhat unusual introductory gesture on my part to open my address with a few secret details about the process whereby I find myself standing in front of you all this evening.

When I was initially contacted about putting my name forward as a candidate for the presidency of MESA, I immediately responded, as I now recollect, “But I’m a literature scholar.” That admittedly feeble attempt was instantly rebuffed by a vigorous assertion of the fact that literature is a significant field within this organization, but would I please not launch into a disquisition on any of the mu‘allaqat, nor even of a novel by Naguib Mahfouz. Now, finding myself at the proverbial cross-roads, I decided to play what I thought would be my trump-card: “But I’ve only been cited on Campus Watch three times!” Yes, we know, came the response; that is pathetic, but you’ve still got some time. Just try a bit harder, can’t you?

This article is a part of an attempt to show how the Iraqi novel depicts the main sectarian and ethnic groups in Iraq. Concentrating on Iraqi novels in Arabic, written mainly by Arab writers, I will examine the attitude of intellectuals to the Kurds as well as the role accorded to Kurds in the narratives of contemporary Iraqi novels.

Benedict Anderson was one of the first scholars to speak about the role of the novel in creating and spreading a national identity. This is done through a creation of an “imagined community” with shared notions of time and space. The Iraqi novel was and still is committed to this idea and most Iraqi (Arab) novelists were partisans of an Iraqi nationalism that strongly supports the integrity of the country within its current borders and envisions a nationalism that contains all of Iraq’s communities.

Alexis de Tocqueville was born an aristocrat, in the very conservative region of Normandy, in France in 1805. He was at the same time an admirer of the French Revolution, although due to his upbringing and family, he was unable to subscribe to all the principles inherent to that revolution. Tocqueville remains admirable on that score, as he lived under the counterrevolution and participated in the government of the new monarchy. His contradictions made him an observing outsider. He studied law and went into politics. He accompanied his friend, Gustave de Beaumont, who was sent by his government to the New Republic of America, to study the U.S. prison system for its eventual application in France. They cosigned the subsequent report.

The history of Algeria’s colonization by France is closely linked to resistance (from 1832 to 1847) led by the Algerian hero Emir Abd al-Qadir (1808–1883), and to the ideology of the French agent Alexis de Tocqueville concerning the means by which France could dominate the country. The colonization of Algeria divided the French political sphere into three approaches: Those who demanded the retreat of French troops, those calling for a limited occupation, and finally those in favour of extending domination and the colonization of the occupied territories. Among the last, let us highlight the chief advocate, Marechal Guizot, and his military accomplices (generals Cavaignac, Pelissier, Saint-Arnaud, Montagnac, and others led by general Bugeaud). Working with them was Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), a fervent defender of colonization at any cost. He was to be their ideologist, a theoretician of colonialism who would legitimize French expansion in Algeria.

As Tocqueville’s writings on empire have become more available in translation, and as both Anglophone and Francophone political theorists have begun to grapple with the transnational aspects of democratic theory, scholars have increasingly puzzled over the apparent dissonance between Tocqueville’s liberal and imperial voices. How can his dedication to human freedom co-exist with his embrace of permanent colonial domination in Algeria? This essay attempts to contextualize this paradox in Tocqueville’s thought without turning historical context into an apologia.