Negative Effects Of Decolonization

For over a century, Algeria had been under the French colonial rule until its liberation after the advent of the Algerian war in 1952. Led by a coalition of nationalist forces known as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), Algeria finally gained independence after an eight-year long struggle of guerilla warfare and tactics employed against the French Empire. Decolonization is an ongoing phenomenon that cannot be achieved through a single, historical act. The very act of decolonization can be broken down into two concordant dimensions namely: the physical act of freeing a territory from external control of a colonizer and the psychological act of freeing the consciousness of the native from the alienation and dehumanization caused by colonization. While the Algerians may have been physically liberated, they can never be fully free from the psychological horrors and trauma of colonization. Written into history, this guilt and trauma is not only experienced by the colonized Other, but is something that the former colonizer will have to face throughout the nation’s existence.

Using the story of Georges Laurent, Haneke discusses the power of guilt and denial, thereby exploring the complex web of repression and guilt forged by European colonialism and the negative effects it has on the colonized. Caché highlights the tension between the colonizer and colonized, and examine what happens when the colonized Other returns. Haneke does this by encoding the film with a nuanced dialogue about the French and Algerians but ultimately, Caché reaches beyond France to encompass the effects of colonialism on all nations that bear a colonizing past, and how a system of exclusion and repression victimizes both the colonizer and formerly