At the second level, the author testifies to aspects of his acculturation as an Algerian Jew with respect to language acquisition, schooling, citizenship, and the dynamics of cultural-political exclusion and inclusion. At the third level, the book is comparative, drawing on statements from a wide range of figures, from the Moroccan Abdelkebir Khatibi to Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel Levinas.

Since one of the book’s central themes is the question of linguistic and cultural identity, its argument touches on several issues relevant to the current debates on multiculturalism. These issues include the implementation of colonialism in the schools, the tacit or explicit censorship that excludes other (indigenous) languages from serious critical consideration, the investment in an ideal of linguistic purity, and the problematics of translation. The author also reveals the complex interplay of psychological factors that invests the subject of identity with the desire to recover a “lost” language of origin and with the ambition to master the language of the colonizer.