Algeria Revisited History, Culture and Identity

On 5 July 1962, Algeria became an independent nation, bringing to an end 132 years of French colonial rule. Algeria Revisited provides an opportunity to critically re-examine the colonial period, the iconic war of decolonisation that brought it to an end and the enduring legacies of these years.

Given the apparent centrality of violence in this history, this volume asks how we might re-imagine conflict so as to better understand its forms and functions in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. It considers the constantly shifting balance of power between different groups in Algeria and how these have been used to re-fashion colonial relationships. Turning to the postcolonial period, the book explores the challenges Algerians have faced as they have sought to forge an identity as an independent postcolonial nation and how has this process been represented. The roles played by memory and forgetting are highlighted as part of the ongoing efforts by both Algeria and France to grapple with the complex legacies of their prolonged and tumultuous relationship.

This interdisciplinary volume sheds light on these and other issues, offering new insights into the history, politics, society and culture of modern Algeria and its historical relationship with France.

Rabah Aissaoui is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the author of Immigration and National identity: North African political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France (2009).

Claire Eldridge is Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the author of From Empire to Exile: History and Memory within the Pied-Noir and Harki Communities, 1962-2012 (2016).

Introduction: Revisiting Algeria (Rabah Aissaoui, University of Leicester, UK and Claire Eldridge, University of Southampton, UK)
Part 1: Revisiting Conflict
1. Criminalising Dissent: Policing Banditry in the Constantinois, 1914-1918 (Samuel Kalman, St Francis Xavier University, Canada)
2. Between Two Worlds: Emir Khaled and the Jeunes Algériens at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Rabah Aissaoui, University of Leicester, UK)
3. The Algerian Woman in Conflict in The Battle of Algiers (Sophie Bélot, University of Sheffield, UK)
4. Culture as War by Other Means: Community, Conflict, and Algeria's Cultural Revolution (James McDougall, University of Oxford, UK)
Part 2: Re-imagining Colonial Relationships
5. The Young Algerians and the Question of the Muslim Draft, 1900-1914 (Michelle Mann, Brandeis University, USA)
6. Weapons of Mass Representation: Algerians in the French Parliament, 1958-1962 (Arthur Asseraf, University of Oxford, UK)
7. Making Algerians Eurafricans? Imagining Algeria in French Late-Colonial Projects (Stephen Tyre, University of St Andrews, UK)
Part 3: Postcolonial Identity Construction and Contestation
8. Collective and Individual Identity in Algerian Francophone Literature: Jean Senac's “Poetry on all fronts” (Blandine Valfort, Université de Lyon II, France)
9. Algerian Identity Re-constitution and Colonial Language: a Postcolonial Malaise in Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la Fantasia (Rachida Yassine, Ibn Zohr University, Morocco)
10. “Encounter”, Frustration and Hope in the writings of Maïssa Bey (Samira Farhoud, St Thomas University, Canada)
11. On the Shifting Significance of “Algerian Cinema” as a Category of Analysis (Patricia Caillé, Université de Strasbourg, France)
Part 4: Remembering Algeria
12. Repatriating the Duc d'Orléans: The Entangled Politics of Postcolonial Commemoration (Jennifer Sessions, University of Iowa, USA)
13. Passing the Torch: Memory Activism within the Pied-Noir and Harki Communities Fifty Years after Independence (Claire Eldridge, University of Southampton, UK)
Conclusion: Algerian History in a Comparative, Transnational and Emotional Perspective (Martin Evans, University of Sussex, UK)
Bibliography
Index

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