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Algeria

Knowledge and Power in Algeria: An Interview with Daho Djerbal on the Twentieth Anniversary of NAQD

0 Jan 31 2012 by Muriam Haleh Davis

[Poster for NAQD. Image via the author.]

It is still very possible to work on Algeria without ever passing through the Contrôle Passeport in Algiers. For a host of reasons—archival, bureaucratic, historical and, perhaps, psychological—Algeria remains on the margins of its own historiography. Arriving in September, I expected to get many questions from scholars who have worked here in the past, pertaining to the current conditions of research, the upcoming legislative elections, and the finally-completed metro (thirty years in the making). Instead, the one question I was most consistently asked by friends and colleagues was: Do you know Daho Djerbal? Unlike the scholars who are hesitant to come (some of them ...

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The Shibboleths within Albert Memmi's Universalism

2 Oct 08 2011 by Dina Jadallah

Albert Memmi, Decolonization and the Decolonized. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. “What? Post-colonialism? Have they left?” - Aborigine activist Bobbi Sykes’ comment at an academic conference on post-colonialism[1] Is there a place for “Muslim” or “Arab” peoples in “Western” “universal” values of equality, freedom, democracy, rights, and so forth? Both categories frequently subsume religious and/or ethnicized (mis)conceptualizations in current Western discourse. Every day in the news, there is at least one item that reveals (again) the hypocritical duality that bifurcates “West” from Other. The duality undergirds debates and ...

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Call for Submissions: Youth, Media and the Politics of Change in North Africa

0 Jun 29 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication Special Issue Call for Papers Youth, Media and the Politics of Change in North Africa: Negotiating Identities, Spaces and Power Guest Editor: Loubna H. Skalli (American University, Washington D.C.) This special issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication solicits theoretical and empirical papers on “Youth, Media and the Politics of Change in North Africa: Negotiating Identities, Spaces and Power.” The purpose of this special issue is to document ways in which the Maghreb countries of North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya) provide vibrant and complex settings for studying the ...

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Algeria's Impact on French Philosophy: Between Poststructuralist Theory and Colonial Practice

0 Jun 06 2011 by Muriam Haleh Davis

[Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida. Image from the University of Chicago Chronicle.]

Pal Ahuluwalia. Out of Africa: Post-Structuralism’s Colonial Roots. New York: Routledge, 2010. Jane Goodman and Paul A. Silverstein (eds). Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Christopher Wise. Derrida, Africa and the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. In the past few years, there appears to have been a falling out between Middle Eastern studies and post-structuralist theory. Edward Said’s Orientalism remains necessary reading for most graduate students, but the surrounding debates in post-colonial and post-structuralist theory have fallen decisively out ...

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Emergencies and Economics: Algeria and the Politics of Memory

1 Mar 01 2011 by Muriam Haleh Davis

[The crest of the UGTA (The General Union of Algerian Workers)]

On February 24th the Algerian government lifted the state of emergency that has been operative in Algeria for almost two decades. Undoubtedly, this was a response to the changing political tides in the Middle East, as well as popular unrest in Algeria itself. While localized riots have been a common occurrence in the country since 2005, the start of 2011 has witnessed a wave of simultaneous protests in Algeria. On January 8th, the regime announced it would temporarily cuts taxes on sugar and cooking oil in an attempt to quell the protests. But that was before the Jasmine Revolution. After watching events in Tunisia, and then Egypt, Algerians were emboldened, taking ...

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The Battle of Algeria

0 Feb 20 2011 by Susan Slyomovics

[Algerian flag. Image from printableworldflags.com]

The departure of Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation on February 11 sparked conjectures about Algeria as the next country in the Arab world to attempt to rid itself of authoritarian leadership. While Egyptians have lived under “state of emergency” laws since Mubarak came to power after Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Algeria’s version, also prohibiting any public demonstrations, was enacted in 1992 after the country's first national multiparty elections and runoff set for January 16, 1992 were suspended. A military coup d’etat deposed then President Chadli Benjedid who had ruled since 1979. By ...

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Al-Tahir Wattar (1936-2010)

0 Aug 16 2010 by Sinan Antoon

Al-Tahir Wattar, one of Algeria’s most influential writers died on the 13th of August, after a two-year battle with colonic cancer. He was a foundational figure in the Arabophone novel in Algeria and widely recognized and celebrated in the Arab world. Some of his ten novels were translated into ten languages. Wattar was born to an Amazigh family in Suq Ahras, in eastern Algeria in 1936. After a traditional education, his father sent him in 1950 to Qasantina (Constantine) to study at the Bin Badis Institite. He later studied at the Zaytuna in Tunisia, but he abandoned his education it to join the National Liberation Front in 1956 in its struggle against French ...

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Contre-révolution en Algérie, enseignements pour l'Egypte

0 Jan 16 2012 by Thomas Serres

Alors que la répression des révolutionnaires égyptiens a pris ces derniers temps une forme de plus en plus ostensible et brutale, il devient urgent de chercher à comprendre ce qui fait la force de la Contre-révolution en cours. Bien sûr, chaque contexte est différent et il est souvent vain de chercher à superposer deux expériences. Pour autant, on trouvera dans les expériences passées quelques enseignements qui ne seront pas inutiles pour mieux comprendre les voies de la Contre-révolution. L’échec du ...

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Algeria and the Arab Spring: A View from the Forest

2 Sep 16 2011 by Muriam Haleh Davis

Algeria has been back in the “Arab Spring” headlines this month, though for more ambiguous reasons than the lifting of the state of emergency in February. Since the fall of Qaddafi, Algeria’s role has been cast as a bastion of the military elite, on the one hand, and a quiet supporter of Qaddafi’s regime, on the other. The suspicion that Algeria may be “Immune to the Arab Spring” is related to the lack of “Tahrir-style” mass protests, its willingness to offer refuge to members of the Qaddafi ...

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Youth, Media and the Art of Protest in North Africa

1 Jun 27 2011 by Loubna Hanna Skalli

“Everyone has his own way of fighting, and my weapon is art!” says Milad Faraway, a 20 year-old Libyan who created the rap group Music Masters with another young friend in 2010. Their song “Youth of the Revolution” urges “Moammar [to] get out” and end the violation of Libyans’ rights. “Qadhafi, open your eyes wide” sings another rap group Revolution Beat: “you will see that the Libyan people just broke through the fear barrier.” In neighboring Tunisia, twenty-one year old Hamada Ben Amor, known as El ...

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French Wildflowers and Algerian Gangsters: Humanism and Violence at the Movies

2 Mar 16 2011 by Muriam Haleh Davis

Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men). Written and directed by Xavier Beauvois. France, 2010. Hors la loi (Outside the Law). Written and directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Algeria/Belgium/France, 2010. Recently, two movies have offered Algeria a starring role at the post-colonial box-office. Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men), which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival and César award for Best Film, is the story of seven Trappist monks who lived in Algeria during the civil-war of the ...

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Algeria's Military Capabilities

2 Feb 27 2011 by Susan Slyomovics

The basic Algerian tripartite configuration of a national gendarmerie, the police, and the armed forces (army, navy, air force) mirrors in many ways its French counterparts. As with the French national Gendarmerie, the Algerian equivalent, made up of 150,000 people, serves as a paramilitary force charged with public safety and policing among the civilian population especially outside urban areas. Additional core tasks include counter-terrorism patrols and searches in the countryside as well as urban ...

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From Cairo to Madison: the New Internationalism and the Re-Mystification of the Middle East

11 Feb 19 2011 by Muriam Haleh Davis

After being glued to Al-Jazeera for what seemed like decades, I returned to semi-normal life and found that there was breaking news in the academic circles as well. In the last three weeks, the popular overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak seems to have brought about the demise of another oppressive foe of the Arabs: Islam. Once fixated on Muslim psychology and Qu’ranic exegisis, commentators now have no choice but to emerge from their essentialist slumber to return to the Clintonian adage (not Hillary, ...

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