Algeria

« Manvotech ! » Chronique d’une historienne en campagne

by Malika Rahal

The legislative elections of 10 May 2012 in Algeria.

Despite participation in the legislative elections officially rating above 40% - an unrealistic figure - the number of... more Despite participation in the legislative elections officially rating above 40% - an unrealistic figure - the number of people who refused to vote is high. They all used the same expression which sounded like a political slogan by the end of the end: "I'm not voting", "Manvotech".

The Other Frontiers Of Arab Nationalism: Ibadis, Berbers, And The Arabist

by Amal Ghazal

From Workers' Self-Management to State Bureaucratic Control: Autogestion in Algeria

by Samuel Southgate

Chapter in Dario Azzellini and Immanuel Ness eds. 2011. Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present. Haymarket Books: Chicago. pp. 228-247

40 YEARS OF MISSION IN ALGERIA

by Duane Alexander Miller

James McDougall, History and the culture of nationalism in Algeria

by Malika Rahal

The Past is Present: Pied-Noir Returns to Algeria

by Amy Hubbell

Nottingham French Studies. Volume 51, Page 66-77 DOI 10.3366/nfs.2012.0007, ISSN 0029-4586, Available Online March 2012

While Algeria has long been a popular subject for travel writers, since its decolonization in 1962, the travelogues... more While Algeria has long been a popular subject for travel writers, since its decolonization in 1962, the travelogues documenting journeys to Algeria have predominantly become returns and reunions with the homeland. Immediately after their exile from Algeria during and after the war for independence, the Pieds-Noirs, or former French citizens of Algeria, began returning to their homeland in their memories, literature, and recently, their films. Early return narratives were almost always filled with nostalgic descriptions of familiar places and sensations in an effort to bridge over the ruptures with the past. By transposing the colonial past onto the present, the travelogues effectively stop time in the homeland. However, more recent returns often demonstrate the instability of the past. Through a study of Marie Cardinal's Au pays de mes racines and Hélène Cixous's Si près, this article investigates how Algerian return narratives have begun to deconstruct themselves, and yet the past is ever present within them.Keywords. Pieds-Noirs, Algeria, Marie Cardinal, Hélène Cixous, Travel, Time

1962 Un Monde // 1962 A World // 1962 عالم

by Malika Rahal

Graebner, Seth. History's Place: Nostalgia and the City in French Algerian Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007

by Amy Hubbell

book review in The French Review 82.4 (March 2009): 836-37.

Coastal boulders as evidence for high-energy waves on the Iranian coast of Makran

by Christophe Morhange

Marine Geology 2011

Coastal boulder deposits attesting to large waves are found along the rocky coast of Makran (Iran) from Chabahar more Coastal boulder deposits attesting to large waves are found along the rocky coast of Makran (Iran) from Chabahar
to Lipar. Boulders are either scattered on the rocky coastal platform or accumulated in imbricated clusters.
The boulders are mostly rectangular and composed of biogenic calcarenite deriving from the present
coastal platform. Significant morphological features observed on the boulders include supratidal karstic
pools, sharp broken edges and fractures. Some boulders contain boreholes and shells of marine bivalves, suggesting
detachment and transportation from the subtidal zone. The dimensions, elevation and distance from
the coastline of 58 representative boulders are documented to estimate their volume, weight and inland displacement.
The boulders, weighing up to 18 t, are found up to 6 m above present mean sea level and up to
40 m from the present shoreline. We applied hydrological models to estimate and compare the wave height
and inundation distance required to transport the boulders inland. Our results demonstrate that no known or
probable storm event on the Makran coast is capable of detaching and transporting the boulders. In contrast,
tsunami wave height of 4 m is enough to detach all the boulders from the rocky coast and transport them inland.
We conclude that a tsunamigenic origin for boulder deposits is most plausible. Our results imply that
the western part of the Makran coast has archived evidence of paleotsunami events, probably generated by
large earthquakes at the Makran subduction zone

“L’Anti-sémitisme et la situation coloniale en Algérie entre les deux guerres: les émeutes anti-Juifs à Constantine, August 1934,” Vingtiéme siècle, no. 108 (October-December, 2010), pp. 3-23.

by Joshua Cole

"Frantz Fanon: Travelling Psychoanalysis and Colonial Algeria." Mosaic 42.3 (2009): 127-40.

by Ziad Bentahar

DÉCOUVERTE D’UN NOUVEAU GISEMENT DE STÉGOCÉPHALES D’UNE CONSERVATION EXCEPTIONNELLE DANS LE TRIAS D’IN AMENAS (BASSIN D’ILLIZI, ALGÉRIE)

by J.Sébastien Steyer

The wounds of Algeria in Pied-Noir autobiography

by Amy Hubbell

Dalhousie French Studies 81 (Winter 2007): 59-68.

L’Algérie récurrente et l’Algérie errante dans l’écriture des Françaises d’Algérie

by Amy Hubbell

in Frictions et devenirs dans les écritures migrantes au féminin. Enracinements et renégociations. Ed. Névine El Nossery and Anna Rocca.
Editions universitaires europeennes (02-12-2011).
ISBN-13: 978-3-8417-8146-8
ISBN-10: 3841781462

book abstract:

Cette collection d’articles retrace les différentes facettes de la mobilité inhérente à... more book abstract:

Cette collection d’articles retrace les différentes facettes de la mobilité inhérente à l’écriture migrante au féminin dans différentes aires géographiques, tels le Maghreb, l’Afrique sub-saharienne, les Caraïbes, le Moyen-Orient, le Québec et la France. Ces articles explorent les frictions et les devenirs qui se dégagent de ces traversées transgressives et problématiques. Organisé autour de trois axes : « Le questionnement identitaire », « La violence de l’exil » et « La mémoire fragmentée », cet ouvrage contribue au questionnement identitaire de la migration, ciblant un lectorat constitué de spécialistes en littérature de la migration, mais aussi de passionnés d’écriture au féminin. Les auteures et artistes étudiées dans ce collectif contribuent à l’émergence d’une certaine altérité littéraire qui prend force d’un privé autobiographique déplacé. Les univers narratifs qu’elles créent font ainsi éclater les contradictions des rhétoriques politiques classiques et démontrent que, même dans les circonstances les plus désavantageuses, la création artistique demeure un acte social décisif de transformation.

An Amputated Elsewhere: Sustaining and Relieving the Phantom Limb of Algeria

by Amy Hubbell

Life Writing 4.2 (2007): 247-262.

Since their departure from Algeria in and around 1962, the former French citizens of Algeria, or Pieds-Noirs, have... more Since their departure from Algeria in and around 1962, the former French citizens of Algeria, or Pieds-Noirs, have been writing about their traumatic separation from their homeland. Many of these authors, including Marie Cardinal and Nobel laureate Albert Camus, write to cultivate memory and communal identity. Their literature is filled with colorful recreations of the physical landscape of Algeria, sustaining their amputated homeland through writing. This continuing connection to the amputated past haunts the Pieds-Noirs like phantom limb pains that plague amputees, and the group uses its literature like a prosthesis to reconnect to what they have lost. This article demonstrates how most of the former French of Algeria perpetuate their phantom limb in their writing to maintain a connection to the past, while others such as Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous have embraced their amputated identities because they were separated while still in Algeria. By accepting this always absent or escapable elsewhere, the two use their writing to lay the ghostly limb to rest.

Dual, Divided, and Doubled Selves: Three Women Writing between France and Algeria

by Amy Hubbell

In This 'self' which is not one : Women's life writing in French. Ed. Natalie Edwards and Christopher Hogarth. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 35-46.

A History of Administrative Divisions of Algeria under French Rule

by Sławomir Dorocki

The article deals with the history of Algeria's administrative divisions in the 19th and 20th century (until 1962).... more The article deals with the history of Algeria's administrative divisions in the 19th and 20th century (until 1962). After the French invasion of 1830, which inaugurated 132 years of colonial rule, the territory of northern Algeria was occupied by French troops and found itself under military administration. In 1834, when Algeria was officially proclaimed French territory, the military and the civil administrations were separated. Even then, however, the colony was ruled by the military governor. The administration was divided between tribal territories and 'arrondissements', which continued with some modification, until the 20th century. The structure of city administration with mayors and city councils was based on the French metropolitan model. In 1833 the first 'Bureaux Arabes' manned by both Europeans and Arabs, were set up to take charge of the indigenous population.In 1845 it was partly demilitarized and granted more autonomy. Algeria was divided into three provinces (Algiers, Oran and Constantine), which comprised three types of territories, civil (where the Europeans formed a majority), military (with indigenous population), and mixed (also run by the military, in areas with a small European population). Later the military territories were reclassified as mixed, and the mixed ones were granted full civil status. In 1848 the three provinces were refashioned into departements, subdivided into arrondissements and communes. In 1870, by special decree, Algeria was joined to France. Administratively, it consisted of three departements incorporating the former civil and military units. In the north the four-tier structure - with 3 departements, 20 arrondissements, 330 autonomous communes and 78 mixed communes - remained virtually unaltered until 1955. In 1958 in a major decentralizing reform, three new departements were created, while the old ones were divided into five territoires each. The arrondissements were reclassified as communes. This division was replaced by a new administrative grid in 1962, when Algeria became independent.

"La valise ou le cercueil": un aller-retour dans la memoire des Pieds-Noirs

by Amy Hubbell

Revue Diasporas: histoire et sociétés 12 (octobre 2008): 199-207.

Looking Back: Deconstructing Postcolonial Blindness in Nostalgérie

by Amy Hubbell

CELAAN 3.1-2 (Fall 2004): 85-95.

Collecting Souvenirs or Hoarding Memory: The Literary Reconstruction of Algeria

by Amy Hubbell

This work in progress, posted here as it was presented at the University of Queensland on 2 September 2011, provides the English version of the paper below from CIEF with elaboration including works by Leila Sebbar and Nicole Guiraud. Please contact me if you are interested in the corresponding PowerPoint presentation.

For the former French citizens of Algeria who left their homeland during and after the Algerian War from 1954-1962,... more For the former French citizens of Algeria who left their homeland during and after the Algerian War from 1954-1962, Algeria lives on as a sacred location of memory. Almost anyone who has lost a “home,” let alone a homeland, experiences a rupture; but for the Pieds-Noirs and other exiles for whom the choice to leave was equivalent to “la valise ou le cercueil” (the suitcase or the coffin), this separation was traumatic. Attempting to appease their painful nostalgia for a place that no longer exists, some exiles find themselves caught up in collecting memorabilia related to what they lost. For others, collecting both souvenirs and memories becomes obsessive. The psychological illness of compulsive hoarding is often related to traumatic ruptures, and it is estimated that worldwide 1 to 2.5% of the population suffer from it. The goal of this presentation is to explore the link between the traumatic separation from homeland and the fixation on “things” that symbolise the lost country such as this phenomenon is expressed in Franco-Algerian exile literature. Through an analysis of literary works by Marie Cardinal and Leïla Sebbar, I hope to demonstrate that instead of protecting place and memory, the act of hoarding threatens to destroy the very thing it attempts to preserve.