Burning the veil

In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps

A large scale hearing loss screen reveals an extensive unexplored genetic landscape for auditory dysfunction

The developmental and physiological complexity of the auditory system is likely reflected in the underlying set of genes involved in auditory function. In humans, over 150 non-syndromic loci have been identified, and there are more than 400 human genetic syndromes with a hearing loss component. Over 100 non-syndromic hearing loss genes have been identified in mouse and human, but we remain ignorant of the full extent of the genetic landscape involved in auditory dysfunction. As part of the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, we undertook a hearing loss screen in a cohort of 3006 mouse knockout strains. In total, we identify 67 candidate hearing loss genes. We detect known hearing loss genes, but the vast majority, 52, of the candidate genes were novel. Our analysis reveals a large and unexplored genetic landscape involved with auditory function

Burning the veil

In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps

Des Révolutionnaires Invisibles:Les femmes Algériennes et l'organisation de la « Section des Femmes » du FLN en France métropolitaine

While historians have studied in some detail the French Federation of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), embedded in a predominantly masculine universe of migrant workers, almost nothing is known about the role of Algerian women who arrived in increasing numbers during the War of Independence. The article, through access to previously unknown internal archives of the FLN Section des femmes and interviews with key participants, investigates the origins and organisation of a clandestine network that spanned the main urban and industrial centres of metropolitan France. The Section campaigned for the recognition of women's equality within the FLN, and of rights to literacy, employment and political participation as integral to the creation of a just post-Independence order that could harness the full potential of the neglected half of the population. However, such an agenda revealed generational differences between young French-educated militants and older married women as to the nature of mancipation, and aroused male opposition due to the deeply entrenched socio-cultural norms of female segregation and codes of honour. Such tensions within the FLN French Federation, the most politically advanced proletarian section of the independence movement, already revealed the contradictions of an emancipation agenda that was to lead to a rapid, conservative marginalisation of women by the newly independent state

The Roots of Insurrection:The Role of the Algerian Village Assembly (Djemâa) in Peasant Resistance, 1863–1962

Interpretations of the origins of the Algerian war of independence have tended to emphasize either discontinuity - the radical dislocation of precolonial social and political structures following the French conquest - or the continuity of a culture of peasant resistance between 1871 and 1954. Little investigation has been carried out into the latter, or how, if at all, socio-political institutions enabled rural society to sustain an unbroken tradition of resistance over nearly a century of unprecedented crisis. Most debate has focused on the role of the tribe, a largely moribund institution, and this has obscured the importance of the village assembly, or djemâa, a micro-level organization that historians have largely neglected. The djemâa, in both its official and covert forms, enabled village elders to regulate the internal affairs of the community, such as land disputes, as well as to present a unified face against external threats. This article shows how emerging nationalist movements starting in the 1920s penetrated isolated rural communities by adapting to the preexisting structure of the djemâa, a tactic that was also followed after 1954 as independence fighters established a guerrilla support base among the mountain peasants. While Pierre Bourdieu and other scholars have emphasized the devastating impacts that economic individualism had on peasant communalism, this study employs the djemâa as a case study of a traditional institution that proved flexible and enduring as rural society confronted settler land appropriations and a savage war of decolonization

La Fédération de France du FLN et l'organisation du 17 octobre 1961

The violent police repression of the Algerian demonstration of 17 October 1961 has given rise to considerable political and historical debate. Through the use of previously unseen police and intelligence reports, as well as a large volume of captured internal FLN documents available in the Archives of the Paris Préfecture de Police, a new insight is provided into the clandestine structure of the FLN fédération de France during 1961 and how and why the demonstration was planned. The article discloses the existence of a previously unknown, centralized Federal structure based in Paris and how this body liaised, via a network of porteurs de valises, with the Federal Committee in Germany. It is argued that the demonstration was organized against the wishes of the Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne, as part of a gambit for pre-independence power. The fédération leadership, disappointed by previous lack of support from the French left, did not seek PCF and wider left participation in the demonstrations : this decision left the Algerian demonstrators more exposed to police repression