Algeria as Postcolony? Rethinking the Colonial Legacy of Post-Structuralism

While there is little doubt that Algeria was of enormous importance to the theoretical output that is often recognized as French, here I would like to ask: what is at stake in re-inscribing these French intellectuals as postcolonial? In what ways did the particularities of Algerian history impact French philosophy? Indeed, if the term postcolonial is meant to describe those who were influenced by events in Algeria, then an entire generation of French thinkers might be considered postcolonial to varying degrees. Surely Derrida’s oeuvre was influenced by his experiences in Algeria, but does this make him postcolonial in the same way as Jean-Paul Sartre or Pierre Bourideu, who have also become important figures in postcolonial theory?

Producing Eurafrica: Development, Agriculture and Race in Algeria, 1958-1965

The Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) was one of the most violent wars of decolonization in the twentieth century. Yet along with military repression, the technocratic spirit of the Fifth Republic also played a key role in France's struggle against the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). In 1958 French President Charles de Gaulle announced a comprehensive program to develop Algeria socially and economically, known as the Constantine Plan. This dissertation argues that these development initiatives were a means of producing a Eurafrican space. Given the pressures of European integration and anti-colonial nationalism, planners sought to delineate a supranational space of interaction that would ensure French influence. Drawing on archival material from Algeria, France, and Italy, this thesis also claims that the postwar reconfiguration of empire sought to transform Homo Islamicus into Homo Econmicus. As biological racism was increasingly untenable in the postwar period, planners viewed Islam to be culturally resistant to the modernizing flows of a market economy, even if it was potentially amenable to reform. French economists conceived of the Constantine Plan as a self-conscious break with older traditions of economic development. At the same time, planners used the discipline of territorial planning (aménagement du territoire) in order to recognize the specificity of the "Algerian personality" while inscribing this difference in a politically centralized entity. The question of spatial scale was also addressed in studies on the Saharan Desert and Mediterranean Sea, consistent with the objectives of the Constantine Plan. While the promise of oil drew planners to the Sahara, the modernization of agriculture was also an ideological touchstone of development. The proposed creation of a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provided an important impetus for the standardization of crops such as olive oil and wine, which could then be exported on the European common market. After 1962 the Constantine Plan influenced negotiations between Algeria and the European Economic Community, the policy of Franco-Algerian Cooperation, and the "specifically Algerian socialism" of Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella. Algerian planners were both trying to develop a national economy and reconfigure its relationship to France, Europe, and the rest of the world. Focusing on the Algerian case, this dissertation argues that planning was fundamental to the national self-conceptions and economic thinking that came to define the postcolonial era

“Incommensurate Ontologies”? Anti-Black Racism and the Question of Islam in French Algeria

In recent years, scholars and activists in France and the United States have questioned whether discrimination against Muslims constitutes a form of racism. In France, some on the left have claimed that religion is a category of belief and therefore should remain separate from discrimination based on skin color or other physical characteristics. In the United States, Afropessimist approaches insist on the specificity of anti-Black racism, rooted in the historical difference between the native and slave. This article, by contrast, argues that race and religion should be studied relationally and highlights how being Muslim exceeded the frame of personal conviction in colonial Algeria, where religious identity was the basis of a political and economic project that were constructed in their wake. The works of Frantz Fanon are particularly instructive in this regard, as he insisted on viewing Blackness as fundamentally relational and also drew on his analysis of anti-Black racism in mainland France to understand the dynamics of settler colonialism in Algeria. The porous line between religious and racial categories also sheds light on discussions of sectarianism in the Middle East more broadly, as colonial regimes irrevocably shaped the contours of the nation-state that were constructed in their wake. Postcolonial sectarianism inherited the intimate relationship between race and religion constructed by empire

Hannoum Abdelmajid, Violent Modernity. France in Algeria, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2010, 257 p.

Parler de la violence en Algérie est une gageure, tant le sujet a pu être contaminé par les interprétations culturalistes ou par les prises de positions partisanes liées à la guerre civile. Reconnaissons tout d'abord que l’ouvrage d’Abdelmajid Hannoum aborde cette problématique en posant une question importante : comment expliquer la violence de la guerre civile algérienne en tenant compte des expériences et traumatismes résultant de l’époque coloniale ? Cependant, si l'entreprise ne manque n..