Paul A. Silverstein. in : Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-253-34451-9.

Reviewed by Jennifer Sessions

Published on H-Africa (December, 2006)

If, in 1988, historian Gérard Noiriel could been constructed, contested, and experienced open his magisterial study of immigration in mod‐ from the French conquest of Algeria in the mid- ern France with the observation that immigration nineteenth century to the present. Whereas histo‐ was a "non-lieu de mémoire" (non-site of memo‐ rians of postcolonial immigration in France have ry) in French history, the same can no longer be primarily focused on cultural racism and exclu‐ said today.[1] With the growth of the xenophobic sionary citizenship policies, the anthropologist Sil‐ far-right Front National party and the rise of im‐ verstein is interested in immigration not only as migration as a political issue in France over the an artifact of French colonialism, but also as a last two decades, immigration, especially from the window onto broader social-scientifc questions former French colonial empire, has captured the about the relationship between the local and the attention of scholars across the human and social global in the postcolonial era. In answering these sciences. The central theme of much of this schol‐ questions, he seeks to intervene in a series of an‐ arship has been the tension between the secular thropological debates enumerated in the intro‐ universalism of French republican ideology and duction: coloniality and postcoloniality, nation the ethno-religious particularity of colonial and and infranation, transnational social formations, postcolonial immigrants, especially from and urban anthropology. former French colonies in the Maghreb.[2] Paul "Transpolitics" is the term that Silverstein Silverstein's new study of Algerian immigrant uses to describe the ways in which questions of subjectivities in contemporary France shares this postcolonial immigration simultaneously cross preoccupation. national boundaries and transcend formal state Drawing on a wide range of printed materials and political institutions. Hence the title, Algeria and ethnographic feldwork carried out in and in France, which encapsulates the book's argu‐ around in the mid-1990s, Silverstein sets out ment that Algerian immigrants' subjectivities are to explore how Franco-Algerian identities have forged through "the processes of collusion and H-Net Reviews contention, of appropriation and transformation, ethnicity in the nineteenth century, and the orga‐ that link Algeria and France--Algerians and Fran‐ nization of domestic and urban space in Algeria co-Algerians" across the Mediterranean (p. 7). This and Paris from the 1850s to the present. Although thesis departs in subtle but important ways from much of this ground is well explored, and despite earlier sociological work on the "divided lives" of a certain collapsing of temporal distinctions be‐ immigrants in France, and from the concepts of tween colonial and postcolonial discourses, these "hybridity," "creolization," and "métissage" that chapters highlight important continuities and par‐ have gained currency in postcolonial studies over allels between the French state's management of the last decade.[3] Unlike postcolonial theorists racial diference in the Algerian colony and its and scholars, who see the creative mixing of cul‐ treatment of subnational minorities at home.[6] tures as evidence of resistance by the colonized It is in the second half of the book that the au‐ and postcolonial non-West against hegemonic thor begins to draw more heavily on the voices of Western culture, Silverstein defnes "transpolitics" his Franco-Algerian informants in order to ex‐ instead as a tactical tacking back and forth be‐ plore the cultural practices implied in the concept tween France and Algeria on the part of Franco- of transpolitics. Chapter 4's consideration of Algerians. He sees the relationship between the sports as a form of religious bodily practice yields French nation and Algerian immigrants, between a fascinating discussion of the convergence of France and Algeria, not as an example of cultural global capitalism, radical Islam, and gender in hybridization, but as a dialectical relationship personal and public attitudes towards the mul‐ through which the two countries form a single tiracial national football team captained by the space in which Franco-Algerians construct their Franco-Algerian star, Zinédine Zidane, in the social, cultural and political identities. 1990s. Those who followed news reports of the ri‐ The author, like many of the postcolonial oting in French suburban housing projects in No‐ globalization theorists he cites, may overestimate vember 2005 and of the Zidane-led team's fairy‐ the uniqueness of the postcolonial moment's chal‐ tale dance into the fnal game of the 2006 World lenges to the nation-state, and his use of "transpol‐ Cup tournament will be struck by the ongoing itics" sometimes risks reifying the very colonial pertinence of the connections Silverstein draws binaries he claims to challenge.[4] But in grafting here. globalization theory's interest in the "transnation‐ Chapters 5 and 6 trace important shifts be‐ al" with cultural studies' search for the political in tween the cultural practices and political attitudes forms like rap music, grafti, and sports, "trans‐ of second- and third-generation Franco-Algerians. politics" ofers a dynamic, alternative to the vision Drawing on interviews with Berber cultural ac‐ of global "fows" of people, ideas, and goods cele‐ tivists and examples of Franco-Algerian literature, brated by postcolonial critics like Arjun Appadu‐ Silverstein directs well-deserved attention to the rai.[5] diferences between the second, generation's Eschewing the ethnographer's community struggles with cultural assimilation and their study format, Silverstein has organized his book younger brothers' turn away from the national into thematic chapters which highlight citizen‐ and towards the ultra-local ("crews" based in indi‐ ship, ethnicity, locality, religion, and generation as vidual housing projects) and the transnational the key categories of Franco-Algerian identity. The (Berber and Islamic social movements). The fnal frst three chapters survey citizenship law in chapter sketches intriguing links between Franco- France since the French Revolution, colonial Algerian ethnic and religious movements, and ef‐ ethnographers' invention of "Berber" or "Kabyle" forts by other cultural minorities in France to gain

2 H-Net Reviews from the European Union recognition that is de‐ tendency to confate the Berber cultural associa‐ nied them by the French state. tions he studied with Algerian immigrants as a Throughout, the author raises intriguing whole, and to discuss the Franco-Algerian experi‐ questions about the ways that Franco-Algerians ence in isolation from that of other immigrant relate to both France and Algeria. The embrace of groups, whether from diferent former French Franco-Algeria football players in youth culture colonies or (as is increasingly the case) from Cen‐ and the appropriation of supranational institu‐ tral and Eastern Europe. Even so, with the recent tions by subnational groups explored in the last opening of Algeria to foreign researchers, Silver‐ chapter are both fascinating examples of the sorts stein's work raises critical new questions for of challenges to the nation-state that the book scholars not just of colonial France, but of the seeks to highlight. The book's focus on big themes, Maghreb as well. For a feld that has tended to however, often leaves the reader wishing for highlight migration primarily as a tactical re‐ more attention to the author's empirical data. The sponse to the dislocations of French colonial rule, kind of close reading of lyrics and performances this is an important call that diaspora should be‐ that made Silverstein's earlier work on French come as important a theme in North African his‐ rap so compelling, for example, is largely missing tory as it has been in that of sub-Saharan Africa. here.[7] In the frst half of the book, the emphasis [8] on interpretation may leave readers unfamiliar Notes with the histories of France and Algeria in the [1]. Le Creuset français: histoire de dark about basic elements of the historical narra‐ l'immigration XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Seuil, 1988), tive. Similarly, brief glimpses in the last chapter of 14. the alliances forged by Berber cultural associa‐ [2]. Maxim Silverman, Deconstructing the Na‐ tions with Catalan, Breton, and Occitan groups tion: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in only hint at a rich body of research that an old- Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992); Alec fashioned community study might have more ef‐ Hargreaves, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity in fectively exploited. Contemporary France (London: Routledge, 1995); The book's conclusion, that eforts by the David Beriss, Black Skins, French Voices: Carib‐ French state to eface Algerians' ethnic, racial and bean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France religious diferences ultimately reinforce them, (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 2004); Gary that "the ongoing process of French national con‐ Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negri‐ struction is predicated as much on the production tude and Colonial Humanism between the Two as on the erasure of infranational diferences" (p. World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 10), is indicative of its ultimately Franco-centric 2005). focus. This is, perhaps, not surprising--Algeria in [3]. Albert Nicollet, Femmes d'Afrique noire en France is, after all, one of the frst entries in Indi‐ France: la vie partagée (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1992); ana University Press's new "New Anthropologies Homi Babha, The Location of Culture (London of Europe" series--but it is disappointing in light of and New York: Routledge, 1994); Ulf Hannerz, Cul‐ the promise held out by the framing concept of tural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organiza‐ "transpolitics." Algeria itself fgures in Silver‐ tion of Meaning (New York: Columbia University stein's analysis primarily as an absence, a refer‐ Press, 1992); Chris Bongie, Islands and Exiles: The ent whose meaning is defned from within French Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature (Stan‐ politics and society. Algeria's place in immigrant ford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Robert subjectivities is further obscured by the author's

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Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Cul‐ lim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encoun‐ ture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995). ters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904) (Berkeley: [4]. Frederick Cooper is only the most recent University of California Press, 1994); Kamel Kateb historian to point out not only that reports of the and Benjamin Stora, Européens, 'indigènes' et juifs nation-state's demise have been vastly exaggerat‐ en Algérie (1830-1962) (Paris: Presses Universi‐ ed, but that its hegemonic power, even at the taires de France, 2001). height of Europe's nationalist, imperialist nine‐ teenth-century, has similarly been overestimated. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, His‐ tory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), esp. chapters 4-5. [5]. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Min‐ nesota Press, 1996). [6]. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nation‐ hood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995); Zeynep Celik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Under French Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Neil MacMaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900-62 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), esp. chapter 5; Tyler Stovall, "From Red Belt to Black Belt: Race, Class, and Ur‐ ban Marginality in Twentieth-Century Paris," in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, ed. Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). [7]. "'Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire?': French Gangsta Rap and the Critique of State Cap‐ italism," in Alain-Philippe Durand, Black, blanc, beur: Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture in the Fran‐ cophone World (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 45-67. [8]. On the increasing accessibility of Algeria to researchers, see Benjamin Brower, review of Nabila Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine: monu‐ ments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830-1930), H-France Review 6, no. 67 (June 2006), http://www.h-france.net/vol6reviews/brow‐ er.html; Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Mus‐

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Citation: Jennifer Sessions. Review of Silverstein, Paul A. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. December, 2006.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12603

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