____________________________________________________________________ Talks & Participants Conference The Algerian War of Independence: Global and Local Histories, 1954-62, and Beyond 10-12 May 2017 Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College & Trinity College, University of Oxford Convenors: Andrea Brazzoduro (Trinity College, Oxford) James McDougall (Trinity College, Oxford Natalya Vince (Portsmouth & Algiers 2) OxfordAlgeriaConference2017.wordpress.com ____________________________________________________________________ Introduction ————————————–———--——————————————————–- This conference will mark a major shift in the historiography of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Accounts of this war have largely remained confined within, and constrained by, the boundaries of the French and Algerian nation- states and the conflicting narratives of each. Recent work by Anglophone (especially American) scholars has broadened the field by offering international histories of the war, but such work has moved even further away from engaging with the realities of the conflict as it actually unfolded “on the ground” within Al- geria and within the Algerian emigrant community in France. A fuller understand- ing of the war requires a marriage of both global and local scales of analysis, pay- ing attention simultaneously to the global connections and significance of the Al- gerian revolution and France’s Cold War counter-insurgency, on the one hand, and to the complex, often very divisive, local experience of the war for Algerian men, women, and children, on the other. Inseparable from such rewriting is critical at- tention to the construction and voicing of individual, familial, and local memories and memorialisations (and the concomitant forgetting, or silences) of the war, and its key role in social memory in Algeria and France since 1962. [ALN troops on the Tunisian border (M. Kouaci); Front page of Jeune Afrique, 16-22 July 1962 (Middle East Centre library, Oxford); women and child near a regroupement centre, probably ca. 1959 (National Archives, Algiers)] Talks ————————————–—————————————————————— Panel 1: Un-framing/Re-framing the Algerian War of Independence and its aftermaths, in Algeria and in France Chair: James McDougall (Trinity, Oxford) Andrea Brazzoduro (Trinity, Oxford) Is a global microhistory approach of any use in Algerian War studies? This paper deals with a paradox: what does a global approach to a war in which the fight was for—or against—national independence actually mean—if anything? And what does this have to do with microhistory? Pourquoi faire simple si on peut faire compliqué? (why make it simple if you can make it complicated?), one would like to answer d’emblée—taking up the famous joke by Jacques Revel, which later became a kind of emblem, an anti-reductionist motto of the microhistory itself Focusing on two main features of microstoria (intensive use of sources and a high level of reflexivity), and building on my fieldwork conducting interviews in the Aures, south-east Algeria, I will argue here that the close-up, the micro- approach does not mean merely ‘local’. And it is precisely in this perspective that the engagement of microhistory with global history is productive in order to challenge—and potentially undermine—the ‘historical’ national narratives that work to maintain the Mediterranean as a border, in the frame of an unexhausted ‘memory war’ that is ongoing both between and within Algeria and France. Andrea Brazzoduro (Trinity, Oxford) Une approche de micro-histoire globale peut-elle être d’aucune utilité dans l’étude de la guerre indépendance algérienne? Cette communication traite d'un paradoxe: qu'est-ce qu'une approche globale signifie pour l’étude d'une guerre dans laquelle la lutte était pour – ou contre – l'indépendance nationale, si cela peut signifier quelque chose? Et qu’est-ce que cela aurait à voir avec la microhistoire? Pourquoi faire simple si on peut faire compliqué? on aimerait pouvoir répondre d'emblée – pour reprendre le célèbre bon mot de Jacques Revel qui est devenu une sorte d'emblème, de devise anti- réductionniste de la microhistoire elle-même. En mettant l'accent sur deux caractéristiques principales de la microstoria (l’utilisation intensive des sources et un haut niveau de réflexivité), et en m'appuyant sur mon travail de terrain qui comprend une enquête orale de long cours dans les Aures, dans le sud-est de l'Algérie, j’essaye de montrer que le close- up, l’approche micro ne signifient pas simplement un point de vue “local”. Et c'est précisément en cela que la rencontre entre microhistoire et global history peut être productive, afin de contester et potentiellement ébranler les récits nationaux qui visent à maintenir la Méditerranée comme frontière, dans le cadre d'une inépuisable “guerre des mémoires” qui se poursuit à la fois entre et au sein de l’Algérie et la France. Malika Rahal (CNRS-IHTP, Paris) Writing about 1962. Questions of time, continuity and revolution In this presentation, I would like to present an ongoing research project focusing on 1962 in Algeria, and based on the observation that 1962 functions, in the historian’s experience, as “the end of history”. 1962 in Algeria was a polysemic event, as it as altogether a paroxysmal moment of war, the end of a war and the transition to peace, the birth of a state (or its transition from colonial to independent), a year of internal political crisis, a milestone in the creation of a nation (if not its birth). Despite such divergent descriptions, I choose to consider 1962 a an event in its own right, in order to discuss what, in the event itself, makes it “the end of history”. As an event, 1962 created the divide in time between colonization and independence; as an event, it also held the dual dimension of opening up new possibilities, releasing enthusiasm and creativity, as well as disrupting destinies with tragedies, traumas and pain “happening to people”. Such a variety of meanings, such a wide spectrum of emotions and passions (from violence, to bereavement, to festivities and fervor) as well as the extreme density of events during 1962 are indicative of what is, in fact, a revolution. What I suggest is an anthropological history of 1962, in order to study millenarian hopes, utopias and anxieties by focusing on several objects: events; violence; bodies; space and time. As this project is in its early stages, I would like in this presentation to discuss some of the more pressing methodological questions, in particular, the necessity of thinking 1962 in connexion with its past (with its chronological hinterland), as well as with its future. While one of the objectives is to free oneself from today’s dominant narratives about the “revolution betrayed”, or the “disappointed hopes” of 1962 and return to the meaning(s) of the event at the time, understanding its meaning also involved to put it in a longer term perspective, enabling us to hear echoes of the past in the revolution and to fully measure the importance of what was at stake in 1962. Malika Rahal (CNRS-IHTP, Paris) Écrier à propos de 1962. Questions de temps, continuité et révolution Dans cet exposé, je voudrais présenter un projet de recherche en cours, portant sur 1962 en Algérie, projet fondé sur l’observation que dans notre expérience d’historien.ne.s, 1962 est “la fin de l’histoire”. 1962 est un événement polysémique: c’est tout à la fois un paroxysme de la guerre, la fin d’une guerre et la transition vers la paix, une étape essentielle dans la création d’une nation (sinon la naissance- même de la nation). Malgré ces descriptions divergentes, je recherche ce qui, dans l’événement lui-même, en fait “la fin de l’histoire”. Comme événement, 1962 partage le temps entre colonisation et indépendance. Comme événement également, il ouvre des possibles, libère enthousiasmes et créativité, en même temps qu’il perturbe le destin par ce qui arrive aux acteurs et actrices de tragique, traumatisant, ou douloureux. Cette multiplicité de sens, cette variété d’émotions apparemment antagonistes (de la violence, au deuil, à la ferveur des festivités), ainsi que la densité événementielle de l’année sont des indicateurs de ce que 1962 est, en fait, une révolution. Car si l’un des objectifs est de se défaire du récit aujourd’hui fort en Algérie de “la révolution trahie” ou des “espoirs déçus” pour retrouver le sens de l’événement dans son temps, dans une large mesure, le sens de l’événement ne se comprend que dans une perspective plus longue, qui seule permet d’étudier les échos du passé dans la révolution, mais aussi de mesurer l’ampleur de ce qui se joue en 1962. Natalya Vince (Portsmouth & Algiers 2) When was the post-war, when was the post-colonial? The case of the University of Algiers, 1963 The end of fighting does not mean a return to “normality”, even less so when a war ended 132 years of colonial domination and gave birth to a new, independent nation-state. Yet post-war, post-colonial (in the chronological sense of “after independence”, but also understood more broadly as “decolonial”) Algeria has attracted few fine- grained studies. The violent nature of the seven-and-a-half year long war of liberation, the oft-repeated declarations of successive political leaders that Algeria would not fall into a neo-colonial trap of allowing continued French economic, political, military, social and cultural domination under a new flag, Algeria’s vision of itself as the leader of the Third World – all this suggests that 1962 marked a rupture. Yet we know relatively little about how this rupture functioned on the ground – or indeed when rupture became possible – in country devastated by war and in which the vast majority of the population was illiterate (in 1954, this was 86.3% of adults). Alongside anti-colonial rhetoric, the other key feature of state discourse since independence has been the glorification of the liberation struggle, its martyrs and veterans.