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Abstract
This analysis applies theories of recognition explicated by Frantz Fanon, Nancy Fraser, and Pierre Bourdieu towards the semiotic analysis of Le Joli Mai (1963), The Battle of Algiers (1966), and La Haine (1995). This article argues that embodied affective histories (constituting the habitus) seek to be validated and recognised at the level of the individual, the collective group identity, and the nation-state. The films analysed constitute attempts at recognition within the global Bourdieusian field of cinema through means of semiotic communication. In doing so, this project hopes to analyse film from a social action perspective, focusing on the effects of the film with audience interaction in mind, and how toexplain the role audiences and publics have within the conceptualisation and execution of semiotic communication within the context of a postcolonial film.
Acknowledgement
I want to thank Dr Rajeshwari Vallury for her guidance and mentorship throughout my research and writing process, and her willingness to work with a scholar with no previous research experience. Dr Milton Machuca-Gálvez for his insightful discussions and feedback to my work − his special interest and expertise in ethnographic film made this project possible. In addition, I would like to thank The Ronald E McNair fellowship for providing funding that allowed me to conduct the analysis for this article. Finally, I would like to thank my friends Kate Thuma and Rudolpho Herrera for their unwavering support and encouragement, their friendship and growth as people have served as a constant source of motivation.
Notes
1 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996
2 Sol Worth and Larry P Gross, Studying Visual Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1981
3 Rethinking Recognition, ‘Nancy Fraser, Rethinking Recognition, NLR 3, May/June 2000’, New Left Review, June 2000, https://newleftreview.org/issues/II3/articles/nancy-fraser-rethinking-recognition
4 Gerdi Quist, ‘Being Intercultural through Texts: Dialogism and Addressivity’, Ubiquity Press, 2021, https://doi.org/https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Education_and_Professional_Development/Reading_With_My_Eyes_Open%3A_Embracing_the_Critical_and_the_Personal_in_Language_Pedagogy_(Quist)/03%3A_Being_Intercultural_Through_Texts-_The_Student_as_Text_Ethnographer/3%3A_Texts/2%3A_Being_Intercultural_Through_Texts%3A_Dialogism_and_Addressivity
5 Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein, Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and the American Presidency, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012
6 Steven Threadgold, Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities, Bristol University Press, Bristol, 2020
7 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, Polity Press, Cambridge, quoted in Steven Threadgold, Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities, Bristol University Press, Bristol, 2020, p 36
8 Francis Fukuyama, Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition, Profile Books, London, 2019
9 Judtih Butler, ‘Preformativity’s Social Magic’, in Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, Richard Shusterman, ed, pp 113–128. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford and Malden, Massachusetts, 1999
10 Cynthia Marker, ‘Self-Censorship and Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai‘, French Cultural Studies 12, no 34, February 2001, pp 023−41, https://doi.org/10.1177/095715580101203402
11 Morson, G S/Addressivity: Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Elsevier Ltd, 2006, pp 55−58
12 Lempert and Silverstein, Creatures of Politics, op cit
13 Nathalie Mary, ‘Le Joli Mai Ou Les Prémices d'Une Révolution', Vertigo 2, no 43, 2013
14 The famous tirade of the trouser merchant on rue des Saussaies – ‘if forty million French people are selfish, all in all, that makes a policy' – reveals what this man, a possible admirer of Pierre Poujade, thinks of public affairs: a denial of sharing, he who is only happy when his coffers are full. Authors translation; ‘Mary, Nathalie, ‘Le Joli Mai Ou Les Prémices d'Une Révolution', Vertigo 2, no 43, 2013.
15 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, second edition, Routledge, Hove, East Sussex, quoted in Megan Watkins, ‘Desiring Recognition, Accumulating Affect‘, in The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2010, pp 269−289
16 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, Penguin Books, London, 2017
17 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power‘, Sociological Theory 7, no 1, 1989, pp 14–25, https://doi.org/10.2307/202060
18 Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, Harvard University Press, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007
19 Francis Fukuyama. Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition, Profile Books, London, 2019
20 Charles S Peirce, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur Burks, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1: Principles of Philosophy, Thoemmes, Bristol, 1998
21 Angelique Chrisafis, ‘France Admits Systematic Torture during Algeria War for First Time‘, The Guardian, 13September 2018, World News section, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/france-state-responsible-for-1957-death-ofdissident-maurice-audin-in-algeria-says-macron
22 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Kwela Books, Cape Town, 1961
23 Jacques Rivette, ‘De L’abjection‘, Cahiers Du Cinéma 120, 1961
24 John Oller, and Anne Wiltshire, The Language of Emotions Conceptualization, Expression, and Theoretical Foundation, Susanne Niemeier and DirvenRené, eds, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1997
25 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2003
26 Steven Threadgold, Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities, Bristol University Press, Bristol, 2020
27 Libby Miller, The Remarkable Power of Language in The Battle of Algiers’, Third Text 173, vol 35, issue 6, November 2021, pp 751−763, https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.2016331
28 Guy Austin, Algerian National Cinema, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016
29 Noëlle Giguère, ‘Characterizing the City: Space and Identity in the Battle of Algiers’, Equinoxes, no 5, 2005
30 Sohail Daulatzai, Fifty Years of ‘The Battle of Algiers: Past as Prologue, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 2016
31 Ibid
32 Lois McNay, ‘Suffering, Silence and Social Weightlessness: Honneth and Bourdieu on Embodiment and Power‘, in Stella Gonzalez-Arnal, Gill Jagger, and Kathleen Lennon, eds, Embodied Selves, pp230–248. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012
33 John L Jackson, Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013
34 Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis, 2009
35 Loïc J D Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2010
36 Ibid
37 Ibid
38 Ginette Vincendeau, ‘La Haine and After: Arts, Politics, and the Banlieue‘, The Criterion Collection, 9 May 2012, https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/642-la-haine-and-after-arts-politics-and-the-banlieue
39 John L Jackson, Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness: The New Reality of Race in America, Basic Civitas Books, New York, 2010