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Abstract
This essay examines the ideological terrain of the Algerian War and takes seriously the question of the nature of the fight; not only the type of anticolonial discourse and mobilization (whether ideological or militant), but also the vision deployed in pursuit of independence, and the means by which it is pursued. In doing so, it explores the idea that how we fight determines the types of futures made possible by anticolonial revolt. I thus not only investigate the types of anticolonial imaginaries that came to compete for legitimacy and possibility during the Algerian War, but also examine the idea that the predicament of the national liberation state was not simply about policies adopted post-independence (whether regarding political or economic development, or social policies). Rather, the predicament came to life during the anticolonial struggle, and acquired poignancy once the task of the struggle – removing the colonizer – was accomplished. In that sense, I seek to explore here both the varied ideological anticolonial terrain and the immense cost exacted by a specific vision of decolonization that came to prevail. What Amilcar Cabral identifies as “the struggle against our own weaknesses” remains a struggle very much unfinished.
Acknowledgements
A different version of this article was presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in Baltimore in February 2017, and at the Millennium Annual Conference at LSE in October 2017. I would like to thank the participants at both events for helpful comments and engagement with the paper. Many thanks also to Naeem Inayatullah, Tim Seidel, and to the anonymous reviewers for reading various drafts of the paper and for their thoughtful feedback.
Notes
1 For analyses that take issue with national independence as the end goal of decolonization, see Scott (Citation2004), Wilder (Citation2015), McDougall (Citation2006a, Citation2006b). For a critique of this literature and an engagement with its implications, see Sajed (Citation2018a).
2 For a more sustained engagement with Chatterjee’s theory of anticolonial nationalism, see Sajed (Citation2017).
3 This brief discussion appears also in Sajed (Citation2018b).
4 See also Crapanzano (Citation2011, 46), though he only mentions two: assimilationist and traditionalist. Malley (Citation1996, 23), in his study of the intersection between Third Worldism and the rise of Algerian nationalism, discerns three ideological orientations in the emergence of the latter: the assimilationists, the traditionalists, and the socialists. The categorization of Algerian nationalism is a disputed territory among scholars of the Algerian War. McDougall (Citation2006a, Citation2006b, Citation2017) discerns two major currents, voluntarist vs. essentialist conceptions of Algerian nationalism (Citation2006a, 15–16). He claims the former refers to the idea of the “nation as will, a dream to be inscribed in reality through human agency” (as embodied by the movements of Algerian workers in France, such as Étoile Nord-Africaine, or the PPA – Parti du Peuple Algérien – whose internal tension led to the formation of the FLN); the second, essentialist conception, refers to “a prior, deep truth requiring revelation”, namely that Algeria was intrinsically a Muslim, Arab nation (as embodied by the Association of Muslim ‘ulamā – AUMA, the French acronym). While I find real merit in this categorization, I also do not find it very compelling, as it attempts to assign the reformist Islamist movement active at the time a purposeful nationalist agenda, an idea which is deeply contested in the literature (see, for example, Djeghloul Citation1985; Malley Citation1996; Horne Citation2006).
5 Crapanzano (Citation2011, 46) calls it a modernizing movement.
6 The massacres of Sétif and Guelma are generally seen as the catalyst for the onset of the anticolonial struggle in Algeria. Ironically, as France was celebrating its victory against Nazi Germany, a large number of Algerian demonstrators gathered in the Algerian town of Sétif chanting anticolonial slogans and asking for an end to the French occupation. The French police fired on the demonstrators while Algerian demonstrators assaulted a number of French colons in retaliation. The counter-retaliations by the French colonial authorities against the Muslim population of Sétif are recorded anywhere between 1,000 (French official figures) to 45, 000 (as reported by Radio Cairo at the time). See also Sajed (Citation2013).
7 For a recent reexamination of the UDMA’s role within the context of Algerian nationalism, see Rahal (Citation2017).
8 See also “PCF et la question coloniale”, Prashad (Citation2007), Bismuth and Taubert (Citation2014), Malley (Citation1996), Stora (Citation1998), Ross (Citation2002), Edwards (Citation2013).
9 Code de l’indigénat was a set of laws put together by the French colonial administration in 1887, which effectively created the category of “natives” as subjects with inferior legal status in the French Empire. The code was in effect until about 1944–1947.
10 The SAS (Sections Administratives Spécialisées), created in 1955 by Governor General of Algeria Jacques Soustelles, aimed to “pacify” the Algerian countryside by promoting social programmes. The rationale behind its creation was that since the FLN was recruiting massively from the countryside, the French government should attempt to engage the latter by placating it with social programmes and helping it “modernize”.
11 For a focus on Soummam as part of a study of the extensive transnational links between the FLN and other anticolonial/liberation movements, see Byrne (Citation2016).
12 For an excellent analysis of the complexities behind the failure of the Nasserist project in post-independence Egypt, see Gerges (Citation2018).
13 For a study of the marginalization, devastation and impoverishment of the Algerian peasants during colonialism, see the classic work of Bourdieu and Sayad (Citation1977).
14 One of the deepest betrayals by the Algerian national liberation state (but also in the case of so many other former colonial spaces) is that of women. This essay chose not to focus on the betrayal of women – I am working on a different article that tackles this issue exclusively. Elsewhere, I have examined the economy of gender and race in anticolonial struggles in the context of the Dutch East Indies (Sajed Citation2015).
15 For an in-depth discussion of this, see Sajed (Citation2018b).
16 I explore this further in Sajed (Citation2018b).
