The AFA is, exceptionally, to report this book and commend the quality and scope of this collective work in which all authors should be thanked and Fanny Colonna and Loïc Le Pape for their welcome initiative.
Raoul WEEXSTEEN
"Based on the local tracks will avoid official histories produced ideologies and unhealthy "
result of a long collaboration between Italian researchers Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan and French, the book, written by Fanny Colonna and Loïc Le Pape, addresses the issue of after- colony in North Africa by circumventing the ideological debate and the current controversy on Western social sciences often accused of perpetuating a new form of domination.
This collective work is almost a first, what are the difficulties you encountered to achieve it? The first
challenge was completing a research project with 25 researchers from 5 different countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy and France) over four years. We also want to free ourselves from the conventional rules of social science literature and propose an original work, which shows as much research as other things that speak of this shared history: photography, novels, etc..
Is it difficult to avoid polemics and ideology while working on post-colonial? Is there a trend in social sciences which assumes more and more this "bypass"?
It was easy enough to overcome the controversy since all participants were convinced of this. The book was designed explicitly as a set of original research (history, sociology or anthropology) outside conventional frameworks and sometimes controversial study called "post-colonial." As for the "bypass", it seems that it was essential in a scientific field that can not think clearly the post-colonial North African immigration, and this shared history. If social scientists still can not believe it, do not expect men women and political might in the near future, emerge from all these controversies.
You mention sharing an identity inherited by generations of both sides of the Mediterranean: why we urge that we know nothing of this identity, to the point of falling - on both sides of the river - in illness identity (Islam, Islamophobia, racism, etc..)?
This shared identity is in its infancy. It can develop only doing two or three steps sideways and three transgressions: keep away from official histories (which were, north and south, largely reinterpreted), bind to think a situation that was shared, so we like it or not is a common history that we must do together, and finally face all practical drifts policies and / or assertive identity here and there, thinking in a global context (historical and sociological). This is not the easiest task. One positive point is, we believe there a question of generations. It is a time when "young researchers", French and Algerians, have not experienced the War of National Liberation (Algerian version) or events (French version), and where can therefore develop research, say, emancipated. Except ... Youth, even the school was able to spread stereotypes paralyzing.
This notion of "traces" is she still tangible, identifiable in the newspaper, she will rebuild this assumes that the ambiguities of the past perfect?
The traces are there, clearly, and this is where to start. This is the essence of the book: from the field, what remains to see what can do. Mine Timezrit, for example, today the ruins. But it was one of the major mines in colonial Algeria. It has transformed an entire region, a whole village structure, but Azzedine Kinzi shows that the tribes who composed and captured with unions, gave a hard iron settlers: they are assertive and sometimes defended. However, what we can do these ruins today to try to think of something larger? Azzedine would like to participate in a museum ... Another much talked about track, cemeteries. The article on
Cemetery Constantine not only shows the settlement and war graves around, it's a century of Algerian history, until today, with the graves of Chinese, which runs along the custodian and listening to the stories of each of these graves! It is from what remains, we have proposed to construct a story, still incomplete and future, but has the merit of raising questions. And it is also starting local traces that avoid both official histories and ideologies produced unhealthy (Islam / Islamophobia, identity politics / racism).
* Ed Actes Sud. 28 euros.
Adlène Meddi
July 9, 2010
0 comments:
Post a Comment