Nota
13: Ajusto la cantidad y variedad de herramientas en red que utilizo para aprender en función de:
Contemporary Algerian culture continues to be shaped by the instability and conflict that has characterised Algerian history and politics, particularly throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and Algerians in London often make reference to specific periods in their country’s history. The era of French colonial rule (1830-1962), the eight-year war of independence (1954-1962), the Tafsut Imazighen (Berber Spring, of 1980), and the country’s civil war16 (1991-2002) remain influential upon Algerian society, and their remnants can be recognised in events in London, such as the Algerian Cultural Festival and Nostalgically Algerian celebrations.17 However, whilst it is impossible to
15 Mods is an abbreviation for ‘digital music modules’
16 There has been some debate over the correct terminology to use in order to describe the political violence of the 1990s, with some writers employing the term ‘civil war’, whilst others refer to the ‘violence’ or ‘troubles’ of the period. As this dispute is not a central concern of this thesis, I employ the term ‘civil war’ for the sake of simplicity.
17 The Algerian Cultural Festival, in 2012, marked the 60th anniversary of national independence, whilst the Nostalgically Algerian event celebrated the vibrancy of Algerian culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
deny the impact that these violent occurrences continue to have upon Algerian culture, I concur with James McDougall’s (2005) warning about reifying essentialist assumptions about Algerian savagery.18 I draw attention to Algeria’s troubled history not to add to the scholarship that focuses upon violence within Algerian society, but to explicate the historical conditions that frame contemporary Algerian cultural practices.
Algeria’s location at the heart of North Africa and on the southern Mediterranean has ensured that the country has always been crossed by trade routes and has subsequently been a place of cultural encounter. Benjamin Stora, the prominent French-based, Algerian-born scholar, suggests that the country has always been ‘a hub uniting Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia’, and records that ‘its privileged situation and its resources would provoke six major invasions before the French arrived’ (2004: 2). The ensuing arrival of Roman, Arab and Turkish settlers, and their interaction with the region’s Berber population, created a diverse and heterogeneous culture in Algeria. Arab invasions began in the seventh century, and whilst they were initially opposed, the increasing dominance of the country’s Arab population was reinforced by the arrival of Moorish immigrants who had been forced to flee southern Spain by the Reconquista and arrived between the tenth and fifteenth centuries CE.
The Turkish Ottomans gained control of Algeria in 1555 and further contributed to the diversity of Algerian culture, before the arrival of the French in 1830 (Stora, 2004: 3).
French rule in Algeria produced a complex but highly stratified society that would last until national independence in 1962, and which generally excluded the country’s Arab Muslim population from positions of power (Evans:
2012a: 19-23).19 The country’s Berber and Jewish populations were caught
18 A further example of the enduring role of violence and death in Algerian society is provided by Judith Scheele (2006), who provides an ethnography of Algerian
graveyards, and argues that the arrangement of these spaces simultaneously highlight local practices for dealing with death and violence, and represent understandings of historical and political discourse, and social power relations.
19 It would certainly be incorrect to suggest that all French settlers (known colloquially as ‘pied noir’, or black feet) lived a comfortable and privileged life, or that all members of the Muslim population suffered equally. Martin Evans (2012a) examines the diversity of both communities, and comments upon the suffering of many working class French
between the white French settler and Arab Muslim communities. The long-established Jewish community gained greater political rights than their Muslim neighbours, but suffered anti-Semitic abuse and discrimination from elements of both the Arab population and the right-wing of French settler society. Berbers, particularly in Kabylia, were considered by the authorities to be less
‘threatening’ than Muslims, and these cultural divisions within Algerian society enabled the authorities to instigate a system of divide-and-rule. Alistair Horne, in his highly influential history of the war of independence, writes that ‘the Kabyle and Arab had little love for each other and – in the best colonial tradition – it was often the policy of the French administrators to set one off against the other’ (2006: 50).20 This heterogeneous society contrasts sharply with the notion of cultural unity that was propagated by the Algerian government after independence in 1962. Following bloody infighting within the Algerian nationalist movement, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) emerged as the leadership of the Algerian people, and, having formed the first independent government, has remained in power ever since. The government continues to promote a history of national independence that suggests that the Algerian people, under the auspices of the FLN, collectively overthrew French rule in an act of glorious decolonisation. Martin Evans calls this the ‘one million martyrs narrative’ and suggests that it ‘was seen to be spurious and indiscriminate, the measure of a secretive system which justified the status quo by blaming all of Algeria’s ill on the colonial past’ (2012: 355). Raphaëlle Branche (2011) also writes of the notion of glorious martyrdom that has been employed in Algerian postcolonial narratives, relating to both the war of independence and the civil war, and suggests that this has been intended to deny other discourses around the history of the country. The Algerian people, as depicted by this governmental narrative, are formed around a single Arab Muslim culture, and this actively denies the country’s cultural diversity. Marnia Lazreg (1994) suggests that the settlers. Nevertheless, in terms of legal status and political rights, those of French citizenship (who were usually white) had far more privileges than Arab Muslims.
20 Horne’s book ‘A Savage War of Peace’ was infamously read by American President George W. Bush in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, having been recommended as a core text on issues of insurgency in Muslim societies by American political diplomat Henry Kissinger, of whom Horne had authored a biography.
varying experiences and attitudes of Algerian women throughout history further problematise the notion of a single, unified Algerian culture, while Ranjana Khanna (2008) examines differing representations of contemporary Algerian femininity. Given the evident heterogeneity of Algerian culture, it is unsurprising that the monoculturalism propagated by the FLN was a contributing factor to the violence that emerged in Algeria in the 1980s and 1990s.
The series of events that swept across the country between 1980 and 2002 brought further violence and bloodshed, and provided the conditions within which many Algerians in London grew up. The on-going frustrations of Berbers in Kabylia at the lack of recognition of their culture, and the nationwide enforcement of Arabization, came to a head in 1980 when poet Mouloud Mammeri was banned from giving a public speech at a university.21 This precipitated the Tafsut Imazighen (Berber Spring), and the ensuing anger and frustrations of Berbers coincided with widespread unemployment and discontent at a lack of adequate housing. As the decade progressed, and the government failed to address the concerns of ordinary Algerians, many turned to an increasingly prominent Islamist opposition. The political wing of the Islamist movement, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), won a landslide victory in the first round of Algeria’s 1991 general election (see Bouandel, 2004; Bouandel and Zoubir,1998). However, when the government cancelled the second round of the election and banned the FIS, effectively installing a military leadership by coup d’état, many Islamists took up arms, forming the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), and precipitating the violence that would engulf Algeria for more than a decade (Hafez, 2000). Musicians and other artists were caught up in this violence, and whilst some emigrated to France for their own safety, others remained in the bled and faced the threat of death.22 The civil war was effectively ended by a political amnesty for Islamists in 2000, and official recognition of the Berber language Tamazight in 2001, although sporadic
21 Arabization attempted to forcibly promote Arabic culture and language throughout postcolonial Algeria. Many of the country’s Berber population considered (and continue to consider) this a direct attempt to deny and subdue their culture.
22 Well-known musicians who were killed during this period included the raï star Cheb Hasni, the raï producer Rachid Baba-Ahmed, and the political Berber singer Lounès Matoub.
violence has continued to plague the country. After the attacks on the USA in September 2001, the FLN government declared their support for the American administration, and became allies in the so-called ‘War on Terror’, making clear their position with regards to militant Islamism, and isolating themselves from many in the Arab world (see Roberts, 2003; Evans and Phillips, 2007; Le Sueur 2010).
Alongside domestic growth and change, a large transnational Algerian diaspora has also emerged. The Algerian diasporic population in France is particularly large, due to the on-going use of the French language in Algeria and the links established between the countries during colonial rule, and Algerians in France have often contributed to their country’s cultural and political landscape by providing alternative critical voices that challenge those found in the bled. Algerians arrived in France throughout the twentieth century to study and in search of work, and were often employed as a source of cheap labour by French industry, whilst also providing the French army with a supply of troops during various conflicts. Allan Christelow (2012) charts the transnational flow of Algerians and Algerian culture through diasporic networks, and notes the issues faced by Algerians when attempting to integrate into French society. Paul A.
Silverstein (2004) highlights the connection between Islamic (often anti-Algerian) discrimination in France and the emergence of a beur identity23, and argues that the endurance of Algerian and Berber diasporas challenges notions of French cultural unity.
Algerian culture continues to be shaped by the discourses that surround the country’s complex and difficult history. The social and political turmoil that has engulfed Algeria over the previous half century has directly touched the lives of many of those living in London, and their families, and with issues around identity, religion and culture in the bled remaining unresolved, these debates continue to circulate amongst Algerians living within the city.
23 See glossary.