Colonial/postcolonial intersections: Lieux de mémoire in Algiers

Third Text

Volumn 13, Issue 49, 1999, Pages 63-72

  Celik, Zeynep ^a  

^a NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149373640     PISSN: 09528822     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09528829908576823     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. Pierre Nora, 'Preface to the English-Language Edition', in Pierre Nora (ed), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past,Columbia University Press, New York, 1996,vol 1, p xvii
2. For a reconstruction of this area before the French interventions, see André Raymond, 'he Centre d'Alger en 1830', Revue de 1'ocddent musulman et de la Mediterranée 31, no 1,1981, pp 73-81
3. 'Song about the Taking of Algiers' (composed by Si Abd al-Qadir), quoted in Alf Andrew Heggoy, The French Conquest of Algiers, 1830: An Algerian Oral Tradition, Ohio University Center for International Studies, Athens,Ohio, 1986, p 23
4. 'Rapport au Comité du Génie, Séance du 11 novembre 1931', SHAT,Génie, Alger, art. 8, section 6.With this appeal, Lemercier prepared the way and predicted Napoleon Ill's well-known royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) policies developed in the 1860s. Qualifying the Arabs as 'an intelligent, proud, and warrior' race. Napoleon called for treating Arabs as compatriots and declared that Algeria was 'not a colony, but an Arab Kingdom', with himself as the emperor of the Arabs as much as he was the emperor of the French. See Benjamin Stora, Histoire de l'Algfrie coloniale (1830-1954), Editions La Découverte, Paris, 1991, p 20. Napoleon's policies made a significant impact on French architecture in Algeria, specifically in the introduction of 'Arab' details into European-style buildings
5. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1879-1880, trans. Janet Lloyd, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981, p 70. The Due d'Orléans was Ferdinand-Philippe who died in a carriage accident in Neuilly in 1842, without ascending to the throne
6. Arnaudiès, op cit, p 202. The replica is now in the Château d'Eu in Normandy; the original was transported to Neuilly after Algerian independence. See AnneMarie Briat, Janine de la Hogue, André Appel and Marc Baroli, Des Chemins et des hommes: La France en Algérie (1830-1962). Editions Harriet, Hélette, 1995, p 175
7. Jean-Jacques Jordi and JeanLouis Planche, '1860-1930:une certaine idée de la construction de la France', in Jean-Jacques Jordi and JeanLouis Planche (eds), Alger 1860-1919: le modèle ambigu du triomphe colonial. Editions Autrement, Paris, 1999, pp 45-46
8. Nora, 'Between Memory and History', op cit, p 19
9. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday life, trans. Steven RendalL University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, p 108
10. I quote Terence Ranger and extend his analysis of the British colonies in Africa to the Algerian situation. See Terence Ranger, 'The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa' in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds),The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p 237
11. In the same volume, Eric Hobsbawm applies the argument to India; see 'Representing Authority in Victorian India', p 209
12. Théophile Gautier pointed to this ambition in a cynical tone when he described the buildings that lined the Place du Gouvernement as pretending 'to recall the architecture of the Rue de Rivoli'. See Théophile Gautier, Voyage pittoresque en Algėrie (1845), reprinted with an introduction and notes by Madeleine Cottin, Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1973, p 183
13. For a discussion of the growth of Algiers during the French period, see Zeynep Celik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997, chapter 2
14. In 1962, Maréchal Bugeaud's statue was transported to a family property in Excideuil, Dordogne. See Briat et al, Des Chemins et des hommes, op cit, p 48
15. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the 19th Century City, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994, pp 14-15
16. Daniel Milo, 'Street Names', in Realms of Memory, (ed) Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Columbia University Press, New York, 1997, vol II, pp 365-366
17. The volatility of such change is pointed out by Ferguson with reference to Paris. See Ferguson, Paris as Revolution, op cit, p 197. A good example that attests to such volatility in Algiers is the aforementioned vernacular reference to the Place des Martyres as Place du ChevaL
18. Discussing the fervour that followed the French revolution, Milo qualifies the years 1792-1794 as 'the great wave of debaptisings' and gives many examples from the renaming of streets in Paris and other French cities that substituted religious and royal signs with revolutionary ones. For example, Place Louis XV became Place de la Révolution, Quai Conti became Quai de l'Unite', Pont Notre-Dame became Pont de la Raison. See Milo, 'Street Names', in Realms of Memory, op cit, vol II, p 372. The phenomenon is similar in Algeria, but the oppositional choice is more straightforward in the examples cited above
19. Leonard Kodjo, 'Noms des rues, noms des maîres', unpublished paper, 1987, quoted in Christopher Miller, Theories of Africans, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990, p 102, note 71
20. Djamila Amrane, Les femmes algeriennes dans la guerre, Plons, Paris, 1991, p 45
21. On French colonial postcards on Algeria, see Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem, trans. Myrna Godzich and Wlad Godzich, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986
22. Assia Djebar, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartanent, des femmes, Paris, 1979, pp170-178. This is a slightly modified version of the argument I presented in the epilogue of my Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, op cit
23. For a comparative discussion of various versions of Picasso's Femmes d'Alger, see L Steinberg, 'The Algerian Women and Picasso at Large', in Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth Century Art, New York, 1972, pp 125-234
24. Djebar, Femmes d'Alger, op cit, pp 186-189. The association of Algerian women's bodies with the memory of the war is a recurring theme in Djabar's work
25. See, for example, the discussion by Ranjana Khanna on La Zerda et les chants de I'oubli (1980), a film Djebar made with Malek Alloula on the French occupation of Algeria. La Zerda begins with the sentence 'La mémoire est corps de femme' (memory is the body of women). Ranjana Khanna, 'The Battle of Algiers and The Nouba of the Women of Mont Chenoua.' Third Text, no 43, Summer 1998, p 26
26. Leila Sebbar, Les Carnets de Shérazade, Stock, Paris, 1985, p 152
27. Nora, 'Between Memory and History', op cit, p 15