Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism: 1988-2015 (Francophone Postcolonial Studies LUP)

__Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015__ offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, the chapters in this volume serve to open up any discourse that would tie ‘Algeria’ to a fixed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. The configuration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. These chapters — written by specialists in Algerian history, politics, music, sport, youth cultures, literature, cultural associations and art — offer the granularity of microhistories, fieldwork interviews and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian nation-building are culturally negotiated, public spaces are reclaimed, and Algeria reimagined through practices that draw upon the country’s past and its transnational present. Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism covers a specific period of time (1988-2013) that has taken on a significantly different socio-political configuration to that of the first 25 years of post-independence Algeria (1962-1987). Since 1988, Algeria has seen democratic contestation, civil conflict between state and Islamist parties and, over the past 10 years, an uneasy peace. It was in the same period that the country endured economic decline and a painful transition to a more liberal economy. Less than twenty years ago Algeria was seen as a 'failed state' yet it is now perceived as having a role in the 'stabilization' of North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring. Central to this transformation has been a turn in Algeria's economic fortunes. The Algerian army and political elite have, over the past 10 years, hugely benefitted from revenues derived from its hydrocarbon exports and use such revenues to manage a society in which a majority depend on state subsidies and public sector employment. Contemporary Algeria, argues Hugh Roberts (2003), is marked by an emerging post-nationalism and a sense that the elite has lost the political bearings that shaped the nation after 1962. There is an on-going tension generated by official positions that remain vigorously centripetal and a more informal, local yet transnational, dynamics that is often centrifugal in effect. The result is a society characterised by a range of oppositions that bear upon the evolution of the state and the lives of ordinary Algerians. Algeria has been dramatically marked by competing forces: state nationalism and grassroots nationalist disenchantment; Islamism and a version of Islam that accommodates greater plurality; a national economy -- and this includes cultural production -- that is responding to globalization; the conflict of the 1990s and its contemporary legacy. The contributions to this book focus on the impact of such forces across a range of interests in contemporary Algeria Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988-2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, the chapters in this volume serve to open up any discourse that would tie 'Algeria' to a fixed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. The configuration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988-2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. These chapters - written by specialists in Algerian history, politics, music, sport, youth cultures, literature, cultural associations and art - offer the granularity of microhistories, fieldwork interviews and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian nation-building are culturally negotiated, public spaces are reclaimed, and Algeria reimagined through practices that draw upon the country's past and its transnational present. Book jacket AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIllustrationsIntroductionAlgeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988-2015 Patrick CrowleyNation, State and SocietyIn the Shadow of Revolution James McDougallAlgeria's `Belle Epoque': Memories of the 1970s as a Window on the Present Ed McAllisterThe Many (Im)possibilities of Contemporary Algerian Judaites Samuel Sami Everett1988-1992: Multipartism, Islamism and the Descent into Civil War Malika RahalAlgerian Heritage Associations: National Identity and Rediscovering the Past Jessica NortheyCultural MediationsWriting in the Aftermath of Two Wars: Algerian Modernism and the Generation '88 Corbin TreacyThe Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History: The Archive and Contemporary Art in Algeria (1992-2012) Fanny GilletMusic, Borders and Nationhood in Algeria Tony LangloisAlgerian Youth on the Move. Capoeira, Street-dance and Parkour: Between Integration and Contestation Britta HeckingSport in Algeria - from national self-assertion to anti-state contestation Philip DineBeyond France-Algeria: The Algerian Novel and the Transcolonial Imagination Olivia C. HarrisonAfterwordPerforming Algerianness: The National and Transnational Construction of Algeria's `Culture Wars' Walid Benkhaled and Natalya VinceNotes on ContributorsIndex Since 1988, Algeria has seen democratic contestation, civil conflict between state and Islamist parties and, over the past 10 years, an uneasy peace. It was in the same period that the country endured economic decline and a painful transition to a more liberal economy. This work covers a specific period of time (1988-2013) that has taken on a significantly different socio-political configuration to that of the first 25 years of post-independence Algeria (1962-1987) The most incisive and up-to-date analysis of Algeria's recent history in the second 25 years after independence Edited By Patrick Crowley. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.