Beyond Revolution: Algeria's Postcolonial Challenge

This essay discusses how culture and politics have been estranged in contemporary Algeria. The key argument attempts to show how Francophone literature in particular has been both memorialized and silenced in a country where culture actually sits at the core of citizen activism. Most prior research tends to eschew Algeria's political scene, while the recent Arab Spring' has brought to the fore the specificity of a country where nothing happens but which, at the same time, has been unsettled by the people's democratic expectations since the 1980s. My theoretical framework focuses on a critique of Francophone literature as well as the under-theorized subaltern discourse applied to the North African world. To explore the role of external factors, I analyse the powers at play against hegemonic forces that are present within the postcolonial condition. This approach leads me to assess and understand the challenge of identity and nationhood in the modern postcolonial state.