Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, 1992. / "Lille-thèses, ISSN, 0294-1767"--Fiche header.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Geography. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-184). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR19749

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris VIII, 1986. / "Lille-thèses, ISSN, 0294-1767"--Fiche header.

This dissertation examines the popular politics of the anticolonial struggle in Algiers from the perspective of people who participated in the Algerian Revolution at a grassroots level. It is largely the product of interviews conducted with 30 women and men who participated in the revolution in and around Algiers. Their participation in the struggle took diverse forms, including armed combat, material or logistical support to those fighting, participating in strikes or protests, and so on. In examining Algerians' anticolonial struggle 'from below,' I have sought to illuminate different and more plural perspectives of this period of history. In presenting this new material, I put forward a number of critiques on the existing historiography of the Algerian Revolution. My goal has been not only to include those who have been excluded from larger narratives in order to fold them into the political history of the revolution, but to demonstrate how these perspectives challenge those narratives. Finally, I have taken the experiences and perspectives of these Algerians to be a legitimate and productive vantage point from which to reflect on larger theoretical questions of popular politics and revolutions in the colonized world. These include questions about revolution, the diverse political imaginaries of what constitutes liberation and freedom, the means that can justly be used to attain such ends, the blurry lines between resistance and collaboration, the relationship between avant-garde parties and the masses that lend them support, and the different iterations of Islamic politics in modernity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Joel Sherzer and Elizabeth Keating. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Joel Sherzer and Elizabeth Keating. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In this dissertation, I map the experimental margin of Algerian cinema between 1965 and 1979 against the paradigmatic film about Algeria, Gillo Pontecorvo and Yacef Saadi’s The Battle of Algiers (1965). I focus on the period immediately following the successful conclusion of an eight-year war waged by the Algerian National Liberation Front against France. It is known as the “Golden Age” of Algerian cinema, a span of nearly fifteen years after the film industry was nationalized when culture was generously financed by newly exploited petrochemical resources in the Sahara. This mapping has two aims, the first of which is straightforward: I read four films made in Algeria by Algerian filmmakers closely in light of their socio-political contexts and I argue that together they represent a significant and overlooked minor history in Algerian film. The films are Tahia Ya Didou! by Mohamed Zinet (1969), Omar Gatlato by Merzack Allouache (1976), La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua by Assia Djebar (1976), and Nahla by Farouk Beloufa (1979). They are significant formally and in terms of their critical reception at the time and since the late 1960s and early 1970s among Algerian filmmakers, but they are crucially significant as ambivalent testimony about life after the colonial period and about the traumatic effect of the long and violent struggle for liberation. Second, I read these films against the Battle of Algiers in its socio-political context. I argue that the aspects of the War of Liberation that fall out of this canonical portrait of decolonial resistance are precisely those taken up by the experimental margin I examine elsewhere in the dissertation. My reading of Pontecorvo and Saadi’s classic film is critical not only in terms of its representation of violence perpetrated by the French but also in the aspects of Algerian history it occludes, namely the history of women. If the margin provides a space for testimony for the trauma of the war, the Battle of Algiers reifies a Fanonian understanding of revolutionary violence, an understanding that is constitutively exclusive of women’s role in the war. I read extensively with Karima Lazali on the clinical situation of Algerians post-war. I draw on archival materials from Algeria and France including production notes and documentation of contemporary reception, especially by Algerians. On contextual questions, I read Algerian sociologists, politicians, filmmakers, and film critics as much as possible. My commitment to de-centering especially a French perspective on Algeria allows the rich semiotic exchange between filmmakers, artists, architects, and political activists to emerge and to challenge the hegemonic perspective that Algerian culture post-war was entirely dominated by its authoritarian government.

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