Generating Martyrdom: Forgetting the War in Contemporary Algeria

By Judith Scheele

Volume 6, Issue 2, pages 180-194

Abstract

Nationalist displays and rhetoric invoking the Algerian war of independence from France (1954–1962) are omnipresent in contemporary Algeria. Yet personal memories of the war of independence are conspicuously absent locally, although the war generation is still alive, and although all current power‐holders and their contenders tend to refer to the war as the supreme source of political legitimacy. This article explores this apparent paradox with special reference to Kabylia, a Berber‐speaking area in northeastern Algeria. It argues that the local absence of war history is crucial for its functioning as a national myth; that this local indeterminacy allows for an implicit and constant re‐negotiation of local hierarchies although they superficially refer to moral absolutes; but that it also imposes an inherently restrictive model of political legitimacy and protest.

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