Sartre

This article addresses an area of French colonialism, specifically French Algeria, through the critical lens of Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories on race and colonialism developed in Colonialism and Neocolonialism. I focus in particular on two key components of Sartre’s critical commentary: first, the way in which French colonialism established practices that assigned full humanity only to the European colonizers; indigenous Muslim Arabs were systematically confined to the category of “sub-humans.” Second, my article examines in detail how promised reforms to colonial rule were consistently thwarted by practices mired in deception and fraud. Finally, I suggest that the application of liberal humanist principles in this colonial context was designed to create further inequality between Arabs and Europeans.

Interpreting the Haitian Revolution

Long relegated to the margins of history in the study of international relations, the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 should be considered of paramount importance for understanding the emergence of a global racial imaginary of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The consequences of the liquidation of slavery and French colonialism on the island were felt throughout the western hemisphere and constituted a perpetual source of anxiety about the possibilities of racial rebellion. This chapter examines the intellectual effects of the Haitian Revolution in order to demonstrate the crystallization of a global racial hierarchy. This global racial hierarchy took for granted the ineluctable supremacy of “white” Western Europeans and Americans but was, nonetheless, deeply anxious about the possibilities of its future demise. A key element in this intellectual history, examined in this chapter, is the idea of racial violence or war that is used to interpret the events of the Haitian Revolution.

Amkoullel, the Fula Boy

Born in 1900 in French West Africa, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ was one of the towering figures in the literature of twentieth-century Francophone Africa. In Amkoullel, the Fula Boy, Bâ tells in striking detail the story of his youth, which was set against the aftermath of war between the Fula and Toucouleur peoples and the installation of French colonialism. A master storyteller, Bâ recounts pivotal moments of his life, and the lives of his powerful and large family, from his first encounter with the white commandant through the torturous imprisonment of his stepfather and to his forced attendance at French school. He also charts a larger story of life prior to and at the height of French colonialism: interethnic conflicts, the clash between colonial schools and Islamic education, and the central role indigenous African intermediaries and interpreters played in the functioning of the colonial administration. Engrossing and novelistic, Amkoullel, the Fula Boy is an unparalleled rendering of an individual and society under transition as they face the upheavals of colonialism.

OTTOMAN INFLUENCES ON THE SIDI EL KETTANI MOSQUE IN CONSTANTINE ALGERIA

The city of constantine is considered one of the algerian cities , that witnessed tremendous urban and architectural devlopment during the ottoman era, and the ottoman chose it to be the capital of eastern algeria, and the city witnessed during this period the building of many mosques but most of these monuments were subjected to sabotage and destruction from the party of french colonialism, and perhaps the most important models that still presrve a large part of their orignal style, we mention the sidi el kettani mosque which was built by salih bey as it combined the local architectural style, with the incoming ottoman style and this gave it a unique characteristic in the field of architecture in addition, to its richness of exquisite architectural and decorative elements

History as inspiration

History is written in textbooks but is indubitably remembered through cultural artifacts and architecture. This is particularly the case when one thinks of Hanoi, where its thousands of years of ancient history can be found in the old citadels and more than half a century of French colonialism can be glimpsed in the houses of the Old Quarter. Many of these structures have survived the brutality of wars and now feed into nostalgia for the French aesthetic.

Reflections on Race and Ethnicity in North Africa Towards a Conceptual Critique of the Arab–Berber Divide

This essay argues that the usages of the divide between Berbers and Arabs by the Algerian government and Berber activists alike should be analyzed in light of the transformation of the Imazighen into a cultural minority by the nation-state. The nation-state's definition of the majority as Arab, as well as the very concept of a minority, has shaped both the status and the grammar of the Arab-Berber divide in ways that are irreducible to how this binary functioned under French colonialism. In order to understand the distinct modes by which these categories function in Algeria today, one needs to analyze how the language of the nation-state determines their grammar, namely how they are deployed within this political context. Hence, by focusing primarily on French colonial representations of race such as the Kabyle Myth and by asserting simplified colonial continuities, the literature fails to make sense of the political centrality of the nation-state in the construction of the Amazigh question.