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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.

The article applies to three autobiographical novels written in the 1980s and 1990s by citizens of France, second generation Algerian immigrants. The authors of these novels widely relate to their own experience of life in the suburbs of French cities. The protagonists are young people who on the one hand feel French and demand acceptance, and on the other experience acts of discrimination. Moreover, their relationship to traditional Algerian culture is also ambivalent. The place with which they identify themselves is not France, in spite of the citizenship, nor Algeria, in spite of the origin, but their own district, which is a place where they live their everyday life. The author of the article analyzes the chosen novels through the perspective of the republican model of integration which excludes recognition of ethnic origin of the citizens. The article, referring to M. Foucault’s theory of heterotopia, argues that although the novels in question sensitize French readers to the various social questions, they, paradoxically, support the typical thinking of the republican model.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Marseilles was the first large Metropolitan French city to receive a Muslim emigrant population remaining attached to Islamic religious practices. Although incomplete, archival sources clearly show that religious observance (prayer, fasting during Ramadan, religious holidays) and respect of Islamic rules governing burial and halal food, were practised by Kabyle and Arab workers from Algeria. Futhermore, important plans for the construction of mosques (191 7, 1937, 1942, 1949-51) mobilised leading local Muslim residents and elected politicians as wellas the administration, thereby revealing the wide range of conflicting interests and motives generated by Islam in the Metropolitan context. The well-known figure of Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit (Paris Mosque) is linked to the history of Islam in Marseille., La ville-port de Marseille est l'agglomération de métropole qui accueille le plus tôt une population musulmane émigrée, attachée aux pratiques religieuses de l'islam. Des sources d'archives lacunaires mais probantes établissent l'observance cultuelle (prière, jeûne de ramadan, fêtes religieuses...) et normative (inhumations, alimentation licite...) chez les ouvriers kabyles et arabes de la cité phocéenne. Par ailleurs, d'importants projets de mosquée (1917, 1937, 1942, 1949- 51) ont mobilisé des notables musulmans, des édiles locaux et l'administration, faisant apparaître le faisceau de motivations et d'intérêts contradictoires généré par le religieux islamique dans une métropole coloniale. La figure nationale de Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit (Mosquée de Paris) est liée à l'histoire de l'islam marseillais., Renard Michel. Aperçu sur l'histoire de l'islam à Marseille, 1813-1962. Pratiques religieuses et encadrement des Nords-Africains. In: Outre-mers, tome 90, n°340-341, 2e semestre 2003. Haïti Première République Noire, sous la direction de Marcel Dorigny. pp. 269-296.

- In the Campany region, the eighties are the years both of the start of an important immigration flow and of the development of new productive areas on the margins of Naples' metropolis. In the vesuvian area, and particularly in the town of San Giuseppe Vesuviano, an economy grews, based on poor quality textile products manufactury and wholesale business. The creation of this pole was followed by the coming of a foreign labour force, essentialy from Maghreb, employed in factories, and by Chinese subcontractors. Recently these Chinese entrepreneurs opened wholesale shops which seem to have introduced a certain competition but also strengthened the attraction of San Giuseppe on a foreign clientele, which main characteristic is mobility. Periurban mobility for morocan itinerant merchants, transmediterranean mobility for traders from Maghreb for which the way through Campany is just a step within circulatory trajectories., Résumé. - En Campante, les années 1980 sont à la fois celles du début d'un flux d'immigration important et celles du développement de nouveaux espaces productifs aux marges de l'aire métropolitaine de Naples. Dans la zone vésuvienne, et en particulier dans la commune de San Giuseppe Vesuviano, se développe une économie basée sur la vente en gros et la fabrication en sous-traitance de produits textiles de basse qualité. La constitution de ce pôle entraîne d'une part la venue d'une main-d'œuvre étrangère, essentiellement maghrébine, employée dans les fabriques, d'autre part celles de façonneurs chinois. Récemment ces entrepreneurs chinois ont ouvert des magasins de gros qui semblent avoir introduit une certaine concurrence tout en renforçant le pouvoir d'attraction de San Giuseppe sur une clientèle étrangère qui se caractérise par sa mobilité. Mobilité périurbaine pour les marchands ambulants marocains, mobilité transméditerranéenne pour les commerçants maghrébins pour lesquels le passage en Campanie est une étape au sein de trajectoires circulatoires., Schmoll Camille. Immigration et nouvelles marges productives dans l'aire métropolitaine de Naples (Immigration and new productive margins in Naples metropolitan area). In: Bulletin de l'Association de géographes français, 78e année, 2001-4 ( décembre). Commerce et centralité. Marges urbaines, sous la direction de Alain Metton, Gérard Hugonie et Colette Vallat. pp. 403-413.

During the inter-war period, many colonial workers came to find jobs in metropolitan France. Almost all of them came from North Africa, especially Algeria. The situation in Paris shows that they consisted in an unskilled, ill-paid workforce who was employed in the most strenuous and the most menial tasks. Despite very poor working conditions, the colonials rarely went on strike. It was considered as an extreme, ultimate weapon and a ponctual expression of protest against a social order which placed and maintained them among the rank and file of the working-class., Entre les deux guerres, de nombreux ouvriers coloniaux vinrent travailler dans la France métropolitaine. La quasi-totalité d'entre eux étaient originaires d'Afrique du Nord, en particulier d'Algérie. L'exemple parisien montre qu'il s'agissait d'une maind'œuvre non qualifiée, mal payée, employée aux tâches les moins nobles et les plus rudes. En dépit de conditions de travail particulièrement médiocres, les coloniaux pratiquaient peu la grève, qui constituait pour eux une arme ultime, extrême, l'expression ponctuelle d'une protestation contre un ordre social qui les plaçait et les maintenait au dernier rang du monde ouvrier., Sirot Stéphane. Les conditions de travail et les grèves des ouvriers coloniaux à Paris des lendemains de la Première Guerre mondiale à la veille du Front populaire. In: Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, tome 83, n°311, 2e trimestre 1996. pp. 65-92.

Natality of foreigners and intensification of the pluri-ethnicity: the French case. Since the beginning of the century, immigration presents a familial characteristic. Natality within the foreign population has gone through periods of increase and reduction. Today, more than one birth out of ten is of foreign parents, particularly of Algerian, Moroccan and Portuguese parents. The pluri-ethnic feature of French society is thus renforced among the young generation. Births of foreign parents are concentrated in the Eastern part of France, with various combinations of different nationalities in each region. The variety can be found at a local scale in the Paris urban area., L'immigration en France a, depuis le début du siècle, un caractère familial, et les naissances de parents étrangers ont connu des phases d'accroissement et des phases de diminution. Aujourd'hui, plus d'une naissance sur dix est le fait de parents étrangers, en particulier Algériens, Marocains et Portugais : ainsi se renforce chez les jeunes générations le caractère pluri-ehtnique de la société française. Les naissances de parents étrangers se concentrent dans la moitié Est de la France, donnant dans les diverses régions des combinaisons de nationalités différentes. Cette diversité se retrouve à un niveau local, dans l'agglomération de Paris., Guillon Michelle. Natalité des étrangers et renforcement de la pluri-ethnie : le cas de la France. In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1983-2. L'immigration étrangère en Europe occidentale. pp. 103-116.

The Algerians in the Grenoble urban area. The image of a monolithic immigration is called into question because of the socio-professionnal and the residential diversity, and the diversity in age and in the length of time they have been in the country. When analysing the practices of the trades people, the young, and the group living in a specific distric among the Algerians in the Grenoble urban area, you can see an appropriation of space which is the subject of risks and struggles as specific to each group as are the systems of material and symbolic exchanges., La diversité socio-professionnelle, résidentielle, d'âge ou dans l'ancienneté d'établissement remet en question l'image d'une immigration monolithique. L'analyse des pratiques des commerçants, des jeunes et d'un groupe résidentiel parmi la population algérienne de l'agglomération grenobloise montre des appropriations d'espaces, objets d'enjeux et de conflits aussi spécifiques à chacun des groupes que ne le sont les réseaux et systèmes d'échanges matériels et symboliques., Boumaza Nadir. Les Algériens dans l'agglomération grenobloise : différenciations internes, rapport à l'espace. In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1983-2. L'immigration étrangère en Europe occidentale. pp. 49-56.