How we Fight: Anticolonial Imaginaries and the Question of National Liberation in the Algerian War

Abstract

This essay examines the ideological terrain of the Algerian War and takes seriously the question of the nature of the fight; not only the type of anticolonial discourse and mobilization (whether ideological or militant), but also the vision deployed in pursuit of independence, and the means by which it is pursued. In doing so, it explores the idea that how we fight determines the types of futures made possible by anticolonial revolt. I thus not only investigate the types of anticolonial imaginaries that came to compete for legitimacy and possibility during the Algerian War, but also examine the idea that the predicament of the national liberation state was not simply about policies adopted post-independence (whether regarding political or economic development, or social policies). Rather, the predicament came to life during the anticolonial struggle, and acquired poignancy once the task of the struggle – removing the colonizer – was accomplished. In that sense, I seek to explore here both the varied ideological anticolonial terrain and the immense cost exacted by a specific vision of decolonization that came to prevail. What Amilcar Cabral identifies as “the struggle against our own weaknesses” remains a struggle very much unfinished.