The Algerian Revolution, the French state and the colonial counter-revolutionary strategy of the Holy Republic

Abstract

Abstract This article takes a materialist approach to the so-called ‘memory war’ over France’s colonial past especially the Algerian War of Independence, and its continuity in the present. It attempts to reinsert the ‘memory war’ within the larger context of the institutional materiality of French neo-colonial racism, in both its ideological and repressive modalities. By focusing on three specific aspects of the neo-colonial organization of the French state, the permanent state of emergency, the spatial organization of neo-colonial racism in France, and the politicization of the new French indigènes, this article argues that one cannot understand France’s Algerian past may not necessarily be understood through a debate over French ‘repentance’, and nor could today’s racism be understood solely as ‘ideological’ (in the commonplace sense of this term). It aims to show how French colonialism in Algeria, and the handling of the Algerian Revolution by the French state, have shaped the French state and its control of non-white people living in France today.