The Second World War, Imperial, and Colonial Nostalgia: The North Africa Campaign and Battlefields of Memory

Eva Kingsepp

doi:10.3390/h7040113

Abstract

The article addresses the function of (post)colonial nostalgia in a context of multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) in contemporary Europe. How can different cultural memories of the Second Word War be put into respectful dialogue with each other? The text is based on a contrapuntal reading (Said 1994) of British and Egyptian popular narratives, mainly British documentary films about the North Africa Campaign, but also feature films and novels, and data from qualitative interviews collected during ethnographic fieldwork in Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt, during visits 2013–2015. The study highlights the considerable differences between the British and Egyptian narratives, but also the significant similarities regarding the use and function of nostalgia. In addition, the Egyptian narrative expresses a profound cosmopolitan nostalgia and a longing for what is regarded as Egypt’s lost, modern Golden Age, identified as the decades before the nation’s fundamental change from western-oriented monarchy to Nasser’s Arab nationalist military state. The common elements between the two national narratives indicate a possibly fruitful way to open up for a shared popular memory culture about the war years, including postcolonial aspects.

Highlights

The Second World War still provides powerful contributions to national identities through monuments, ritual commemorations, the school curriculum, and postmemory work (Finney 2018a).It continues to resonate in collective memories around the world and remains a source of inspiration for all kinds of new media products, from popular history to digital games
Representations of the North Africa Campaign during the Second World War look quite different in dominant western media as compared to the texts referred to in the Egyptian data, both regarding the amount and the content
As experiences of war and conflict are generally considered crucial in the formation of collective as well as individual memory, one might expect to find mediated counter-memories of the Second World War in regions usually not visible in Western representations, especially those where this time-period is related to colonial oppression and anticolonial struggle

Summary

Introduction

The Second World War still provides powerful contributions to national identities through monuments, ritual commemorations, the school curriculum, and postmemory work (Finney 2018a). It continues to resonate in collective memories around the world and remains a source of inspiration for all kinds of new media products, from popular history to digital games. While there is a growing scholarly interest in intercultural memory studies, there are still considerable research gaps regarding some of the geographic areas formerly under imperial domination, in particular the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region under British rule This article examines how popular mediations of the war years, in the context of Egypt during the 1940–1943 North Africa. Provide a backdrop to contemporary nostalgia and dreams about identity and community, with a focus on Egypt. The study is situated in an interdisciplinary field where cultural memory studies, media studies, area studies, and postcolonial theory meet

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