Papers by Susan Slyomovics
Politique et Fiction: Mélanges offerts à Abdelhay moudden, 2023
In 1988, Abdelhay Moudden was awarded a political science doctorate from the University of Michig... more In 1988, Abdelhay Moudden was awarded a political science doctorate from the University of Michigan. His dissertation, “Malthusian Development and Political Weakness of Morocco's Industrial Bourgeoisie,” described a stratified Moroccan society in which an efficient traditional and conservative state maintained its power by benefiting from conflicts among the country’s isolated and self-isolating elite. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s discussions about Malthus in the Prison Notebooks, Moudden added the fear of, or contempt for the Moroccan masses, weak political parties, and the ability of the state to diffuse crises without making economic or political compromises. Moudden actively confronted enduring features of political cruelty when he was appointed one of seventeen members of Morocco’s truth commission (2004-5). As head of the History Unit, he was tasked with public hearings on the state’s abuses from 1956-1999. How and what does it mean to create a “non-Malthusian” archive of individual personal testimonies based on fieldwork and oral histories about human rights and witness testimony?
Les Portes du poème: Hommages à Habib Tengour, 2022
"The Talking Hedgehog: Habib Tengour and Algerian Oral Literature" (article in French) in Les Por... more "The Talking Hedgehog: Habib Tengour and Algerian Oral Literature" (article in French) in Les Portes du poème: Hommages à Habib Tengour, edited by Hervé Sanson et Regina Keil-Sagawe. Algiers: APIC, 2022, pp. 223-247.
Hespéris-Tamuda, 2020
The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphas... more The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphasizing identity papers. By observing Algerian women arrested and imprisoned during both the colonization and decolonization phases, it appears that female prisoners are generally reduced to a simple first name. Using the concept of "colonial aphasia" (Ann L. Stoler), to then speak of nominal aphasia, this article seeks to understand strategies created by both French and Algerians around pseudonyms, unidentified first names, names of wars or generic names used to designate Algerian women. To do so, three cases are examined: the female entourage of the Emir Abd el-Kader, the "nurses of the maquis," and the "bombers" of Algiers, all women brought to France to live exiled in prison. By exposing the logics behind the erasure of names (clandestinity, fictionalization, essentialization, generalization), this article measures, in part through the eyes of anthropologists, lawyers, intellectuals, and prison visitors, those minute traces left by women prisoners notably in France, and the difficulty of doing history and ethnography because it is the name that is key to accessing archives and witnesses.
Modern and Contemporary France, 2023
On January 20, 2021, historian Benjamin Stora released a report commissioned by the government of... more On January 20, 2021, historian Benjamin Stora released a report commissioned by the government of Macron intended to achieve a reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria. This article focuses on the report’s proposals concerning a disputed monument, the famous Ottoman cannon known as ‘Baba Merzoug’. Seized in July 1830, the month France invaded Algeria, and spoliated to Brest, France, it was transformed into a monument renamed ‘La Consulaire’. How does ‘statuomania’ animated by the erection of numerous war memorials operate in France and what is the symbolism of columns as memorializing monuments? Moreover, how does the Stora Report for Algeria compare with the prior 2018 Macron government-commissioned Sarr-Savoy Report that called for immediate restitution of sub-Saharan artifacts housed in French museums?
Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective, 2021
Since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962 after 132 years of colonial rule (1830–1962), cl... more Since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962 after 132 years of colonial rule (1830–1962), claims and counterclaims for reparations have continually resurfaced in a variety of legal forums and public spaces. A brutal war of decolonization (1954–62) brought an end to France’s settler colony in Algeria, instigating incompatible and ongoing demands for repatriation, restitution, and reparations. Since the archive of French Algeria remains largely in French hands, there is no escaping historical linkages between France’s settler colonial project in Algeria and ongoing disputes about archival sovereignty, provenance, and digitization.
Middle East Report, 1990
Algeria’s Islamist challenge to secularism and the populist revulsion against the corruption of t... more Algeria’s Islamist challenge to secularism and the populist revulsion against the corruption of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) form the background to “Fatma”, a one-woman show which premiered May 23, 1990, at the El-Mouggar theater in Algiers. “Fatma’’ recounts a day in the life of an Algerian washerwoman who is a maid and a servant to the state, to her employers and to her family.
TDR (1988-), 1991
... As an invited member of a jury, the other members of which were Dr. Lamice El-Amari and Dr.Fa... more ... As an invited member of a jury, the other members of which were Dr. Lamice El-Amari and Dr.Fares Noureddine, both professors of theatre at the University of Oran; Lakhdar Derradji, a journalist; and the festival host, Djemal Saoudi, the president of the National Association of ...
Ezra, 2021
Translation of "Boqala" by Daniele Djamila Amrane-Minne
Hespéris-Tamuda, 2021
In 1856, French sculptor Charles Cordier (1827-1905) was sent on an ethnographic mission to Alger... more In 1856, French sculptor Charles Cordier (1827-1905) was sent on an ethnographic mission to Algeria to produce racial typologies. One sculpture, the “Jewish Woman of Algiers” (Juive d’Alger) reflects and joins the works of Eugène Délacroix, Théodore Chassériau and other artists and photographers documenting Jewish women. If North African Jewish males famously served as the tarjumān or translator and dragoman for travelers, missionaries, military officers, artists and adventurers alighting in Algeria, the Jewish woman in turn was another gendered mediator and object of fascination, representation and substitution, or so it was believed, for the exotic interior feminine world of the native in the absence of Muslim women.
Open access: http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/
American Anthropologist, 2012
Reframing Postcolonial Studies Concepts, Methodologies, Scholarly Activisms, 2021
The term “statuomania” was coined to reflect the vast amount of statues, war memorials, and monum... more The term “statuomania” was coined to reflect the vast amount of statues, war memorials, and monuments erected in the newly colonized spaces of French Algeria beginning in 1830. After Algerian independence in 1962, the post-colonial afterlives of monuments inscribe a historical, geopolitical, and affective provenance between Algeria and France. This essay follows the history of the 1972 statue to the Algerian war hero and martyr Youcef Zighoud (1921-1956). Sculpted by artist Ahmed Benyahia for Algeria’s third largest city of Constantine, the statue’s creation, emplacement, disappearance and reappearance recounts post-independent Algeria’s efforts to decolonize public space.
Knowledge, Authority and Change in Islamic Societies Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman, edited by Allen James Fromerz and Nadav Saman, 2021
Under extreme conditions, the acts of writing, witnessing and speaking go on as a last resort -- ... more Under extreme conditions, the acts of writing, witnessing and speaking go on as a last resort -- not as a way to communicate among disparate audiences but into the void. Can we rethink emerging public spheres and plural democratic vistas (articulated in Eickelman and Anderson, 1999) to question the ways in which aspects of public culture might emerge from the open grave of the cemetery or from behind closed prison walls?
Hésperis-Tamuda, 2020
Open access: http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/fr/index.php/nouveaux-numeros/volume-lv-fascicule-2-2... more Open access: http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/fr/index.php/nouveaux-numeros/volume-lv-fascicule-2-2020/882-4
"The Prison Exile of Unnamed Women: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Algerian Women Prisoners in the Wars of Colonization and Decolonization (1830-1962)":
The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphasizing identity papers. By observing Algerian women arrested and imprisoned during both the colonization and decolonization phases, it appears that female prisoners are generally reduced to a simple first name. Using the concept of “colonial aphasia” (Ann L. Stoler), to then speak of nominal aphasia, this article seeks to understand strategies
created by both French and Algerians around pseudonyms, unidentified first names, names of wars or generic names used to designate Algerian women. To do so, three cases are examined: the female entourage of the Emir Abd el-Kader, the “nurses of the maquis,” and the “bombers” of Algiers, all women brought to France to live exiled in prison. By exposing the logics behind the erasure of names (clandestinity, fictionalization, essentialization,
generalization), this article measures, in part through the eyes of anthropologists, lawyers, intellectuals, and prison visitors, those minute traces left by women prisoners notably in France, and the difficulty of doing history and ethnography because it is the name that is key to accessing archives and witnesses.
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 2014
This essay traces the intertwined topics of collaboration and multisited ethnography in the writi... more This essay traces the intertwined topics of collaboration and multisited ethnography in the writings of anthropologist Sondra Hale on Sudanese artists and art. Hale’s trajectories and movements in and out of Sudan traverse parallel, sometimes overlapping tracks with the artists she studied, championed, and curated. Studying Sudan and its artists may have begun in Khartoum during Hale’s first three-year period there from 1961 to 1964; however, this essay analyzes Hale’s subsequent writings based on the places where she encountered artists, residing abroad and in exile, in Cairo, Asmara, Addis Ababa, Oxford, the Hales’ Los Angeles home, as well as in American venues for meetings of the Sudan Studies Association.
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory , 1990
W omen are usually the central speaking subject of the zdr, a spirit possession and exorcism cere... more W omen are usually the central speaking subject of the zdr, a spirit possession and exorcism ceremony common in the Middle East and Africa. The word for this spirit possession cult-zdr-has been glossed, according to folk etymology, as the Arabic word meaning "to visit" or "a visitation." The main feature of the zdr cult is the possession of the body and mind of an individual woman-for this is predominantly a woman's activity-by a specific and appropriate spirit.
Journal of North African History, 2020
Open Access: Introduction to special guest edited issue: "Historic Preservation in North Africa."... more Open Access: Introduction to special guest edited issue: "Historic Preservation in North Africa." Issue includes articles by Susan Slyomovics, Yassine Ouagueni, Sidi Mohamed el Habib Benkoula, Zeynep Çelik, Daniel E. Coslett, Boussad Aiche, and Marc André.
Narratives and Representations of French Algeria, 2020
Between June 1990 and June 1992, I managed to spend as much time as possible in Oran on six succe... more Between June 1990 and June 1992, I managed to spend as much time as possible in Oran on six successive Algerian cultural visas. Much of the time I stayed in the hostel attached to the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie, the seat of the diocese of Oran in El Maqqari (ex-St. Eugène). I owe my housing and much more to Pierre Claverie, who was the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his assassination from a bomb placed near his car in 1996 that also took the life of his chauffeur, Mohamed Bouchikhi. I can still hear his voice, literally, because I tape-recorded an initial interview and I continue to follow his writings. It took me decades to listen to him again and not without tears.
OPEN ACCESS: https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/oranimes-susan-slyomovics-interview-with-pierre-claverie/
History and Anthropology, 2020
Implanted in 1846 as a pilgrimage site on Algerian soil after France’s 1830 conquest, the majesti... more Implanted in 1846 as a pilgrimage site on Algerian soil after France’s 1830 conquest, the majestic Virgin Mary of Santa Cruz statue overlooks Oran, Algeria’s second city. This essay traces trans-Mediterranean journeys by Virgin Mary statues between France and Algeria that call for reflexive, mirrored readings. A key concept is the “repatriated,” a French legal category for European settlers of Algeria that extends to objects and statues they carried with them along the “French Mediterraneans” corridor. At Algerian independence in 1962, a smaller Virgin Mary statue used for mobile pilgrimages throughout Algeria was removed to Nîmes, France, where a recreated Oran Marian pilgrimage for the “repatriate” settler community is celebrated to this day. Post-1962, statues and their roles have multiplied multi-directionally and trans-culturally as objects of veneration as well as reconfigured pilgrimages and cultural heritage reunions that enact and invent layered histories for the cities of Nîmes and Oran.
The Journal of North African Studies , 2020
The history of France’s war memorials is a much-studied domain of scholarly inquiry. According to... more The history of France’s war memorials is a much-studied domain of scholarly inquiry. According to historian Antoine Prost, constructing monuments on a grand scale to commemorate wars was a response to the staggering number of 1,300,000 French dead in World War I. Among those who fought for France in 1914–18 were 343,000 conscripted and mobilised Algerians divided according to colonial categories between French citizens and indigènes, the latter drafted as French subjects. So widespread was the ‘cult of the monument’ that the term ‘statuomania’ was coined by historian Maurice Agulhon to account for 36,000 war memorials erected in the interwar period throughout France and its overseas territories, especially in Algeria, which was integrated as France’s southernmost province. The significance of French colonists implanting statues was well understood by the native Algerian population who linked a colonial Algeria known for a plethora of monuments to the visible and materialised expressions of colonial power and occupation. Analysing how the formerly colonised of Algeria address the enduring material presence of statues, steles, monuments, and other effigies of the colonial past, this essay draws on concepts such as ‘dark heritage’ and ‘difficult heritage’. My case study is the town of Sidi-Bel-Abbès, headquarters and cradle of the French Foreign Legion until 1962 and the different fates of its two war memorials after Algeria’s 1962 independence from France.
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Papers by Susan Slyomovics
Open access: http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/
"The Prison Exile of Unnamed Women: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Algerian Women Prisoners in the Wars of Colonization and Decolonization (1830-1962)":
The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphasizing identity papers. By observing Algerian women arrested and imprisoned during both the colonization and decolonization phases, it appears that female prisoners are generally reduced to a simple first name. Using the concept of “colonial aphasia” (Ann L. Stoler), to then speak of nominal aphasia, this article seeks to understand strategies
created by both French and Algerians around pseudonyms, unidentified first names, names of wars or generic names used to designate Algerian women. To do so, three cases are examined: the female entourage of the Emir Abd el-Kader, the “nurses of the maquis,” and the “bombers” of Algiers, all women brought to France to live exiled in prison. By exposing the logics behind the erasure of names (clandestinity, fictionalization, essentialization,
generalization), this article measures, in part through the eyes of anthropologists, lawyers, intellectuals, and prison visitors, those minute traces left by women prisoners notably in France, and the difficulty of doing history and ethnography because it is the name that is key to accessing archives and witnesses.
OPEN ACCESS: https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/oranimes-susan-slyomovics-interview-with-pierre-claverie/
Open access: http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/
"The Prison Exile of Unnamed Women: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Algerian Women Prisoners in the Wars of Colonization and Decolonization (1830-1962)":
The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphasizing identity papers. By observing Algerian women arrested and imprisoned during both the colonization and decolonization phases, it appears that female prisoners are generally reduced to a simple first name. Using the concept of “colonial aphasia” (Ann L. Stoler), to then speak of nominal aphasia, this article seeks to understand strategies
created by both French and Algerians around pseudonyms, unidentified first names, names of wars or generic names used to designate Algerian women. To do so, three cases are examined: the female entourage of the Emir Abd el-Kader, the “nurses of the maquis,” and the “bombers” of Algiers, all women brought to France to live exiled in prison. By exposing the logics behind the erasure of names (clandestinity, fictionalization, essentialization,
generalization), this article measures, in part through the eyes of anthropologists, lawyers, intellectuals, and prison visitors, those minute traces left by women prisoners notably in France, and the difficulty of doing history and ethnography because it is the name that is key to accessing archives and witnesses.
OPEN ACCESS: https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/oranimes-susan-slyomovics-interview-with-pierre-claverie/
This edited collection celebrates Patrick Wolfe’s contribution to the study and critique of settler colonialism as a distinct mode of domination. The book emphasises Wolfe’s militant and interdisciplinary scholarship, together with his determination to acknowledge Indigenous perspectives and the efficacy of Indigenous resistance. Racial capitalism and settler colonialism are as entwined now as they always have been, and keeping both in mind at the same time highlights the need to establish and nurture solidarities that reach across established divides.
(Chosen in 2017 as ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) in Humanities Open Book (HOB) for outstanding out-of-print books in the humanities. Award is free e-books on ACLS site)
Susan Slyomovics explores this and other compensation programs, both those past and those that might exist in the future, through the lens of anthropological and human rights discourse. How to account for variation in German reparations and French restitution directed solely at Algerian Jewry for Vichy-era losses? Do crimes of colonialism merit reparations? How might reparations models apply to the modern-day conflict in Israel and Palestine? The author points to the examples of her grandmother and mother, Czechoslovakian Jews who survived the Auschwitz, Plaszow, and Markkleeberg camps together but disagreed about applying for the post-World War II Wiedergutmachung ("to make good again") reparation programs. Slyomovics maintains that we can use the legacies of German reparations to reconsider approaches to reparations in the future, and the result is an investigation of practical implications, complicated by the difficult legal, ethnographic, and personal questions that reparations inevitably prompt. http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15198.html
Danièle Djamila Amrane-Minne joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1956 with her mother and step-father Jacqueline and Abdelkader Guerroudj. She was captured in November 1957 and spent nearly five years in Algerian and French prisons. She was amnestied as a political prisoner along with her imprisoned mother in July 1962 when Algeria became independent. Her poem “Boqala” was originally published shortly after her release from prison in the October 1962 issue of Jeune Afrique, winning first prize in the newspaper’s poetry competition. She later earned her doctorate in history and wrote the book Des femmes dans la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 1994).
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YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePkRU-v5NDk
Yale University: CMES site: https://cmes.macmillan.yale.edu/featured-videos