The following message was adressed to several editors of mainstream media outlets in Britain (including The Guardian, The Independent, and the BBC). Colleagues wishing to add their signature to this message may do so by indicating their name and institutional affiliation in the comment section of this post
Le message suivant, signé par plusieurs de nos collègues, a été envoyé à différents médias britanniques, en protestation contre les raccourcis historiques utilisés après les attentats de Paris, raccourcis déjà dénoncés par Natalya Vince dans un précédent billet. Les collègues qui souhaitent y ajouter leur signature peuvent le faire en indiquant leur nom et leur affiliation dans les commentaires de ce post.
Paris attacks have nothing to do with the Algerian War of Independence
A number of commentators in the mainstream British media, notably Andrew Hussey on BBC radio (also a regular Guardian columnist) and Robert Fisk in The Independent, have evoked the Algerian War of Independence between 1954 and 1962 as an interpretative lens for understanding the motivations of the 13 November attackers. In short, they claim that the violence of colonialism and the war of decolonisation have engendered an ancestral desire for revenge amongst younger generations of French citizens of Algerian origin. Such a reading ignores the specificities of the present situation and fails to provide any convincing explanation of how this ‘memory’ is transmitted from generation to generation: it is profoundly unhistorical. It reduces whole peoples to perceived unchanging cultural characteristics: this is blatant essentialism.
Malika Rahal est historienne, directrice de recherche au CNRS et directrice de l'Institut d'histoire du temps présent (CNRS-Université Paris 8)..
Dr. Malika Rahal is a historian and a senior researcher. She is the director of the Institut d'histoire du temps présent (CNRS)
الدكتورة ملكة رحّال باحثة في التاريخ و هي مديرة معهد تاريخ الزمن الراهن، المركز الوطني للبحث العلمي
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