Algeria in Others' Languages / Edition 1

by Anne-Emmanuelle Berger

Overview

For decades the superimposition of languages in Algeria has had growing cultural and political consequences. The relations between identity and language, already complicated before independence, became all the more entangled after 1962 when the new state imposed standard Arabic as the sole national language. The vernacular brand of Arabic spoken by the majority of the population—as well as Berber, spoken by an important minority—were denied legitimacy. Moreover, French, the colonial language, continued to be important all the while that its position changed. The violence that ensued in the late 1980s cannot be fully understood without considering the politics of language. This timely book is devoted to Algeria's linguistic predicament and the underlying disagreements over notions of identity, power, and belonging.What problems arise when a new national language is adopted by a postcolonial state? How does the status of the former colonial language change? What becomes of the original "mother tongue(s)" of the populace? The authors of Algeria in Others' Languages address these questions as they explore the historical, cultural, and philosophical significance of language in Algeria, and its relation to issues of politics and gender. Their topics range from analyses of political violence to the status of the principal of evidence in the legal system to the place of "Francophonie" in the 1990s.The authors represent the fields of literature, history, sociology, sociolinguistics, and postcolonial and gender studies; some are also historical players in Algeria's linguistic debates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801488016
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2002
Series:	Cornell French Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anne-Emmanuelle Berger is Professor of French Literature at Cornell University.

What People are Saying About This

September 2002 Choice

Berger includes an introduction that provides useful historical and political contextualization for the literary critical analyses—all written between 1996 and 2000 at the height of the confrontation between Islamists and secularists—and their philosophical approaches to the specific case of Algeria.... Recommended for college and university libraries serving upper-division undergraduates and above.

Vicente L. Rafael

In speaking about the intractable complexities of Algerian speech, this collection of essays reaches beyond the historical singularity of Algeria to address the linguistic predicaments of many other postcolonial societies. Each writer raises, in his or her own way, the questions of translation and its recurring failures; the terror but also occasional pleasures of untranslatability; and the fate of the mother tongue set upon by colonial and national languages. By rendering a 'linguistic portrait of Algeria,' this volume grants readers everywhere with ways to understand the violence and love inspired by nationalism's elsewhere. A remarkable book, its importance is already upon us.

Emily Apter

As transnational language politics increasingly come to be recognized as crucial to the study of post-independence cultural formations in the wake of colonial wars, a book such as Algeria in Others' Languages is both timely and historically significant. Lucid, eloquent, and charged with political urgency, this collection is the first of its kind in English devoted to Algeria's predicament as a society riven by the conflicting claims of secular and Islamist traditions.

Susan Tarrow

Readers interested in exploring the issues of language, gender, and contemporary politics in Algeria will find much that is new in these essays, and will appreciate the diverse views expressed by their authors. An extensive bibliography adds an invaluable research tool for scholars in many fields of study on Algeria.

Aida A. Bamia

The essays reveal that the debate over the linguistic situation in Algeria is neither over nor solved, and is still capable of provoking the same passion and controversies half a century after the country's independence, almost as much as it did in the early years of independence. Readers interested in issues of identity and multilingual situations would find Algeria in Others' Languages a very valuable reference.

Valerie Orlando

Taken as a whole, Berger's Algeria in Others' Languages offers a cogent, well organized group of essays that analyze the most persistent problems inherent in contemporary Algeria.

Melissa Marcus

Even a seasoned reader of the Algerian scene, its literature, history, and politics, can learn a great deal from this book.... In 'The Names of Oran,' Helene Cixous skillfully and creatively brings the reader into the psyche of those living in the multilingual environment of Algeria through a recounting of her experiences growing up in Oran and Algiers.... Cixous's essay is a gentle ending to an anthology that describes much of the searing pain and suffering of Algerians in the last fifteen years. Perhaps it is an expression of some hope for resolution and peace, given the creative possibilities of multicultural and multilingual Algeria.

Editorial Reviews

Algeria in Others' Languages tells in turn, and collectively, of an erstwhile Algerian history of indigenous conflict and colonial violence and the individual critical visions and languages of another once-upon-a-time that is still to come.

--Barbara Harlow "Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History"

From the Publisher

Algeria in Others' Languages tells in turn, and collectively, of an erstwhile Algerian history of indigenous conflict and colonial violence and the individual critical visions and languages of another once-upon-a-time that is still to come.

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History - Barbara Harlow