Visions of Algeria: Revolution, Visuality, and the Potentialities of History

“Christians go to the Vatican, Muslims go to Mecca, revolutionaries go to Algiers” Amílcar Cabral, guinean revolutionary. What is Algeria? A country, a nation, a flag, a history, but also a narrative, a potentiality and, until recently, an ideal, a blueprint, and a paradigmatic example for anticolonial and liberation movements of the Global South in the 20th Century. In this class, we will ask the question of Algeria beyond the simple area study or historical inquiry, as a way to explore such vast concepts as visuality, colonialism, nationalism, revolution, and the writing of history. We will question the value of looking at images in order to unpack and untangle how places like Algeria became fraught emblems of many concepts, myths, and opposing visions.