Generation independence: a people's history

How do you make space in public history for a period which is historically important, but not institutionally valued? How do you transmit stories about the past between generations who have been educated in different languages of instruction? These were two key questions which emerged from an AHRC Early Career Fellowship on 'Rewriting the veteran: gender, geography, generation and the Algerian War'. In this previous project, the Principal Investigator (Natalya Vince) wrote about the difficulties of writing post-independence history and analysed intergenerational (non-)transmission. She critiqued the squashing down of Algerian history in academic and popular history into two juxtaposed periods - the War of Independence (1954-62) and the civil conflict of the 1990s - as feeding into a caricature of Algeria as locked in an inescapable cycle of violence. She analysed how younger generations of Algerians understood the wartime and post-war roles of women, revealing the ways in which young people reimagined women who were often socially unconventional as more conservative figures, using a dominant language of sacrifice, martyrdom and religious piety. This Follow on Funding project provides an opportunity to go beyond analysis. It will develop and test out creative solutions to these issues, which are societal risks even more than they are academic challenges. It thus significantly enhances the value and wider benefit of the original research project.

The project will produce 18 new 20-minute documentary portraits in which Algerian women and men talk about the 1960s and 1970s. This was a key period in Algerian history: after eight years of a devastating anti-colonial war and 132 years of colonial rule, the emphasis was on rebuilding Algerian infrastructure, tackling massive illiteracy, freeing the Algerian economy, society and culture from (neo-)colonial domination and positioning Algeria as a world leader amongst newly liberated nations. The documentaries seek to convey this story on a human scale, going beyond the usual handful of iconic political figures. The intersections of ordinary lives with processes of state- and nation-building will emerge through interviews with teachers, doctors, air traffic controllers and power plant managers, amongst others.

Documentaries will be edited, subtitled in Arabic, French and English, uploaded onto a specially-created project website, and connected into social media. Intergenerational exchange is embedded in the production process as well as generated through the outputs: the PI will be working with an Algeria-based film company funded via a scheme to support unemployed youth, and two young Algerian artists will produce artwork to express the stories told in new creative forms, further engaging new audiences. Subtitling the films and using Facebook autotranslation features for posts and comments will enable those who are more Arabophone and those who are more Francophone to exchange views and testimony around the same artefact, bridging a linguistic divide which is hyperpoliticised, but in everyday life can be as much a practical barrier as anything else. Audience feedback on a first round of films will shape who is interviewed in the next round and the themes to be addressed, reinforcing the co-production of knowledge and shared ownership of the project.

By the end of the award, the project will have produced a substantial body of original, creative, open-access material and aims to have generated a cross-generational online conversation amongst new audiences about the 1960s and 1970s. This will serve as a springboard to engage with more 'top down' outlets for public history (print press, TV, radio, art galleries, museums) to encourage them to integrate this period into their activities. If successful, this model of how to bring new chronologies and stories into public history 'from below' has the potential to be applied to a wide range of contexts and chronological periods.

This project trials a new model for engaging with new audiences. Concrete, feasible, measurable goals to be achieved within the lifespan of the funded project aim to create the basis for wider ranging and more ambitious, difficult-to-achieve impacts beyond the end of the award.

Those who will immediately benefit from the project are the interviewees who participate in the documentaries. They will have the opportunity to make a contribution to the history of Algeria in their own words, ensuring that their stories are not lost at a point in time when their generation is beginning to die out. Oral history interviews carried out by the PI as part of the original research have demonstrated that telling one's story to a researcher can enable interviewees to realise the value of what they have to say, prompting them to write their memoirs, or talk to their family about their life story. Also amongst the immediate beneficiaries are the young Algerian filmmakers and artists who will contribute to producing the documentaries and the associated website and artwork. They will have the opportunity to directly engage with a period in history to which they have been little exposed and shape how it is presented to the wider public, as well as bring their work to the attention of an international audience.

Once the website and associated social media are up and running, the main beneficiaries are the target users. The primary audience will consist of: (a) other Algerians of the 1960s and 1970s generation, who will be able to share their memories via the project website and its Facebook page (b) Younger generations of Algerians who will have resources to learn about a period in history which is not taught in schools, present in museums or much discussed in the media. All users will be encouraged to give feedback about what they would like to learn more about, enabling them to actively shape and have a stake in how the project develops. The professionally subtitled films and autotranslate features embedded in social media will facilitate community engagement in Arabic, French and English.

The secondary audience will consist of international audiences in the French/English/Arabic-speaking worlds (including their diasporas). The model of the documentaries, website, artwork and associated social media which will emerge from this project has the potential to be replicated in a wide range of places and chronological periods. It will be of particular interest to users elsewhere in the world who face similar issues to those in Algeria (absence of post-independence history in public space, closed archives) and who could adapt the model to new contexts.

By generating an online discussion around a specific documentary project, the broader aim beyond the life of the award is to start a wider conversation within Algeria about post-independence history and intergenerational transmission. Institutional priorities and ways of doing things are always slow to change, but the long-term goal would be that post-independence, 'ordinary' histories find their place within Algerian museums, school textbooks, art galleries and the mainstream media as a result of demonstrating 'bottom up' interest in this period. As a stepping stone to this, the fact that the videos will be of broadcast quality and available via a Creative Commons licence will facilitate their reuse by journalists on the radio and in documentaries and reports. The artwork also has the potential to be easily repackaged by a curator as a gallery exhibition, with the videos integrated via viewing posts or QR codes. Making space for stories which foreground agency, construction, negotiation and hope in the future provides an important counterbalance to stories of violent confrontation between mutually exclusive groups which have for too long dominated how Algerian history, and Algerian society, have been seen and understood from both 'inside' and 'outside'.