Algerian Colonialism as a Case Study for Religion and Politics
The study of religion and politics is often recognized by scholars as a sub field of political science (Olson 639). As a part of a broader disciplinary category, it contributes a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of religion. Indeed, the categories of “religion” and “politics” often tend to be deeply connected concepts. In the past, scholars working in the fields of religious studies and political science tended to work exclusively in their own disciplines. However, in recent years there has been a transition between disciplines that usefully links both studies together in order to produce more critical and intelligent ways of understanding the roles played by “religion” and “politics” in society. It seems as though scholars in social sciences and humanities have been faster at implementing this process than political scientists, for example, who have been slower “to embrace the study of religion”(Olson 639). The evidence for this is apparent in the fields of political science and international relations, where scholars tend to view their disciplines as more suited to a secular framework in their respective disciplines (Abu-Nimer 492). Similarly, this is an issue that is reflected in much of the history of religious studies scholarship, where the concept of “religion” was often viewed as a unique category that existed outside of the traditional spheres of the social sciences and humanities (McCutcheon 611).
However, with the emergence of critical theory and postmodern thought in the study of religion, the political has been understood to be reflected in the concept of religion, which is often thought to be used a category of the political. The way in which the category of religion is framed, for example, whether as a government policy, category of identity or a subject of law, often reflects the extent to which religion is shaped by the political. In religious studies, there seems to have been a shift in the way in which scholarship approaches the intersection of religious and political realities. In the contemporary study of religion, for instance, many religious studies departments bring in different voices from a variety of disciplines to form a multidisciplinary approach to the study of religion, aimed at discussing how religion can be usefully studied as an aspect of political, social and cultural thought (one example is the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria). This is also meant to encourage critical debate between scholars, in order to develop a well-rounded community of academics engaged in the study of religion.
With these examples in mind, I will now turn my attention to the particular subject of this paper, which I believe is a significant point of reference for thinking about the relationship between religion and politics. In this paper, I am interested in exploring the relationship between French colonialism in Algeria and anti-semitism as a case study for understanding the study of religion and politics. What is the significance of the relationship between the colonization of Algeria and anti-semitism for the study of religion and politics? How do the concepts of religion and politics connect to the core themes of this particular era of colonial administration? I argue that the situation of colonialism in Algeria points towards the complexity of social, religious and cultural realities, directly challenging the neat binary opposition of the distinctions separating “religion” from “politics”. This case study reveals that in reality, it is difficult to separate the religious from the political, and shows how religion can be used as a category for power and control. Thus, in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of religion and politics, it is necessary to understand the variety of ways in which these categories can be constructed and implicated in each other. In order to discuss the case of Algeria, I will begin with an introduction to the legacy of Jacques Derrida, an Algerian Jew, whose work represents a tremendous challenge to power politics, and the legacy of Eurocentrism in philosophical and literary analysis.
I believe that Jacques Derrida is a thinker whose thought plays a critical role in the development of theory and method in the study of religion. For example, Derrida’s theory of deconstruction is an important way of critiquing and challenging the construction of categories in the study of religion which, for example, frame religious studies as perhaps a solely theological endeavour, disconnected from the study of politics and society. While Derrida’s ideas are highly significant for thinking about a wide range themes in philosophy and literary theory, including the dynamics of power in philosophy, language and ethics, it is important to think about the context of his life, and the society in which he was born into, which played a highly contextual role in shaping Derrida’s ideas. For this reason, Derrida might be described as a scholar on the margins, as someone whose ideas are informed by a different and unique historical positioning of identity. Indeed, in the context of the imperial legacy of European culture, Algeria is often portrayed in a marginal way, as a colonial outpost of civilization, as a frontier on the periphery of culture.
As a Sephardic Jew, Derrida was born into a complex and shifting social, political and cultural system that reflected a community, culture and context in transition. In a way, the complexity of Derrida’s scholarship is a reflection of the Jewish experience in Algeria during the period of colonization. Indeed, the Jewish experience of the loss of citizenship in Algeria in 1943, and subsequently the loss of an identity, and what remains of this identity are constant themes throughout Derrida’s work. In effect, the experience of colonization had a profound impact on Derrida’s writing, especially the way in which Derrida thought and spoke about his relationship with French language and culture. Indeed, the traumatic reality of such an experience resonates deeply with themes of cultural and social alienation, and the use of writing as a particular method of self-expression to potentially reconcile these experiences within oneself.
In any case, I argue that the colonization of Algeria has a profound significance for the way in which we think about the relationship between religion and politics. In the context of French colonial Algeria, it seems that the concept of religion is woven into the political organization of French Algerian society, pointing towards how religious identity can be used to determine political ideas such as citizenship, sovereignty and law. For the purposes of this paper, I will briefly highlight the history of French Algeria, focusing on the place of religion in the French colonial administration.
The colonization of Algeria by the French began in 1830, and ended with Algerian independence in 1962. As recounted at the beginning of Helene Cixous’s essay, “This Stranjew Body,” the colonization of Algeria was deeply imprinted on to the memory of Algerians:
How to recall, how to bring to mind, the month of July, 1830; it is so hot, it was yesterday; how not to recall the surge of the army, the 37, 000 men, armed by the ministry of war with a historical insight that permitted the opposition of “truth” to “errors” and promised to the soldiers a victoriy over the Turks, the Moors, and the others. It is a yesterday well protected by forgetfulness, that evening of July 4, when the army reached the plateau of El Bihar and the slopes that dominate the Fort L’Empereur to the West (52).
The colonial legacy of the French empire in Algeria reflects a complex period of political, cultural and social transformation in French society. The arrival of the French in Algeria was met with a great degree of resistance among the local Arab populations, including the Muslim resistance leader Emir Abdelkader, who successfully fought off the French for a significant period of time. In general, this period is characterized by a significant amount of violence and tension between the French Army and the Indigenous resistance. The violence permeated into the public sphere, and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. According to Sessions, this was mainly the result of the spread of diseases, rather than the result of the conflict itself (77). Overall, similar to other colonial situations, the conflict created a fracture in Algerian society, and one might argue that it created the conditions for an identity complex in the postcolonial period.
In any case, in order to maintain France’s authority and legitimacy to govern in Algeria, it was necessary to establish French culture as the most dominant cultural horizon (Roberts 12). This was maintained through a system of governance that created the conditions for the political involvement of the Jews of Algeria, as an expression of rights, especially at the local municipal and administrative levels of government (Roberts 24). This can be considered to be a part of the broader strategy of the French colonial regime to assimilate the people of the Algerian colony into French culture and society. According to Roberts, the use of Jewish identity (indeed, the utilization of the Jews as a political experiment, and a category to be thought with) to accomplish this goal was an important aspect of the process of assimilation (3). Hence, the Crémieux Decree was an a significant instrument for the assimilation of Algerian Jews into French society. I think that this is an important example that explains the argument that religion is often used in very political ways to influence power and politics in society.
The French colonial period was a particularly turbulent and violent era. Throughout this period, French society experienced broad social and political transformations, rooted in the shifting political influence of French government, which itself underwent a variety of transformations and political shifts in leadership: from the Second Republic under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, to the decline of the French empire, the reconstitution of the monarchy, and eventually the formation of the Third Republic. During World War II, the French government was primarily subjected to the influence of the Vichy Regime, which under the leadership of Phillipe Petain, was in an alliance with the Nazi regime in Germany. The Vichy Regime had a major impact on the Jews of Algeria when it effectively revoked the Crémieux Decree which afforded Jews and “Berbers” in Algeria French citizenship.
Nevertheless, the anti-semitism of this era is deeply engrained in the cultural memory of the Jews in Algeria. While the Holocaust is presented as the pinnacle of anti-semitism in European history, it is nonetheless important to make the connection to how the cultural genocide of the Jews was also experienced across a variety of cultural contexts, and it is from this perspective of the margins that affords a particularly rich understanding of how these historical events unfolded. For Jews, the period of the French Vichy Regime is marked by a traumatic loss of their cultural identity. As Roberts states, the Crémieux Decree represents a central theme for any study of the Jews of Algeria, because it reflects a deep moment of fragility (1). this paper, I have discussed the relationship between religion and politics, and how this represents a complex area of intellectual discussion and analysis. The case study of Algerian colonialism reveals that the concept of religion can used as a political category to support the dominant ideological discourse, in this case, the strategy of assimilation of the Jews into French culture and society. I have also discussed the work of Jacques Derrida, who I think contributes a tremendous resource to the analysis of religion and politics. The deconstruction of this relationship shows that religion and politics are often constructed in reference to one another.
Works Cited
Abu-Nimer, Mohammed. “Religion, Dialogue, and Non-Violent Actions in Palestinian-Israeli
Conflict.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17.3 (2004): 491–511.
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Cixous, Helene. “This Strangew Body.” Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida. Translated by
Bettina Bergo and Michael B. Smith. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Monolingualism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin. Translated by
Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Print
McCutcheon, Russell T. “On the Myth of Disenchantment.(Review Essay).” Harvard
Theological Review 111.4 (2018): 610–617. Web.
Olson, Laura R. “The Essentiality of ‘Culture’ in the Study of Religion and Politics.” Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 50.4 (2011): 639–653. Web.
Roberts, Sophie B. “Jews Citizenship and Antisemitism In French Colonial Algeria, 1870-1943.”
Utoronto.ca. Last Accessed, November 27, 2019. Web.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/33871/6/Roberts_Sophie_B_201103_Ph
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Sessions, J.E. “Colonizing Revolutionary Politics: Algeria and the French Revolution of 1848.”
French Politics, Culture and Society 33.1 (2015): 75–100. Web.
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