Understanding Islamic Militancy through Material culture:

The Case of the Kouachi brothers

Intro:

«On a tué Charlie Hebdo !» The Kouachi Brothers (FAURE et al., 2015)

“We have killed Charlie Hebdo” were the Words of the Cherif And Said

Kouachi after the murderous rampage that they have perpetrated in the

Charlie Hebdo’s offices. The assailants killed nine unarmed journalists, a

construction worker, the editor of Charlie Hebdo’s bodyguard and one

police officer.

It was the deadliest attacks (adding to that the toll of the killings carried

out by Amedy Coulilbily, which amounted to twenty peoples) on the

French soil in the modern history of the country, proceeded only by the

terrorist slaughter committed by The Organisation de l'Armée Secrète

(OAS) in 1961 Vitry-Le-François train bombing. It was a violent and

despicable act that this paper will analyse from different perspectives of

material culture’s theories. The bodies of Cherif And Said embody an

interaction and relationship to a web of material life (Spyer, 2015). This

approach to the bodies is not to analyse the latter as physical entities in

their own but as sentience beings that had encompassed and imbued the

environment where these humans were developed. In a crude Cartesian

interpretation, the body and the mind create a union shaping a human

being (Honderich, 2015). Due to the non-philosophical design of this

paper, I contend, using a partial cursory philosophical, that the outcome

of mind-body equates mind to body, hence the former has physical

property. This idealism favours mind over body (Honderich, 2015).

This aim of this investigation is comprehensive; it employs different

social sciences (sociology, psychology, philosophy, history) within an

archaeological setting that, hopefully, will help to study radicalised

individuals in an approach that reflects the complexity of the subject and

elucidate the patterns of the culture of radicalisation in France.

Also, when we analyse a modern human body, the methods used to

understand the corps and its dialogue with related materiality helps to

decipher in depths the mysteries of the pasts. Certainly human ideologies,

landscapes and environments… are always changing, yet the substances

of humanity don’t. The essence of the unconsciousness that drives the

fluid consciousness is similar.

The first part of this essay introduces the theoretical methodology to

analyse the Kouachi brother’s assault and its relation to the corrupt

postcolonial historical process, which France denied its true capitalistic

and imperialist purpose and mask especially the Algerian War of

independence (1954-1962) as a straightforward military intervention “to

maintain order” in part of “their” country (3). The second part deals with

the ramifications of postcolonialism in France in forms of stereotypical

fabrication of the Maghrebi identity in a ghettoized setting. These

“external” environment are the streets of the ghettoized cite, and their

outlets that are generally materialized in prisons, football, music, Islamic

radicalisation, drugs and arms trafficking.

Methodology

A brief historical overview:

There is an intellectual need to introduce the theoretical background to

understand the objectification of ideas. In a sense, explaining the

paradoxical oxymoron terminology in relation to the theory that have

evolved since, what we seek in material culture is the ‘immateriality” that

defines the human, her identity, her character, her culture, her social

status and social history (family). In archaeology, the fundamental

theories that shaped the foundation of theory of material culture are

Marxism, structuralism and semiotics, and phenomenology (Tilley,

2006b). This essay resorts to the approaches of objectification and

phenomenology to explain the radicalisation of the Kouachi brothers.

However, postcolonial theory, the skeleton in the closet, steers this

paper’s gist.

Marx claimed that the material conditions of life and their production by

means of human activities, determined the ways of life (Marx and Engels

1977, cited in Jones and Boivin 2010, p. 338). “The mode of production

of material life determines the general character of the social, political

and spiritual process of life” (Marx 1964:51). Staying in the realm of

technology, Marshall McLuhan asserted, “the medium is the message”

(McLuhan, M., 1964). That is to say, that the transformative impact of

technology transforms the human and her relationships to other people. In

the late 1970’s, however, the latter’s determinism of technology was

challenged. Anthropologist, and later on archaeologists, analysed the

effect of the environment on humans that resulted on the development of

symbolic ecology, historical ecology and political ecology (Biesrsack

1999). These schools of thoughts shifted agency from technology and

technological-things to human. “[A]gency…is deeply embedded in the

larger social structure and culture-so deeply, indeed, as to divest

technology of its presumed power as an independent agent initiating

change” (Marx and Smith 1994, cited in Jones and Boivin 2010).

It is against the backdrop of this socially constructed and humanised

nature of technology, the latter is based on socio-cultural factors,

(Pfaffenberg1988: 244) that Tilley in Objectification (2007 b) argued that

the shift must go further and objectified the material forms that are

embedded in culture and society (Tilley 2007 b). According to Tilley

(2007 b), he equates culture and material culture: “Objectification,

considered in the most general way, is a concept that provides a particular

way of understanding the relationship between subjects and objects, the

central concern of material culture studies. It attempts to overcome the

dualism in modern empiricist thought in which subjects and objects are

regarded as utterly different and opposed entities, respectively human and

non-human… Through making, using, exchanging, consuming,

interacting and living with things people make themselves in the process.

The object world is thus absolutely central to an understanding of the

identities of individual persons and societies. Or, to put it another way,

without the things- material culture- we could neither be ourselves nor

know ourselves…Culture and material culture are the two sides of the

same coin. They are related dialectically, in a constant process of being

and becoming: processual in nature rather than static or fix.” (Tilley

2007b, p. 61)

Neumann’s report on the recruitment and mobilisation for the Islamist

movement in Europe (Neumann, 2007) sheds a light on the approaches

through which Islamists in Europe mobilise their followers and recruit

new ones. Understanding recruitment is essential, for it is the active

expression of radicalisation, i.e., using violence for a political aim

(Taarnby, 2006). The Islamist militants, predominantly neo-Salafists and

neo-Wahabists, believe that Muslim and Arab countries ought to be

reigned with Sharia- Islamic rule. It is the obligation of every believer to

engage in Jihad, arm struggle, so to achieve this aim and protect the

Ummah, Islamic community. (This interpretation of Jihad is in

accordance to the Islamist militants’ ideology, for non violent Jihad

definitions, please see Jeremiah Bowden Jihad and the Qur'an: The Case

for a Non-Violent Interpretation of the Qur'an .)

When the Kouachi brothers were identified as the assailants of Charlie

Hebdo, most of the well-meant-constructive attentions went to explain

that the two brothers actions were due to feeling frustrated, alienated and

marginalised by the French society and hence joining a radical group for

a sense of belonging (Le Figaro, 2015-The Guardian, 2015- Le Monde,

2015). This approach of strains and stresses that was endured by the

North-African community in France tried to explain the root of terrorism

as the violent expression of people grievances.

“In November 2005, the French government declared state of emergency

in response to the nation’s most serious civil disturbances since 1986.

Unlike the student and the worker demonstrations of 1968, which took

place in city centers, factories and university campuses, the disorders of

2005 occurred in disadvantaged urban areas known as the banlieues,

(disadvantage neighbourhood), where they pitted mainly ethnic youths

against thousands of French police.” (Hargreaves 2007:1)

This unorganised protest that went on for several weeks were a reaction

to the deaths of two youths, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, in the suburb

of Clichy-sous-Bois. More unrest followed and several other riots erupted

mainly by ethnic minority, second and third generation North-African

youths, in protest of the harassment of the police, discriminations,

inadequate education system and the high unemployment rates. The

rioters expressed these grievances by burning public buildings and cars

(Hargreaves, 2007). The former’s ways of rioting have become in itself a

tradition of protests against the French system (riots of 2007,2009, 2013).

Following Bourdieu’s practical logic in his study of the Kabyle

(Bourdieu, 1972), these social expressions have become traditional

practices in rioting stemed from the habitus (poverty, humiliation,

unemployment, disenfranchisement...). And in its turn this objectification

of grievances becomes the inclination of this ethnic community. “The

mind is a metaphor of the world of objects which is itself but an endless

circle of mutually reflecting metaphors.”

The youths burning of public buildings are symbol of street-justice in

reaction to their mistreatment by officers of the law that had shaped the

formers’ way of life. The burning of cars represents the assailant’s anger

in the continuing exclusion from a society that is rich, comfortable,

secular…The dominant French apparatus has created a capital of injustice

that becomes the identity of the Maghrebis descendants from the

banlieues, however this community’s identity mustn’t be reduced to the

oppressor’s dictations. For even though Bourdieu’s definition of capital is

complex and far-reaching (symbolic, social, cultural), and the

introduction of the habitus elucidate homologies of the objectifications of

rioting, the fairly popular new wave of Islamic radicalisation can’t be

inferred from the earlier theories. For none of the thousands of the rioters

were chanting for a creation of an Islamic state but expressing their

indignation of not being part of the secular France (Hargreaves 2007: 8).

Yet not even a decade later, some of these same youths have

metamorphosed to Islamist militants.

In regard of strain theory, one of its important drawbacks is that its focus

on the social-economical grievances are not sufficient factors to instigate

Islamic radicalism (Neumann, 2007). The radicalised Europeans who

head to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State (IS) since 2011 are on the rise

(Hegghammer, 2015) and both theories above can’t elucidate why. The

downfalls of Bourdieu’s theory of practical logic are several. First, the

hermeneutic capacity of the social scientist who interprets an

environment and a habitus that she doesn’t understand the silence, untold,

cultural, forgotten or gender symbolism of the object is problematic. And

in the case of rioting or radicalisation, the social scientist does not grasp

the psycho-socio dimensions of the subject, or the epistemological and

ontological issues surrounding the object. In later chapters, this paper

takes in consideration some of these factors.

Let’s draw back our attention on the Islamist movement and the material

culture that help mobilise and radicalise people in France.

The Kouachi brother’s pledged their alliance to Al Qaeda in Yemen (Al

Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; AQAP). “Al Qaeda was a system not an

organisation” (Brynjar 2006, cited in Neuman 2007).

However, in different meaning of definitions of a system (Webster

dictionary, 1994), the primary one is: A group of connected part or thing

that forms a whole and function interdependently and harmoniously. The

rest of the definitions are only metaphors of the principle one. Hence in

social science theory, when there is a reference of a system, the individual

and her habitus are excluded from this set. This theorizing contradicts

what was mentioned earlier about the anger of the rioters in not to being

included within the French society. Hence it would be only evident that

these individuals seek something different which is more complex and

alluring to the historical consciousness of the individual. When dealing

with radicalism, social scientist illustrates this issue in a metaphor that is

intrinsic to her own habitus. This hermeneutic difficulty can be overcome

by pursuing a phenomenological analysis to radicalism.

Phenomenology and the material culture of the Islamists:

“[I]t is impossible to insulate the phenomenological approach, and present it as a neatly packaged ‘methodology’, which can be straightforwardly applied to a given body of evidence. Because phenomenology systematically undermines the modern West’s prioritization of epistemology and the demand that ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric and politics be purged from analysis and explanation, these concerns are forever on the brink of erupting into any phenomenological investigation. Phenomenology deals in world disclosure, in which an engagement with a particular entity leads us into an expanding web of relationships. No matter how restricted the frame of inquiry, phenomenology will tend to lead towards more extensive reflections.” (Thomas, 2007).

This clarification of phenomenology leads us to the primary inquiry of

this paper, the mental landscape of a radical. What is his/her mental

landscape and how did she/he get there? Evidently the ultimate

objectification of the militant-mental-landscape results in violent actions.

Yet its process is not always materialised outwardly. It is due time to

outline certain material objects that are associated to the Islamic radical in

France. It is vital to first introduce the young men issued of the banlieue,

of Maghribi descent, outwears of choice. They are fond of Lacoste, a

pricey yuppiesh French clothing brand. Tracksuits (brand names, even

fakes, are more desirable) are also conspicuous attire. (Cherif donned

both style even after his radicalisation.) Chaussures requin, shark shoes

are sneakers of excellence.

After radicalisation, it was customary for Men to grow their bears and

start wearing the Pashtun dress. As for their footwear, some wear

sneakers or sandals. The headgear is also integral to this style usually

men wear Chéchia. Said Kouachi sported these type of clothing once he

was radicalised.

Women start veiling their heads, if they weren’t before, and some form of

Abaya, Khimar, Chador, Niquab or Burka (although France banned face

covering in 2010). For women and men, these outwear demonstrate

modesty and also a rapture with their former selves. Nonetheless, the

value of these objectifications is superficial and naive, especially in the

case of the militants. For although some for these outward observations

might be true for some radicalised, they are signs of Islam orthodoxy

which is peaceful. One of the problems of objectification of material

culture is it falls into racist and prejudice interpretations. The Islamist

militants on the other hand, in this time of high-level vigilance from both

the Muslim community and officials, ceased to objectify their faith or

their militancy. The Taqiya or Idtirar in Islam is a permissible exemption

expressing falsehoods about one’s faith or committing blasphemous acts

when a Muslims is coerced to save her/his life. This doctrine is being

used in France by the radicalised so to stay invisible (Le Monde 2015).

Hence all the forms of objectifications that were stated above are absent.

Despite this active form of deception which result of a false impression of

the militant while his mental state is radicalised. Manifestly, the mind is

the landscape to be studied; the mind is the radicalised materiality.

Mapping the cognition of the Cherif and Said Kouachi:

Said and Cherif were born to Algerian parents, in 1980 and 1982

respectively, in Paris. The father’s presence was irregular and he was

violent toward his children (Seelow, 2015). He died one year before their

mother (Lichfield, 2015). The latter’s death was speculated as a suicide.

The mother was neglectful toward her children and she was having

financial troubles to care for them as well (Lichfield, 2015). After they

became orphaned, they were relocated to different children’s institutions.

Their last orphanage, in Coreze, where they spent most of their

adolescent years was violent and children had to fend for themselves (Le

Matin 2015). Once they became of legal age, they moved back to Paris.

Their uncle kicked them out of his home and for four years they lived in

impoverished conditions in a family of converts (to Islam). It was at this

time when they were radicalised. Yet the degree of radicalisation was not

as strong until Said was imprisoned and proselytise to Salifism by Djamel

Beghal (Le Monde 2015).

This succinct overview of the Kouachi’s life journey brings forward the

elements of the violent father figure, the continuity of violence

throughout their lives-till their deaths- and the yearning for a father

figure.

In Leane Gebona’s article on the relationship between the thoughts and

beliefs of people and their material culture (Gebona, 2008) concludes that

there “are horizontal (within generations) and vertical (between

generation) transmission of material culture” (Gebona, 2008). In this

case, the objectification is growing up in the Algerian-Franco culture in

France.

The Muslim and Arab cultures are patriarchal. These cultures are also

authoritarians. In Counselling and psychotherapy with Arabs and

Muslims, Marwan Dwairy (2006, p.6) stated: “Collective and/or

authoritarian cultures emphasize family integrity, harmony,

interdependence, saving face, authority, and hierarchy within the

collective.”

Violence, verbal and corporal, are ingrained in the education of the

Muslim and Arab family. Dwairy (2006, p.25) writes:

“Parents control their children’s behaviour and allow them little room for freedom of choice. Initially, they use verbal measures such as guidance, directive and advice. Typically, these directives are not limited to what the child should do, but also include warnings and threats of punishment in case of disobedience. If these measures do not succeed, parents immediately move to a combination of deprivation and corporal punishment, on the other hand, and belittling, moralising, and shaming,

on the other. The move from verbal guidance to depravation and punishment is made regardless of the issue with which they are dealing. In one study I conducted among Arab/Muslim parents, the subjects presented their two-stage plan of verbal admonition followed by punishments as their solution for every problem about which they asked (Dwairy, 1988a). Both mothers and fathers adopt this plan to control their male and female children. Only minor differences were found between the plans of fathers and mothers, and between the treatment of boys and girls. Although both parents support the same plan, mothers, being closer to the children, tend to try to mitigate the punishment, expressing some degree of empathic affection for the child or dissatisfaction with the punishment, while fathers tend to be more remote and stricter, displaying less affection. Mothers tend to be ambivalent: They express a lot of positive affection, but conversely express weariness with the burden they carry, and sometimes helplessness. Mothers serve as buffers between the patriarchal authority and their children: They often play the role of the weak agent obliged to fulfil the will of the stronger patriarchal authority, but they also threaten the children with the father’s authority when they disobey.”

This passage shed the lights on the formative years of Said and Cherif.

(Certainly, the Kouachi family was a dysfunctional one, but Dwairy’s

passage introduce us the ‘normal’ habitus of the Arab/Muslim family and

I will add, that these observations are more likely to be of relevance for

first generation immigrant parents). This authoritarian element within the

habitus is one of the most understudied factors in studying radicalisation.

It is important in two distinctive ways, as a personal inclination for

authoritarianism or as to revolt against patriarchal authoritarianism within

an Islamic frame (it has to be taken to account that the individual in

question does not have to be Muslim) . The first clause will be dealt later

on. The second clause suggests that the youths rebel against their parents’

draconian rules of bringing them up. Due to the sacredness of the family

in the Arab/Islamic society, and especially of the parents, it is

inconceivable that a child criticizes his parents. In a way of building that

self-esteem, or respect that one looses; the youths try different ways of

protecting their self and body. And one approach that they take is to go

back to the origins, to immerse themselves in understanding Islam.

However the doctrine that they are seeking is not a peaceful one, they are

seeking for certain justice against the violent parental domination that

they are or were afflicted by. Militant Islam combines all the “arms” to

fight on their families. The only entity that is more sacred than family is

Islam (God, Prophet and Quran) itself. When the youth masters the

Islamic doctrine, the power start shifting to their side. That sense of

power is not fulfilled until there is a real breakage with the family. Which

Islamic doctrine support when the person’s family are not observant.

During this process the children never raise the trauma, caused by the

parents, for discussion.

The Kouachi brothers’ predicaments were not only the disappearance of

their family and the continuing violence through their childhood but also

both men had to learn how to fulfil the roll of the patriarchs.

Djamel Beghal, an Algerian national charged for intents to blow up the

American embassy in Paris, would fulfil this role while Cherif was

incarcerated in the same prison, Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne). It is alleged

that he indoctrinated Cherif, and also Amedy Coulibaly, into Salafism.

Beghal acted as the spiritual father for these youths.

The father figure complex solely cannot explain the radicalisation of the

Kouachi brothers. Said and Cherif existed in perpetual series of traumas,

personal, family, historical, societal, economical…in a sense their deadly

end was imminent. Investigating their type of personalities hopefully will

elucidate the identity of the youths who are prone to radicalisation.

Personhood, recently, has become a focus in identity studies (Fowler,

2007). “The term ‘personhood’ refers to the state or condition of being a

person. Studies of personhood investigate how persons emerge from

specific ways of being in the world, and consider personhood and

concepts of the person to be socially and culturally varied.”(Fowler,

2007)

Personal identity, which is different from the social identity, “is an

interiorized sense of self that underlines that social identity.”(Fowler,

2007) Said and Cherif both try to fill “le vide”, void and emptiness

within, by practicing religion. (In a conversation with his half-sister while

trying to proselytise her, Cherif said that: “Only religion can fill the

void”. (Seelow, 2015) [author’s translation]

Both Cherif and Said traumas have made damaging disturbances on their

personalities and selves. Both of the Kouachi brothers manifested the

traits of Narcissism. In a nutshell, Narcissism is the subconscious

renunciation of the real self. Said and Cherif started denying their true

feelings so to cope with the atrocities that they encounter (Lowen, 1983,

p.5). Cherif especially displayed “various combinations of intense

ambitiousness, grandiose fantasies, feelings of inferiority and

overdependence on external admirations and acclaims.” (Keruberg, 1975,

cited in Lowen, 1983, p.6). Cherif was a very skilled footballer who never

succeeded in his endeavour to join a professional club due to his violence,

toward his teammates, and indiscipline. His self-appraisal was

unbalanced. During his time in the orphanage, he routinely boasted about

his look and his successful sexual adventures. He usually asserted to other

teenagers how good-looking he is (Le Matin 2015). This arrogance of the

ego is found in all narcissistic personalities, regardless of their lack of

achievement or self-esteem. Said needed to “project an image which is a

perversion of reality.”(Lowen 1983, p.5) He was also very violen and

hated the Les Galois (native Frenchs) to a point of dehumanizing them.

The unequivocal definition of narcissism leaves no doubt that one of the

mental trouble that Cherif is a narcissist. People who suffer from this

disturbance are the “unconscious exploitiveness and ruthlessness toward

others.” (Keruberg, 1975, cited in Lowen 1983, p.6) To refine his traits,

he suffered from a psychopathic personality. The latter kind “Moving

along our spectrum to the psychopathic personality, we would expect to

find an even greater degree of grandiosity, whether manifest or latent.

All psychopathic personalities consider themselves superior to other

people and show a degree of arrogance that verges on contempt for

common humanity.” (Lowen, 1983, p.22)

Said on the other hand was the Cherif’s first causality. Said “completed”

the functioning of Cherif’s mental disturbance. The former fulfilled the

“attention seeking” of his younger brother. Said was very dependent on

Cherif (Seelow, 2015, p.4). Even though he hated the Galois and when

his sister Aisha had cohabited with her native French boyfriend, he

severed his relationship with her, he did not show an unbalanced

personality.

To conclude, the personhood of the Islamist militant is barley studied as

oppose to the non-Islamic militant. Once a terrorist act against civilians is

committed by a person of the Muslim faith, he or she are not as a

psychologically disturbed individual, yet if the assailant was not a

Muslim or Arab, reflexively, mentality is taking into consideration. (Fisk,

2015) After every Islamist assault, there is an immediate jumping of the

bandwagon to “personify” culture and Islam into the assailant instead of

considering the identity of the instigator. The identity of the Franco-

Algerian is one that is embedded in the history of both countries. History

is what shapes human nature. (Hegel, 1956) As consequence, in our

pursuit to study the “archaeology of mind” we ought to study this

historical conflict of consciousness.

A brief history of the colonization and decolonization of Algeria:

The part of the history that is emphasized in this paper is the history of

Algeria, and Algerians, and also of its relation to France. For the aim of

this brief historical introduction is to demonstrate the continuity of ideas

that centuries later have been materialised into the carving of

radicalisation’s ideologies of the Kouachi brothers. Hence it is a history

of classes struggle, injustices: against the colonizers, the settlers, the army

and the representatives of the French government in Algeria. Also the

genocides that were committed against the Algerians in Algeria are

highlighted. Third, is mentioning the infamous 17 October 1961 massacre

of Algerian citizens in France and relate it to the continuing repression

(not to the same extent) by the law-enforcement body in dealing with

Algerian descents youths. In sum, this brief historical investigation

demonstrates the continuity of the process of embodiment of traumatic

experiences and imparts them to the following generations by mean of

ideologies and dialectic; in consequence the prevalent one now is

Salafisme (Le Monde, 2015).

Algeria was an Ottoman colony before the French colonized it. France

was in its most intense imperialistic expansion and the colonisation of

Algeria, which later on became part of France, was an act of a vapid

geopolitical supremacy show. From the invasion in 1830 till the start of

the bloody war in 1954-1962, this country was marred by violent

governance of the few Europeans settlers (Frenchs and the pieds noirs:

Spanish, Italians, Maltese) of the majority of native Algerians (Amazighs

and Arabs). It was during this colonisation that Algerian nationalism was

construe and hence the modern Algerian identity.

The historical context:

Before the independence of Algeria in 1962, around a century before

hand, the French invaded Algeria. The dominance of the French was

violent and destructive to the pre-colonized Algeria. Native-Algerians

were massacred, displaced, imprisoned and mass raped (Alexis de

Tocqueville, 1991, cited in Le Monde Diplomatique, 2015, p. 704). The

settlers appropriated their lands (changed the corps from native’s farming

staples to intensive farming of monoculture Europeans craved corps, as

vineyards growing for wine growing for example.) This change of

landscape is relevant to mention for it was part of starving the population

that helped dissidents and most of the time just as an excuse to land

grabbing. Attempts to re-christen Algeria were made by converting

mosques to churches. The architecture of buildings (that housed the

settlers, the military barricades, markets…) that was employed was

French colonial architecture, at odd with the local architectures. It was an

egregious display of dominance and hegemony of the French culture that

reflected on daily lives of the Algerians that have altered their material

culture.

These material changes are important to observe in Algeria within the

colonisation period. For, in a posterior parallelism, a change of landscape

would occur in France, where Algerian immigrants were housed, and

generally their descendants still dwell in the same area. The latter idea

will be developed further in later chapter for its direct significance in the

objectification and socialization of the Kouachi brothers in their French

environment. Hence, together with the reluctance of French government

to address the diary situations of the Muslim Algerians, few subversive

ideologies emerged.

The biography of Algerian nationalism in the colonialist era

Several varying movements were the foundation of Algerian nationalism

during the colonial period. These ideologies were dissipated to France

and are still changing the physical and mental topography of the latter

country’s own citizens.

National identity is unfailingly rooted in wars that are veiled in a

glamorised historical ideology, and Algeria epitomizes it.

Abdelkader, a Sufi leader, waged resistance wars against the French

starting in 1830. By 1838, he created a new Algerian state that covered in

the north, across the borders of the Kabylie, and in the south from the

Oasis of Biskra to the Moroccan border (Encyclopaedia Britannica,

2010). In this new estate the Emir (literary prince in Arabic, but here the

term represents the religious and political leader) introduced schools to

teach the notions of Algerian independence and nationality

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010). The concepts were based on Sufi’s

teachings, equalities for all Algerians, regardless of their religions and

respect of human values and morals for all (O' Centre de l'histoire, AL

AMIR ABDELKADER, 2012).

After the Abdelkader’s defeat, the situation in Algeria deteriorated for the

natives (mainly the Amazighs and the Arabs). The following ideologies

had developed within the last twenty to thirty years before the Algerian

war broke up.

The “assimilationists” was a small group of elitists Algerians who were

educated in the French system and were employed in the French

modernised establishment (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010). They were

willing to accept the annexation of Algeria to France as long as the

Algerians were awarded with the same legal status and rights as the

Frenchs. Their means were peaceful and through the lawful challenge to

the system. The settlers, however, now became a formidable political

body to reckon with and with a strong influence in the French political

apparatus, refused any form of negotiation.

The Algerian Muslim Ulama (AUMA) opposed the former’s movement

ideologies of arrangements with the colons (settlers). The AUMA were a

Salafist non-political-reformist movement lead by Sheikdh Abd al-Hamid

ben Badis. His ideas roused a sense of a deep-seated Muslim Algerian

nationalism. Ben Badis established schools to promote Salafist education

(and condemn Sufism), for children women and men. The protection and

championing of the Algerian heritage was the other ingrained aim

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010).

The following movement is the prelude materialisation of the meshed

national identity between Algeria and France in France. Messali Hadj led

the radical proletariat movement in France. His message, to the Algerians

workers displaced to France in WWI and to the Algerians in Algeria, was

a socialist message of nationalism. The latter form was the strongest form

for identification as Algerian or Franco-Algerian until the last three

decades when the insurgence of Salafist identity start to submerge again.

These previously mentioned ideologies would surface to mould the

Franco-Algerian identity in different time and different situations. The

following paragraphs set the framework of investigating the Franco-

Algerian identities following Mieke Bal’s method of separation between

background memory, narrative memory and trauma memory (Lorcine,

1999, p.vii-vii).

Identity:

“To that extent, to immigrate means to immigrate together with one’s history (immigration itself being an integral part of that history), with one’s traditions, ways of living, feeling, acting and thinking, with one’s language, one’s religion and all the other social, political and mental structures of one’s society – structures characteristic of the individual and also of society, since the former is no more than the embodiment of the latter – or, in a word, with one’s culture.” (Sayad, 2004, p.4)

The concept of identity is in the forefront of postcolonial anthropological

and archaeological studies. The memory in history is imbued in the

making of identity. Bringing into focus again the teaching of Algerian

war (1954-62) in schools in France give us an insight of the embodiment

of the dominate and dominated relationship that pupils must “gorge”.

This is also of great importance because in the France the Laïc system

(secular and the state is separated from religion) building identity (Jo

McCormack, 2006) is accomplished in the schools and history is its

backbone. The French textbooks are amnesic about the Algerian

colonisation (Liauzu, 1999, p.24). The war is studied but not in its own

right but only part of decolonisation. (McCormack 2006) This ambiguity

of studying the Algerian-French history makes the building of French

identity problematic. The Algerian colonisation and indeed the war is

only a generation away from the Kouachi brothers, and most likely their

parent or extended family had transmitted to them this knowledge.

Edward Said in Orientalism claimed that colonial powers reach their

imperialist aims not only by exploitation and violence but is “supported

and perhaps even impelled by impressive ideological formations…as well

as forms of knowledge affiliated with domination” (Said 1993, cited in

Domelen, 2007, p.106) The denial of this shared history is an admission

by the French that the colonisation aims have never ended. If the second

generation Maghrebis are empowered with this knowledge while they are

still marginalised by the same system, subversiveness will take place so

to change their lives for the better. And also, the blame will not be placed

on the immigrants and their descents but the French values.

The violence toward the Algerian immigrants and their offspring in has a

historical continuity. Six months before the end of the war of

independence, on the evening of 17 October 1961, Algerian workers and

their families went to the street to protest the police curfew that banned

Algerian Muslims from circulating in the streets at night and also they

march to show their support to for the independence movement in Algeria

(Cole, 2006, p117). The toll of the savage response of the police is around

200 civilians (Einaud, 1991). The police throw people from the Saint-

Michel bridge (to the Seine), they fired directly at the crowds, jailed,

torture and killed incarcerated civilians…

This massacre was met by the state’s silence. Historians were not allowed

to consult the police archives and there was not a single trial against the

police. (No one was ever charged.) The censorship of reporting this event

and other massacres against Algerians immigrants and their descendant

shed the light on what type of “freedom of expression” that the French

were supporting. Charlie Hebdo is a satirical paper that during the last

years supported vulgar, sexist and racist empty provocation.(See any of

their past covers or The Guardian, 2015). This authorisation by the

French state for Charlie Hebdo to print crass fanatic prejudice and not

allow the media to report on the Algerians massacred in France or in

Algeria is a duplicity that unfortunately is rooted to more a vicious

system of oppression and exclusion.

Conclusion:

The archaeology of the mind, i.e, the mind as material culture, is an

exhaustive way of conducting a throughout way of understanding the

human, her way of life, her culture, her changes, her individuality,

identity, personality…in an interdependent way that will advance our

understanding of not only the past humans but also can make archaeology

a harbinger of the future of humanity. For instance, in this essay, we have

witnessed that militancy is a complex issue that must be dealt with using

a complex method. If the only approach that was used to understand the

militant is psychology, for example, a mind-boggling conclusion would

follow: C.E.Os are more likely to commit terror attacks. (A study was

conducted by O’Reilly III et al. (2014) concluded that most of the

successful C.E.Os display traits of narcissism.) However, while

conducting this mental archaeology, the historical-mind was intrinsic to

understand the heart of Islamic radicalisation.

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