A RESPONSE TO PAUL SILVERSTEIN'S REVIEW OF VIOLENT MODERNITY: FRANCE IN ALGERIA

Extract

In his review of my book Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (IJMES 44 [2012]: 199–201), Paul Silverstein concludes that my argument “in essence boils down to a central syllogism: modernity equals colonialism equals violence.” While I appreciate the time and the effort he put into reading and presenting my book to readers of IJMES, I need to say that this is simply not my argument. Using insights from anthropologist Marshal Sahlins, I examine colonial culture (generative of postcolonial events) and show how it has continued to shape the present and how it manifests itself mainly in the culture of nationalism, any allusion of which is totally absent from Silverstein's review. I define violence in a variety of ways—physical, symbolic, and textual—which all point to the power to transform, that is, to displace, to destroy, and ultimately to create. If a reader misses this idea, the entire argument will be overlooked. I made a complex argument taking into consideration time (i.e., change) and different agencies (i.e., a complex set of historical actors, not reducible to one single binary opposition).