Description
This research examines the embodied memories of the Franco-Algerian War of Decolonization (1954–1962), to explore how this war continues to shape the racial and religious hierarchies in a post-colonial contemporary France. Hegemonic, state-sanctioned narratives privilege Francophone and colonial perspectives, marginalizing Algerian, Harki, and anti-imperial voices. In response, this presentation seeks to decenter official(ized) forms of memory-making (material and spatial commemoration, national days, toponyms, and so on) to include and recognize embodied memories of war. Memories live within and through the body, positioning it as an affective, intergenerational, and active site of knowledge production.
More broadly, the research advances embodied memory as both an epistemological and political intervention. It leans on anti-colonial and Indigenous epistemologies (see cuerpo-territorio by Cabnal, 2010; Guzmán, 2024; Goeman, 2013), which conceive body, mind, and environment as interconnected. By analyzing embodied memories of the Franco-Algerian War, the research contributes to broader debates in decolonial memory studies and reveals how somatic and intergenerational remembrance negotiates colonial hierarchies of race, identity, and belonging in France. The paper argues for an embodied memory as a decolonial practice of reconciliation and re-humanization in postcolonial France.
