How did the pre-1954 nationalism impact on the national movement in Algeria?

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Ancient mythology tells us a lot about what could be an ideal national solidarity. Epic wars and huge battles were either fought to restore dignity of a nation or to fight against injustice. But what types of injustice? Mythology tends to explain the world around us and provides a model for the relationship between humans and the created world. It is a “traditional narrative which has a kernel of historical fact and which features heroic characters” . Myths are in a sense poetic and heroic ways to relate the first social contacts between humans and ‘Mother Nature', or in other terms the social environment. Humans are born tabula Rasa with no a priori knowledge, and their first physical and social contact is with their natural environment. We can compare this relation to a one-to-one relationship with only two major protagonists, humans and the social environment. This naive prepracticum experience comes before the manipulation of the social environment. This process starts at the end of the ‘one-to-one relationship' when humans come to experience a new type of relationship which is a ‘one-to-many' type of relationship. Humans, in this sense, must “quest for the aesthetic experience of meaning which led to the creation of cultural ideals and symbols” . The act of manipulating was thought to be the “way by which humans might overcome their inborn anti-social proclivities, allowing them to live in relative peace and harmony” .

Who do not dream of a “political life where the conditions for human flourishing could be secured” ? What would people willing to do to protect this state of absolute peace? In this way, it is interesting to wonder what would happen if the sacrosanct ‘peace' was to be threatened? What would humans do to protect this ‘non-natural' gift? One concrete example might be found in the making of ancient Rome: “Death be the fate of anyone else who will leap over my walls”. That is, this is “not simply a city's foundation story; it teaches us what happens to those who disregard the city of Rome” . Is violence ever justified? Is violence legally right? More importantly, can we say that violence could be an efficient way for people to dominate again their ‘artificial' so called natural environment in case of threat? This antithesis highlights the complicate relationship between Humans and the structures within which they live. A vast literature in the fields of political science and sociology try to analyze the existing correlation between natural and artificial things. In the same way, political sociology provides us with “information on the relationship between politics and society” . For many analysts the “raison d'etre for studying political and policy development is the attempt to identify individual action, efficacious social structures and an influential realm of ideas and beliefs” . Analyzing the people's actions within social specific structures is essential to understand the real relationship between a moral entity and its people.

Extraits

[...] Violence during this period of wars and colonialism was not just ‘physical' but also moral. However, both physical and moral sufferings helped to create a modern nationhood by fighting for its structures and institutions. Violence, as paradoxical as it might seem, played also an important role in shaping the Algerian social organization. How did Algerian people organize themselves to counter-attack their common enemy? Was violence, in Algeria, the essence behind any social organization formed against the colonizer? Algeria, during the time of the war of independence had adopted an idealist way of living. [...]

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[...] Culture is the social contract between these two moral entities. In this way, we can understand that the very center of Algerian culture is the symbolic violence which operated during decades in Algeria. Political culture can be defined as particular patters of orientations to political action which underpinned all systems of governance”[36]. Political culture “needs time to mature and to become popularly internalized as part of the political routine of the people. It needs to develop popularly-accepted norms and givens, and the mass internalization of such political norms, especially in transformations of historic proportions, does not occur overnight[37]. [...]

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