Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria by David Porter (review)

David Porter declares his parti pris at the outset of this unusual volume: ‘it was the Algerian struggle for independence […] that first introduced me, while studying in Paris in the closing year of the war, to the anarchist press and anarchist analysis’ (p. 11). This is the heartbeat of the book. The author’s intention is threefold: to provide ‘an antiauthoritarian introduction to contemporary Algeria, a brief survey of the French anarchist movement since the 1950s, and an exploration of important generic anarchist issues’ (p. 12). The work is divided chronologically into five parts: the first deals with the Algerian War, 1954–62; the second examines Ben Bella’s short-lived regime, 1962–65; the third begins with the military coup of June 1965 and follows President Boumédienne’s period in power until his death in 1978; the fourth, 1979–99, examines the regime under his successor, President Chadli, as well as the bloody conflict of the 1990s; and the final section follows President Bouteflicka’s regime, beginning in 1999, and brings us up to the Arab Spring. Each part has two introductions, the first presenting a standard overview of the main actors and events in Algeria during the period in question, and the second giving background to the French anarchist movement for the same period. The primary content of the five parts is made up of French anarchist positions on Algeria. The texts are translated by Porter and are either closely paraphrased or directly cited. Furthermore, these anarchist writings are presented according to source rather than chronologically or as part of an analytical argument, the purpose being to allow the reader to compare different anarchist perspectives on events in Algeria during each period under review. For example, on grassroots protest under President Bouteflicka we read anarchist views that appear, successively, in the Alternative libertaire, the Courant alternatif, Le Monde libertaire, L’Oiseau-tempête, Informations et réflexions libertaires, as well as in the online anarchist blog Le Jura libertaire. In the process, not only do we gain an anarchist perspective informing us about developments within French anarchism, but we encounter reports of Algerian events that emphasize grassroots activism in ways that read the movements concerned as proto-anarchist. Porter is clearly passionate about his subject and writes with a disarming lucidity. Commenting on his sources and his own work, he states: ‘This combination of enthusiastically exploring new liberatory social phenomena with a more didactic emphasis on the destructive results of hierarchy (using Algeria as a foil) runs throughout the texts in this book’ (p. 485). However, while the volume contains some fascinating anarchist perspectives on Algeria since 1954, its value is limited, to some extent, by the fact that the content, as mentioned above, pulls in three directions. Porter is concerned to present materials rather than to provide sustained analytical commentary or to sound out the primary sources against alternative viewpoints. And yet, what prompts this work is a refreshing testimony to independent, informed scholarship.