Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015

This Introduction offers a critical political and social context for Algeria 1988-2015. It makes the case for thinking about the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities and the need to do so through a range of methodological approaches that are attentive to the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. It argues for the need to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. Reviewing the chapters that compose the volume it makes the case for a form of enquiry that offers historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in our approach to understanding contemporary Algeria. In particular, it makes the case for the existence of a variety of cultural public spheres in Algeria and their importance to the country’s transition.