Six months after Algeria won its independence, an unusual group of militants gathered in Algiers. Led by a Siamese-born French lawyer, Jacques Vergès, the group consisted of French and Algerian journalists, cartoonists, photographers, and militants. Their mission? To craft a new cultural and political journal. On February 2, 1963, the first issue of Révolution Africaine (RA) was released. Over the course of the next five years, RA experienced important upheavals: editors-in-chief were hired, fired, and arrested; journalists were trained and fled political persecution; the journal was even temporarily halted in 1965 after a coup d’état.

Despite this tumultuous history, RA became one of Algeria’s foremost French-language publications in the first decade of independence. Articles covered domestic politics and culture, journalists conducted in-depth investigations on international revolutionary movements and even reprinted letters and articles from sympathetic readers abroad. The publication had an important impact on debates about culture, politics, and society in the new nation, crafting a robust public square beyond the state. This article is the first institutional study of RA, examining how it articulated a counter-hegemonic definition of postcolonial Algerian identity alongside and beyond the state after 1962.

After Algeria became independent in 1962, the Front de Libération Nationale began a series of social, political, and economic reforms. These state policies dominate studies of  post-colonial identity, yet in the first decade of independence, civil society groups contributed to debates about Algeria’s revolutionary identity in the global South. Under Ahmed Ben Bella (1962-1965) and Houari Boumedienne (1965-1978), Islam, Arabism, and socialism became central components of national identity, defining Algeria as either part of continental Africa or the Arab world. Usually portrayed as an all-encompassing discourse, everyday Algerians in fact consumed, transformed, and challenged these narratives of belonging through civil institutions like literature or education.

Though often censored, the press played an important role in these debates about Algerian identity. RA provides a lens into the negotiation of French, African, and Arab identity in post-colonial Algeria. The publication’s journalists rejected the colonial past through a new revolutionary identity, they also strategically resisted the government’s attempt to dominate debates over the country’s future. In articulating an alternative definition of Algerian identity, RA crafted a public square of discourse that both emphasized the importance of postcolonial reform and challenged the FLN’s hegemonic claim to Algeria’s future… read more

Founded in Beirut in 1969, the Arabic periodical al-Hadaf (The Target) was the media organ of the newly formed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PLFP arose as a guerrilla organization in 1967, espousing a Marxist-Leninist framework and advancing armed revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Its rise is indicative of wider political transformations precipitated by the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the radicalization of a Third World internationalism and New Left anti-imperialist solidarity in the late 1960s. In this context, Al-Hadaf has often been consulted as an archival source offering valuable insights about this crucial moment of revolutionary transformation in the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle. However, the periodical itself, its editorial foregrounding of art as a site of revolutionary struggle, and its visual and material form, have yet to be studied.

In particular, al-Hadaf’s founding editor, Palestinian novelist, journalist and militant Ghassan Kanafani (1936–72) played a pivotal role in defining the aesthetic preoccupations and form of this radical periodical. He dedicated a special section to contemporary political art, literature and culture and, crucially, acted as a conduit to bring on board an emerging generation of Arab artists and writers. Thanks to many artists’ contributions, the periodical itself was visually striking, showcasing a wealth of experimental militant artworks. Furthermore, it reconciled some of the tense relations between modern art and politics which had been fiercely debated in the previous decade in literary Arabic periodicals such as al-Adab and Shiʿr. Thus a new sense of political urgency and commitment through the arts was emerging in the pages of al-Hadaf.

Drawing on an archive of Al-Hadaf’s foundational years (1969-72), under Kanafani’s editorial direction, my paper aims to uncover this neglected art historical and politico-aesthetic dimension. It is concerned primarily with the role such a magazine plays in the politicization of art in revolutionary contexts. How did al-Hadaf succeed in lending new militant meanings to modernist artistic practices outside the confines of gallery spaces, market systems, and elite literary circles? How did it carry in its printed pages—texts, images and symbols—new aesthetic sensibilities that articulate revolutionary horizons? And, in doing so, how did this periodical aesthetically inscribe the Palestinian struggle and the radical left in the Arab world, within the translocal visuality of anti-imperialist revolutionary ferment and transnational solidarities that characterized the global sixties?

Tunisia’s post-French colonial era was dominated by the political and social imagination of the one, President Habib Bourguiba, and his vision for a bourgeois colonial modernity. The most resilient voice of opposition (political and cultural) came from university campuses, and a nebulous leftist organization, Perspectives Tunisiennes or Amel ettounsi in colloquial Arabic, which the regime blamed for “corrupting the minds of youth with foreign ideas”. Their eponymous publication was widely read on campus, and survived government repression in 1968 and 1973. The journal shifted from a Paris-inspired Maoist tone in French in the 1960s, to a pro-Palestine guerilla and pro-workers leaning in Arabic in the 1970s, as the Paris-trained founding generations passed the torch to a homegrown, more provincial generation. As it is currently remembered and celebrated, this journal allowed young Tunisians to broaden their horizon from the restricted nationalist frame of analysis and envisage the terms of a Tunisian revolution.​

This paper considers how this publication shaped the Tunisian post-independence generation of leftists and their horizon of thought through the medium of language and ‘translation’. We will consider it as a multidimensional process: first, the linguistic operation that exposed Tunisian student audiences to leftist debates taking place in Paris and Beirut; second, by theorizing the Tunisian reality in terms of class struggle against the national bourgeoisie; third, we will ask about the impact of multilingual publishing from French, to classical Arabic to darija (spoken Tunisian), and how it was accompanied by a conceptual evolution of the journal’s message. Underneath these changes stood a constant effort to free Tunisia from a the colonial horizon of progress and come up with an alternative and appropriated language. As such, this abstract speaks to the material history of this periodical (area 1) and its modes of cultural resistance (area 3).

This case offers an opportunity to witness the conceptual and semantic evolution across languages in an underexplored country. This paper will first evoke the thematic components of the shift from French to Arabic, namely the topics of economic and social critique levelled against the regime on agrarian reform and the role of the petty nationalist bourgeoisie, to a focus on direct action, the Palestinian guerilla and the cost of everyday life. It will then revisit these issues with examples that highlight the overall “untheorization” of the journal’s prose. Finally, it carries out a diachronic conceptual analysis of “revolution” throughout the journal’s two phases, as we assess how it expanded Tunisian imagination of independence.

2. “(Non-)Aligned in Print: Anti-Colonial Aesthetics in Souffles-Anfas (1966-1971)”
Proposed for Counter-Cultural: Literary & Cultural Resistance in Periodicals

This paper is part of a larger book project that critically explores Arabic, Francophone, and bilingual cultural journals in the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) from roughly the 1930s-1970s. The study addresses the diversity of Maghrebi periodicals across aesthetic, formal, and ideological registers to better understand the capaciousness of the cultural journal as a hybrid genre.

For the Revolutionary Papers collective, I am focusing on the anticolonial Marxist-Leninist journal Souffles-Anfas which was published in French and Arabic from 1966-1971. The periodical’s inaugural editorials frame their mission as “cultural decolonization” mobilizing “terrorist” and “guerilla” literary techniques. Addressing the increasingly Marxist-Leninist orientation of the journal’s editorial collective—referred to as either comité d’action or group d’action—my paper maps Souffles-Anfas’ aesthetic evolution by exploring the journal’s auto-theorization across editorials, manifestos, op-eds, and dossiers. Specifically, it focuses on the periodical’s reflections on decolonization, language politics, as well as supranational political and cultural alliances across the global south (pan-Arab, pan-African, tricontinental, non-aligned).

Scholars commonly periodize Souffles’ transformation from an avant-garde francophone journal with tricontinental affinities specializing in poetics to Anfas as a militant mouthpiece of the Moroccan left focused on regional decolonization—and particularly the question of Palestine (Olivia Harrison 2013 & 2016; Andy Stafford 2009; Teresa Villa-Ignacio 2017). Accounting for pivotal historical crises and movements that shaped this period—from Vietnam to Cuba to Algeria; from the June 1967 war to May 1968—this paper considers the anti-colonial and Marxist-Leninist leanings of the journal across both its francophone and Arabophone writings.

Souffles-Anfas’ subtle tension between the ‘literary’ and the ‘cultural’ is reflected in its rebranding from reveu poétique et littéraire [poetic and literary magazine], to revue maghrébine littéraire culturelle trimestrielle [quarterly Maghrebi literary cultural magazine], to revue culturelle arabe du Maghreb [Arab cultural magazine from the Maghreb]. While its final issues excise the ‘literary’ from its generic subheading, the journal nonetheless continues to publish literary works alongside manifestoes, treatise, op-eds, and dossiers. Interrogating the ways in which Souffles-Anfas’ political aims are formally and aesthetically staged across languages and genres, I attend to the dialectical, dialogic, and polyvocal qualities of the cultural journal.

My talk will look at the literary and cultural journal as a vehicle in the (re)construction of culture, literature and popular education in the aftermath of colonial destruction. I will focus on the 1950-60’s anticolonial activities of two Palestinian periodicals, al-Jadid and al-Ittihad, while offering frames and queries that can be applied to post and anticolonial periodicals on a broader scale.

As in other contexts, anticolonial periodicals were formed in Palestine/Israel in response to colonial destruction. The magazine and newspaper at hand functioned as forums to redress the ravaged cultural landscape through the development of local culture and literature, historical and cultural thought, popular education, collective self-definition, mobilization and political awareness. In the absence of state or institutional support, such literary production took on a central position, providing a space for collective development and facilitating regional and international exchange networks. Periodicals provided alternatives to the publishing route that ran through mainstream venues and publishing houses. They nurtured local culture through the publication of local writers, the transmission of key issues and debates, anticolonial literary gatherings, networks and mentorship, the translation of literatures, and the exposure of readers to international progressive literatures. I will examine the periodical’s table of contents as an archival record that helps us trace the phases and programs of literary and cultural reconstruction.  I will also discuss the major activities that were central to oppositional periodical culture in Palestine/Israel, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between cultural organizing through intellectual clubs and events, communication with the international anti-colonial and socialist literary scenes through translation and exchange, and the nurturing and mentorship of new writers and artists through publication and dialogue.

In this paper, I will explore the concept of community in relation to publishing practices through the PFLP bulletin, a 1970s-1980s English-language monthly magazine published by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The aim of the bulletin was to present the political line of the PFLP, to provide current information and analysis of the struggle at a local, national and international level, and as a tool to build solidarity amongst similar liberation movements around the world. This role in forming networks and an alternative platform for debate and critique fits into the stream “Counter-Institutional: The Material Histories of Periodicals”.

Through an analysis of the layout design, language and content in digital versions of these issues found online and building on the discussion that I began in an article titled “A platform for third world solidarity: thePopularFrontfor the Liberation of Palestine bulletin”published inThe Funambulist (Issue 22), the paper discusses the role and influence of publishing practices in the twentieth century. It grapples with questions of relevance of publishing these types of publications now, and outlines some lessons we can draw on today from the community and solidarity building activities developed through the PFLP Bulletin.