Generation independence: a people's history

你如何在公共历史中为一个历史上重要的时期创造空间，但却没有制度价值？你如何在接受不同语言教育的几代人之间传递关于过去的故事？这是AHRC早期职业奖学金关于“重写老兵：性别、地理、世代和阿尔及利亚战争”的两个关键问题。在之前的项目中，首席研究员（Natalya Vince）撰写了撰写独立后历史的困难，并分析了代际（非）传播。她批评将阿尔及利亚的学术历史和通俗历史划分为两个并列的时期——独立战争（1954-62）和20世纪90年代的国内冲突——这是对阿尔及利亚陷入不可避免的暴力循环的讽刺。她分析了年轻一代的阿尔及利亚人是如何理解战时和战后女性的角色的，揭示了年轻人是如何用牺牲、殉道和宗教虔诚等主流语言，将那些通常被社会视为非常规的女性重新想象成更保守的人物的。这个后续资助项目提供了一个超越分析的机会。它将开发和测试这些问题的创造性解决方案，这些问题是社会风险，甚至超过了学术挑战。因此，它大大提高了原研究项目的价值和更广泛的利益。该项目将制作18幅20分钟的新纪录片肖像，其中阿尔及利亚男女谈论20世纪60年代和70年代。这是阿尔及利亚历史上的一个关键时期：经过8年毁灭性的反殖民战争和132年的殖民统治，重点是重建阿尔及利亚的基础设施，解决大量文盲问题，将阿尔及利亚的经济、社会和文化从（新）殖民统治中解放出来，并将阿尔及利亚定位为新解放国家中的世界领导者。这些纪录片试图从人性的角度来传达这个故事，而不是通常的少数几个标志性的政治人物。通过对教师、医生、空中交通管制员和电厂管理人员等人的采访，我们可以看到普通生活与国家和民族建设过程的交集。纪录片将被编辑，以阿拉伯语、法语和英语字幕，上传到一个专门创建的项目网站，并连接到社交媒体上。代际交流嵌入制作过程，并通过产出产生：PI将与一家阿尔及利亚电影公司合作，该公司通过支持失业青年的计划获得资助，两位年轻的阿尔及利亚艺术家将制作艺术品，以新的创意形式表达故事，进一步吸引新的观众。为影片配上字幕，并在Facebook上使用自动翻译功能，让更多阿拉伯语使用者和更多法语使用者能够围绕同一件艺术品交换意见和证词，弥合高度政治化的语言鸿沟，但在日常生活中，这可能是一个实际障碍。观众对第一轮影片的反馈将决定下一轮采访的对象和要讨论的主题，从而加强知识的联合生产和项目的共同所有权。到奖项结束时，该项目将产生大量原创的、有创意的、开放获取的材料，旨在在新观众中产生关于20世纪60年代和70年代的跨代在线对话。这将作为一个跳板，与更多“自上而下”的公共历史渠道（印刷媒体、电视、广播、艺术画廊、博物馆）合作，鼓励他们将这一时期融入他们的活动中。如果成功的话，这个如何将新的年表和故事“自下而上”带入公共历史的模式有可能应用于广泛的背景和时间顺序时期。

How do you make space in public history for a period which is historically important, but not institutionally valued? How do you transmit stories about the past between generations who have been educated in different languages of instruction? These were two key questions which emerged from an AHRC Early Career Fellowship on 'Rewriting the veteran: gender, geography, generation and the Algerian War'. In this previous project, the Principal Investigator (Natalya Vince) wrote about the difficulties of writing post-independence history and analysed intergenerational (non-)transmission. She critiqued the squashing down of Algerian history in academic and popular history into two juxtaposed periods - the War of Independence (1954-62) and the civil conflict of the 1990s - as feeding into a caricature of Algeria as locked in an inescapable cycle of violence. She analysed how younger generations of Algerians understood the wartime and post-war roles of women, revealing the ways in which young people reimagined women who were often socially unconventional as more conservative figures, using a dominant language of sacrifice, martyrdom and religious piety. This Follow on Funding project provides an opportunity to go beyond analysis. It will develop and test out creative solutions to these issues, which are societal risks even more than they are academic challenges. It thus significantly enhances the value and wider benefit of the original research project.The project will produce 18 new 20-minute documentary portraits in which Algerian women and men talk about the 1960s and 1970s. This was a key period in Algerian history: after eight years of a devastating anti-colonial war and 132 years of colonial rule, the emphasis was on rebuilding Algerian infrastructure, tackling massive illiteracy, freeing the Algerian economy, society and culture from (neo-)colonial domination and positioning Algeria as a world leader amongst newly liberated nations. The documentaries seek to convey this story on a human scale, going beyond the usual handful of iconic political figures. The intersections of ordinary lives with processes of state- and nation-building will emerge through interviews with teachers, doctors, air traffic controllers and power plant managers, amongst others. Documentaries will be edited, subtitled in Arabic, French and English, uploaded onto a specially-created project website, and connected into social media. Intergenerational exchange is embedded in the production process as well as generated through the outputs: the PI will be working with an Algeria-based film company funded via a scheme to support unemployed youth, and two young Algerian artists will produce artwork to express the stories told in new creative forms, further engaging new audiences. Subtitling the films and using Facebook autotranslation features for posts and comments will enable those who are more Arabophone and those who are more Francophone to exchange views and testimony around the same artefact, bridging a linguistic divide which is hyperpoliticised, but in everyday life can be as much a practical barrier as anything else. Audience feedback on a first round of films will shape who is interviewed in the next round and the themes to be addressed, reinforcing the co-production of knowledge and shared ownership of the project.By the end of the award, the project will have produced a substantial body of original, creative, open-access material and aims to have generated a cross-generational online conversation amongst new audiences about the 1960s and 1970s. This will serve as a springboard to engage with more 'top down' outlets for public history (print press, TV, radio, art galleries, museums) to encourage them to integrate this period into their activities. If successful, this model of how to bring new chronologies and stories into public history 'from below' has the potential to be applied to a wide range of contexts and chronological periods.