Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1962

by Lia Brozgal

Absent the Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961 is the first cultural history devoted to literary and visual representations of the police massacre of peaceful Algerian protesters. Covered up by the state and hidden from history, the events of October 17 have nonetheless never been fully erased. Indeed, as early as 1962, stories about the massacre began to find their way their way into novels, poetry, songs, film, visual art, and performance. This book is about these stories, the way they have been told, and their function as both documentary and aesthetic objects. Identified here for the first time as a corpus - an anarchive - the works in question produce knowledge about October 17 by narrativizing and contextualizing the massacre, registering its existence, its scale, and its erasure, while also providing access to the subjective experiences of violence and trauma. Absent the Archive is invested in exploring how literature and culture represent history by complicating it, whether by functioning as first responders and persistent witnesses; reverberating against reality but also speculating on what might have been; activating networks of signs and meaning; or by showing us things that otherwise cannot be seen, while at the same time provoking important questions about the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of representation.

Kindle Edition

Published December 31, 2020

Reviews

[Sierra Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much! Hearing about the massacre of Algerians in Paris on October 17 was shocking because I knew nothing about it and it is something that has happened in recent history. Learning about how to create an anarchive and how that anarchive interacts with the current archive was fascinating. I will admit it was a bit dense at times and Brozgal has some serious footnotes, which says a lot about the depth of her research, but made each of the pages kind of busy. I loved how Brozgal did not just put in the French meanings of words or writing she most of the time translated them into English right after. At some points, it was hard to find the English translation amidst the French and the rest of the book. I almost wish she had made a more clear distinction between French and English, other than just putting the English in parentheses.

I would recommend that everyone read this book! Brozgal does an amazing job of keeping her focus on October 17 and how to define and build an anarchive.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well-presented and nuanced study of the fictional and non-fictional descriptions/responses to this historical event, its partial concealment, and its emergence into official discourse, over decades.