Lecture by Professor Joel Beinin
Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus

The extraordinary artistry of the film “Battle of Algiers” rendered Algeria the emblematic example of settler colonialism and decolonization. The film teaches us that settler colonialism is a violent historical social structure and that decolonization is typically a violent process. A common reading of the film, fortified by the first chapter of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth hails that decolonial violence. Some proponents of that reading celebrated Hamas’s horrific attack October 7, 2023 on Israel as a liberatory assertion of Palestinian agency. But this reading is inconsistent with how Israeli and American historians and sociologists have studied the Zionist project as a variety of settler colonialism, which is a heuristic category, not a procrustean bed.

A more complex reading of the film, fortified by the final chapter of The Wretched of the Earth points to the long-term psychic, social, and political cost of colonial and decolonial violence for both colonizers and colonized. In this lecture, Professor Beinin argues that it is [as] misguided to [uncritically hail decolonial violence as it is to] reject tout court the categories of settler colonialism and decolonization in examining Israel/Palestine. At a minimum they are legitimate categories in scholarly discourse. In the most optimistic case, welcoming them into the conversation may open a door to acknowledging historical realities without which no real peace is possible.