Photographic Exhibition: Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting November 9, 2006

The Methods Lab, Department of Sociology invite you to a launch of the photographic exhibition:

Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting

Location: Room 137 and Kingsway Corridor, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmtihs, University of London

3.30–6pm: Screening of 'Sociology as a Combat Sport' (2001, 146 mins)

A documentary film by director Pierre Carles, following the life of Pierre Bourdieu over three years.
Location: Room 137, Richard Hoggart Building

6–8pm: Reception and drinks in Kingsway Corridor

The exhibition is part of an ESRC Seminar Series on ‘Thinking With Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting’, initiated by Nirmal Puwar and Les Back of the Methods Lab, in collaboration with Azzedine Haddour (UCL), Derek Robbins (UEL), as well the curators of the exhibition - Franz Schultheis (President of the Pierre Bourdieu Foundation, Geneva) and Christine Frisinghelli (Camera Austria, Graz) - both of whom have generously supported the project.

The series utilizes the exhibition as an opportunity to open up a dialogue on the place of intellectuals in war, the consequences of colonialism and post-colonialism on questions of land, work and homelessness. Above all, the presence of the photographs presents the need to re-visit the influence of Algeria, as a colony and a post-colony, on the formation of French social theory. The neglect of colonial contexts upon theoretical
perspectives that continue to impress huge influence upon our contemporary tools of analysis is indicative of the ways in which histories of social and political thought have eclipsed particular landscapes and formations in the writing process.

For Bourdieu, the years he spent doing research in Algeria (1958 -1961), during the period of the war of Liberation, continued to have an enduring impact upon both his theoretical formulations as well as how he intervened and conducted himself as an intellectual. His research resulted in the books: Sociologie de l'Algérie (1958), Travail et travailleurs en Algérie
(1963), Le Déracinement: La crise de L'agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie (with Abdelmalek Sayad, 1964) and Algérie 60, structures economiques et structures temporelles (1997). However, the majority of the vast number of photographs he took during this period remained private. Towards the latter part of his life Bourdieu began to develop a plan for exhibiting the photographs, in conversation with Franz Schultheis
and Christine Frisinghelli. He himself though passed away in early 2002, before the completion of the exhibition.

Future Seminars:

1. 12 January 2007
Opening Up ‘Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting’ (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Chair/Discussant: Nirmal Puwar/Les Back

Confirmed Speakers include:
Franz Schultheis and Christine Frisinghelli, curators of the exhibition and co-editors of Pierre Bourdieu: In Algeria. Zeugnisse der Entwurzelung, (2006). Pierre Carles (Paris), Director of ‘Sociology as a Combat Sport’ (2001) and Annie Gonzalez, Producer of the film.

2. 23 March 2007
Politics and Phenomenology: the Algerian War of Independence and the development of the social philosophies of Jean-François Lyotard and Pierre
Bourdieu (University of East London) – Chair/Discussant: Derek Robbins

Confirmed Speakers include:
Lahouari Addi, Professor in the Institute of Political Science at the Université de Lyon 2, author of Sociologie et anthropologie chez Pierre
Bourdieu (2002)

Louis Pinto, Centre de Sociologie Européenne, Paris, author of Pierre Bourdieu et la théorie du monde social (1998)

Stuart Sim, Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Sunderland, author of Lyotard and the Inhuman, (2001)

3. Date and Speakers tba
The Impact of the Algerian War on French Social Theory (UCL)
Chair/Discussant: Azzedine Haddour

Official Website: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/events/eventdetails.php?eventID=1366