Opening Up the Photographic Exhibition ‘Pierre Bourdieu in Alergia: Testimonies of Uprooting' January 12, 2007

One Day ESRC Seminar on Opening Up the Photographic Exhibition ‘Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting’ currently installed at Goldsmiths, University of London (Kingsway Corridor, RHB) until May 2007.

Date: Fri 12th Jan 2007
Time: 10-6pm

To ensure a place, register with: Kimberly Keith [email protected]

Chair/Discussant: Nirmal Puwar/Les Back

Morning Session: 10-1pm
Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths)Co-editor of 'Postcolonial Criticism'(1997).

Tassadit Yacine (EHESS, Laboratoire of social anthropology), Director of
AWAL, Berber book studies. Close collaborator with Bourdieu.
Franz Schultheis (President of the Pierre Bourdieu Foundation, Geneva) and
Christine Frisinghelli (Camera Austria, Grasz)- Curators of the exhibition
and co-editors of 'Pierre Bourdieu: In Algeria. Zeugnisse der
Entwurzelung'(2006).

Lunch Break: 1-2pm

Afternoon Session: 2-6.30pm
Screening of 'Screening of Sociology as a Combat Sport (2001, 146 mins)
followed by Q&A with the Director Pierre Carles (Paris) & the Producer
Annie Gonzalez.

For Directions Go To: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

The ESRC Seminar Series on ‘Thinking With Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting’, is a collaboration between Nirmal Puwar and Les Back from the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths with Azzedine Haddour (UCL), Derek Robbins (UEL), the BSA Race Forum, 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 at Goldsmiths 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:

23rd March 2007 (University of East London)
Politics and Phenomenology: the Algerian War of Independence and the development of the social philosophies of Jean-François Lyotard and Pierre
Bourdieu .

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)

April 2007 UCL
The Impact of the Algerian War on French Social Theory
Chair/Discussant: Azzedine Haddour. Date t.b.a.
Confirmed Speaker: Professor Robert Young, author of Postcolonialism: an historical introduction.

To ensure a place, register with the Project Administrator:
Kimberly Keith [email protected]

Official Website: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/sociology/bourdieu.php