"Open the Doors, the Martyrs Are Coming". Analysis and Contrast of the Memorial Construction Process of the 2001 Black Spring in National and Diasporic Contexts
Based on a fieldwork carried out in Algeria and France with activists, movement delegates and rioters, this abstract analyzes the processes of memory construction of the Black Spring in the given contexts, questioning the existence of a transnational memory of 2001.
The gains of the Black Spring – mainly the official recognition of Amazigh language – are minors considering human losses : State repression left 126 people dead, 5000 injured, including 200 permanently disabled. Such a toll, questions the place of these events in the lives of the « wounded of Kabylia ». For those remaining in Algeria, indicators suggest hogra is still going on. Commemorations seem hopeless in a post-Hirak context while they are multiplying in diaspora and relayed by social media. They allow former rioters to denounce the violence of a regime still unpunished, and to draw attention on the challenges associated with migration, revealing the reconfiguration of ties with Algeria and the creation of diasporic communities aound 2001. Restoring the trajectories of these wounded allows to understand the long-term effects of violence and how living context affect the recovery of people, and the place this memory may have in their life.
Hence, the urge to focus on the place this memory holds within Kabyle communities, by exploring memorial supports used to build and maintain this memory. This mirrors the impossibility of commemorating 2001 in Algeria, where authorities have reduced the possibilities of political self-organization. To describe memory entrepreneurs and to distinguish narratives about 2001 in the studied contexts can better help us understanding the role of 2001 events in collective memory of democratic activists.